Page 6 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

CHAPTER FOUR

With my hand trapped in the crook of the high lady’s elbow, I would be at this fae’s mercy if she decided to use that superhuman speed of hers.

I’d been separated from my friends, but I refused to be parted from Sawyer.

A sparkling green vine snaked around his midsection and hoisted him to my shoulder like a parrot.

His claws dug into the thick fabric of Ossian’s cloak, his tail wrapping around my neck.

Shannon escorted me through the gardens with quick steps, forcing me to jog next to her or be dragged along.

Her fairy hounds and attendants hurried after us, some following so close I was afraid they were going to clip my heels.

Triggered by our proximity, fairy lights illuminated the mulched paths a few feet ahead of us before winking out after our passing.

In the ever-nearing distance, rising above a colossal rhododendron shrub full of white blooms, was a wall of beech trees.

Each tree was as thick around as a ship’s mast and just as tall, and the branches wove together to form archways and a singular, spectacularly massive dome.

Though it was wintertime, the trees had all retained their leaves.

In the morning, those yellow leaves would catch the light and that dome would shine like a second sun.

Colorful éan sídhe—fairy birds—roosted in the branches like pigeons in a cathedral’s rafters, long slender bills tucked under their wings in slumber.

“This must be the inner grove ,” Sawyer wondered. His claws pinched tighter as he hunched down against my ear.

Shannon turned right at the next intersection. The crystals studding her winter solstice gown twinkled with the sudden change in direction. “So you are here to help your?—”

“How did you free yourself?” I interrupted. My feet halted on their own accord and the high lady jerked at the abrupt cessation of momentum. I couldn’t go another minute not knowing. “How did you and Callan return to each other after Ossian?”

Shannon’s expression smoothed from irritation to empathy.

Then, surprisingly, to shrewdness. This was information I was desperate for, and friend or not, everything came at a price in Elfame.

“You say the Banished One will meet a terminal end if I help you. I want satisfaction, Misty Fields. Can you promise me that?”

He had many women to answer to, but as far as I knew, only Shannon and I had the largest claims. If I had to give up my own vengeance so I could get Arthur back… There was only one answer to that. “Yes.”

“Will you bargain for it?”

A pause. “I can only swear to my dedication that I will do everything in my power to make it so. But I am not a master of fate.” There was every chance I would fail here, that I would fail back home.

Like my trials with the grimoire, just because my intentions were good and right didn’t automatically mean I would succeed.

But I will. I have to.

Shannon lifted her gaze to the twinkling sky as a small sigh escaped her. “Wise words. Then I will have whatever bargain you can make.”

“I’m not swearing anything until I know I can reclaim my bond.”

“So another show of good faith is in order then. Very well. Is your bond spark or tether?”

When I didn’t reply immediately, she elaborated, “Did a green spark flash from your hands when you first touched each other, or did you feel a pull on your heart like there’s a chain or rope linking you to your acushla?”

“Tether. Ossian pulled a blue cord that crackled like lightning from Ar—Bear’s—chest and tacked it to his own heart.”

Memory flashed in the high lady’s eyes. Shannon turned to her attendants who clustered a polite distance away. “Laoise, my bow. We will wait here for you.”

The fae of the Lake Court vanished with a rustle of fabric. We waited in a charged silence, primal witch and high lady quietly, professionally, sizing each other up. Shannon had declared us friends, but we were far from bosom companions.

Laoise returned presently with Shannon’s bow, handing it over with a brief bob of a curtsy.

The longbow was almost as tall as Shannon was and carved of wood as white as alabaster.

Across its arches flowed a stream edged by a forest with frolicking foxes and singing songbirds.

Trout leapt from the water and butterflies danced amongst the cattails.

It was stunning and would’ve been locked away in one of Emmett’s glass display cases with an exorbitant price tag had we been in the mortal realm. I would’ve doubted its field-worthiness had it not been for the permanent calluses on her fingers.

Shannon didn’t allow me to admire it for long. She turned it in deft hands to draw my attention to the string. It was woven cable, iridescent like spider silk.

“A tether acushla bond is like this bowstring,” she explained, “linking you and your mate across time and distance. It can only be severed if one of you dies.”

