Page 8 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

CHAPTER SIX

“Misty Fields, awake!” came a hissing voice.

Adrenaline shot through my veins like a swarm of hornets. The magic oak tree flared as my eyes snapped open and I hinged upright into a sitting position. Thistle thorns, I was incredibly stiff.

And clothed. And lying on a bed with the linens still made up beneath me in a room I didn’t recognize.

Silk curtains swayed in the mild breeze by the windows, which held no glass and better resembled the archways I’d seen leading into the inner grove.

Plush moss in a tight yet springy weave covered the floor, and fairy lights floated near the ceiling like glowing motes of pollen.

On the opposite side of the room was a fireplace lit by coals, the logs having burned down only recently.

Everywhere else was delicately sculpted wood in blonde or dove-gray tones.

Each detail was purposefully selected to lend a sense of serenity to the room, which was entirely lost on me in this current moment.

The owner of the voice that had so rudely awoken me from the temporary rigor mortis of such deep sleep stood nearby with a bundle in her arms. The fae female seemed tense and irritable, the latter emotion quickly dominating the former as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

Phantoms of an unsettling dream disappeared like smoke before I could recognize them for what they truly were.

Sawyer, who had succumbed to the same deep sleep, dragged himself from my lap with a great deal of stretching limbs and splayed toes and a massive yawn that threatened to unhinge his lower jaw from the rest of his skull. “What was that?” he murmured groggily. “Is it still nighttime?”

“Laoise,” I groaned, recognizing the female. “Did Shannon inject us with fairy wine or something?”

“That’s ‘High Lady’ or ‘my lady’ to you.

” Then the fae pointed to the motes floating dreamily about the ceiling.

“Caerulea spores, obviously . For aid in sleeping. You mortals are apparently more susceptible to them.” She tossed the bundle onto the bed and reached for the pitcher on the nearby nightstand.

“Can you function or you do you need a rousing splash of water to the face?”

Sawyer released a little hiss and quickly slunk out of the proposed splash zone.

“I’m up, I’m up!” I cried.

“Keep quiet and get dressed. Now , witch. My lady awaits.” Laoise cast a furtive look over her shoulder at the bedroom door, but it remained closed.

The moment my feet touched the mossy floor, I sucked in a deep breath, grounding myself.

My head instantly cleared, my vision sharpening.

This realm was so much more potent than mine, everything impregnated with a vitality like nothing I’d ever experienced.

My clarity trickled down the bond into Sawyer, dispelling any lingering languidness, and the tomcat commented, “This seems suspicious.”

“Only ‘seems?’” I quipped with a smirk. Working quickly, I untied the stays of the bundle—which was actually a brown oilskin cloak—and paused with my hands on the chain of Ossian’s cloak. “Would you, um, turn around?” I asked the high lady’s attendant.

Laoise tsked , crossed her arms over her chest, and complied. “Don’t use this as an excuse to slow down, witch.” Then she dropped her arms and strode over to the nearest window to peek outside.

“Do you think this is a trap?” Sawyer asked. “Laoise didn’t seem too keen about us a few hours ago, and now she’s… I don’t know if ‘helping’ is the right term or if it should be ‘incriminating.’”

“She’s not helping us,” I answered.

His claws sprang from his toes, ready to defend us if the fae abandoned the windows to rush us. “I knew it!”

“She’s helping Shannon,” I clarified. “Now chill out and help me.”

Using Ossian’s cloak as a kind of privacy drape, I first doublechecked that Arcadis’s ring was still on my finger and the filigree key was still on its chain around my neck. My fingers trailed down the Celtic shield pendant, and a wisp of that unsettling dream returned to me. Hold on, bear claw.

With a roll of my shoulders, I cleared my thoughts and started in on the hidden pockets in the gown’s bodice.

Onto the soft bedding I’d just vacated dropped the Hunting Spell monocle and the bleached tourmaline crystals.

Sawyer slunk down to the mossy floor on silent paws, grumbled something down our bond about not having thumbs, and started freeing all the other witchy bits and bobs hidden in the hem with his teeth and claws.

Illuminate matches, the vial of pokeweed juice, the shrouding powder, the Caer powder, the monocle, the tourmaline—it all got shoved into my bra.

When all my meager possessions were once again hidden, I practically clawed myself free of my clothes.

Ossian’s heavy cloak fell to the ground with an audible thump of chain and fabric, the wedding dress rustling more demurely after it.

I trampled it all with a few hearty stomps of my boots, which earned me a chastising throat-clearing from Laoise.

The clothes she had provided were not tailored for a human, so I had to stuff the hem of the skirt into the belt to keep from tripping on it. The shirt reminded me of those laced peasant shirts Aunt Eranthis sewed for the men of our family, this one made of butter-soft flax instead of cotton.

Laoise’s acute hearing informed her I was now adjusting the oilskin cloak over my shoulders, so she whipped around from her post by the window without any announcement and snatched up my discarded clothes.

She hurled them into the fireplace and used that incredible fae speed of her to flash across the bedroom to the door.

“Come on ,” she whispered impatiently. “Don’t use your magic and don’t make any noise. You humans talk too loud even when you think you’re only whispering.”

Sawyer jumped into my arms and we quickly followed her from the room.

The fae female led us through the warren of the inner grove to a secluded little patio overlooking a dark forest. Stars glittered overhead, the three moons I’d seen earlier huddled close to the crenelated horizon.

Clustered tight against the patio’s railing was a wall of mountain laurel, and Laoise swept the shrubbery away from the wide, flat top, clearly looking for something.

Carved from the stone was a lightly raised relief sculpture depicting leaping fish and swirling water.

Laoise homed in on a one-eyed fish with a closed mouth and fiddled with a ring on her middle finger until the blue cabochon in its setting faced downward.

Then she carefully inserted the jewel into the fish’s eye.

A ripple of blue light shot from the fish at either end of the railing and funneled into her ring.

She lifted her hand, readjusted her now-glowing ring, and gave me an impatient gesture to follow her.

“What about my friends?” I whispered.

Her eyes widened into a threatening glare that promised murder as she flung a finger up against her lips, demanding silence.

I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted my eyebrows expectantly as if to say, Shannon’s not here. My friends aren’t here. Explain yourself.

Laoise bared her teeth at me in a mute hiss and pointed to the dark valley below. With a sweep of her arm against the mountain laurel, she revealed a hidden staircase. She didn’t wait for me, expecting me to follow her despite that piss-poor charades answer.

I didn’t have a choice, so I started after her. The shrubs crowded the stairs so vigorously, they scratched, pulled, snagged— assaulted —our clothes and rained flowers down upon our hair. Laoise was forced to hold up an arm out to the side to block them from smacking her in the face with each step.

Until my green magic coaxed the entirety of them to lean away from the stairs until we had passed. Laoise dropped her arm and cast a look over her shoulder that wasn’t exactly gratitude, but it wasn’t not gratitude either.

My legs were shaking by the time we reached the bottom of the hidden stairs—I’d lost count of the steps long ago, finding I’d needed my concentration not to trip and fall. Laoise rolled her eyes as I took a second to pant and let the magic oak tree soothe away the