“So how did Os?—”

She held up a slender finger, a sly smile on her lips. My gaze tracked her finger as she slid it down the bowstring, hooked, and drew. Instead of two points of contact along the string, there were now three. “This is all that he did.”

“But I saw him rip that cord out of Bear’s chest!”

Shannon released the bowstring and placed that hand on my shoulder. “The Banished One is a master of illusion.”

Stunned, I stared at the shimmering bowstring. That’s all he’d done? Fooled me with an illusion? “B-but I felt…” Somehow the tears pumping from eyes robbed every thought out of my head. Purring, Sawyer leaned against me and rubbed his cheek against my hair.

“Of course you felt,” the high lady said softly. “The Banished One might not be able to steal the bond completely, but he can manipulate it.” Her hand slipped from my shoulder. “To great and devastating effect.”

Sawyer tensed to keep his perch on my shoulder as I angrily swiped at my eyes. “How do I get it back?”

“Are you ready to make that bargain?”

“ Yes .”

Our real names were not needed for a lesser fae bargain where all we pledged were good intentions, much to my relief.

I was not ready to say my real name here; I might never risk it in such a magical place where the true names of things had more power than they did on Earth.

After the breath of air whooshed against our faces to seal our bargain, I spared no time repeating, “How do I get it back?”

“He will need to keep it close at all times in order to manipulate it. Does he keep any pouches on his belt? Wear any jewelry?”

“He has a necklace,” I spat, an image of the beautiful cursed thing instantly coming to mind. I already knew what the high lady was going to say next.

“Do you know what a cloch is?”

The big blue gem in the center of his necklace overlaid my vision like a goal made manifest. “I do,” I said darkly. “And I know how to break them, too.”

“Then that is all you need do.” She hooked her bowstring again and released it. Together we watched the thrumming cord slow to a complete stop, linking the two notches of the bow together again without interference.

“That’s so easy,” Sawyer blurted.

“Infuriatingly so,” I hissed out through clenched teeth.

“You couldn’t have known,” Shannon soothed.

“But I suspected. Thistle thorns, I’ve been so stupid. ”

“Meadow,” Sawyer cautioned through the bond. “Your magic’s starting to do that freaky dark thing again. Calm down.”

A violent inhale, a calmer exhale. Everything was just so much more intense here, even my own emotions. Thank the Green Mother for this cat. I reached up and scratched his cheeks.

Shannon recognized she could lead the way to the inner grove again and gestured down the path with her bow.

After a few gliding steps, she returned to her previous line of questioning.

“So you are here to help your brother by obtaining a certain artifact. Now that we are friends and bonded through bargain, would you care to elaborate or prefer to be cryptic again?”

I doubted I could find the Samildánach without her assistance, but how would she react knowing the artifact I sought would be the very means Arcadis and others like him could use to bypass the restrictions placed on the Unseelie Court?

The Last Fae War had sealed the Unseelie away, forbidding them travel between the realms, and here I was on a quest for a skeleton key to their prison.

Shannon would unfriend me faster than a pixie could gnaw through bone.

“I have to find it and ransom him by the winter solstice.” There, that was something I could tell her without damning myself or my friends.

The rustle of her masquerade costume as we switched directions yet again had me clarifying, “ My winter solstice. Three nights from, uh, when we entered the portal.”

“So a week and then some here. For every one of your days, three days pass in the Seelie Court.”

“But the party?—”

“Do you not have week- or month-long celebrations where you come from?” She didn’t pause for me to answer her rhetorical question.

“Which is just as well because everybody will be preoccupied with the festivities, giving you and your—would you say they’re your coven?

” She flicked her free hand in dismissal over this trivial bit of nomenclature and continued, “You’ll have a certain degree of… inconsequentialness.”

The high lady wrinkled her nose at that word, not as confident in her command of English as she had been with sings .

“Anonymity?” I suggested.

Shannon laughed once, a beautiful sound like water trickling over crystal. “Not with those rounded ears. And your stunted height.”

I pursed my lips. I wasn’t stunted , but I suppose compared to a fae, I was pretty short.

“You’ll be equipped with all the essentials. Clothes”—she paused to glance at my faux wedding gown with its plunging neckline and Ossian’s cloak of damning colors—“travel packs, rations, basic equipment. Am I forgetting anything?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Money,” Agnes of the Vernal Pool answered immediately.

It was an incredibly practical suggestion, but from the way Laoise and Orla glared at her, it was as if she’d said something incredibly crass.

“You’re absolutely right, Agnes.” To me, Shannon explained, “The menial courts and most of the lesser fae and fairies rely on physical currency. Most of Elfame’s commerce is based on trade agreements, but you have no reputation here to draw upon.” She gave me an assessing side-eye. “Violet’s Heir.”

“It’s true.” I knew little about Violet Ní Dara other than the family legends, but she had appeared to me more than once.

Mostly in moonflower-milk-bath hallucinations, but I had also heard her voice speaking from my oak tree.

And there was the fact that I transformed into her likeness every time I summoned my battle magic now.

“True or not, it’s still a title I would use infrequently, or not at all, if I were you.

She was fae and you are not. Such a claim would only serve to validate my brother’s ideology.

He’s a Mac Eru or Erusian. They claim to be the sons of Elfame’s creation goddess and vow to protect the sanctity of Her land, including the magic She poured into it during its birth.

” Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “The fanatical ones like my brother subscribe to the outdated belief that mortals stole fae magic and that it’s their duty to return it. ”

‘This land weeps for what it has lost, and I’ll quench its grief with your blood.’ Unpleasant words from an unpleasant fae. No wonder Fionn barely seemed to tolerate him and his own sister preferred the company of dogs.

The fairy hounds, trotting obediently behind their mistress with bright, attentive expressions on their narrow faces, seemed like very amenable companions, though.

“The Erusians tend not to voice their opinions as vocally as my brother, preferring subtlety, so you must be careful who you interact with. Reveal nothing—which you already seem adept in doing.” That sly smile curved on her lips again.

“I suggest you use the money only in an emergency. The more self-sufficient you are, the better, to be sure. Thus equipped, you will have plenty of time to search for this mysterious artifact, I should think. Though, perhaps you will not need to search at all if you would just tell me what it is you seek.”

“Aren’t you more interested in how my little quest affects Ossian?” I deflected.

“Exceedingly so,” she answered. “But first things first, of course.”

An eerie chill slid down my spine like a drop of ice water at that turn of phrase.

Shannon stopped to face me. We stood in the exact middle of an oaken archway’s threshold.

One step to the left, and we would be back in the night gardens.

One step to the right, and we would be inside the Court of Beasts’ inner grove.

The symbolism of the divide was not lost on me.

Shannon seized my hands in hers, fingernails pinching. Her deep blue eyes held warning.

“What is it that you seek, Misty Fields?” From her tone, she would not ask again.

Our new friendship would end, and my friends and I would be hunted down if we managed to escape this court first. These Erusians she had warned me about would the least of our worries then.

“Elfame is a wild place where legend and magic run free and rampant. It is full of ancient things that may have retreated from everyday life, but they are not dead yet. Peril awaits you here. Less, if you choose to trust me with your answer.”

Swallowing thickly, I whispered in the quietest voice I could manage, “My brother will only be freed if I give Arcadis the Wandering Mirror. The Eternal Door.”

No recognition flickered in the high lady’s eyes. Perhaps those were just the appellations known to the Unseelie?

“The Samildánach.”

Shannon dropped my hands as if they were live coals.

“Absolutely not,” came a firm male voice.

Callan appeared in the archway beside us. It was as if he’d stepped from a hidden door in the beech tree itself (entirely possible, this was Elfame, after all), and with one stride, he positioned himself in front of the inner grove, blocking my entrance.

“Leave,” he barked, but the command was not for me.

Laoise, Orla, and Agnes flinched at the power in his voice and vanished. The feathered ears and tails of the fairy hounds drooped, and they cowered closer to their mistress.

“But,” I began.

Callan held up a hand. “It is not so much what you seek as where it is, Misty Fields. The Samildánach is in the Twilight Court, not far from here. But if I let you step foot in there, you will doom us all.”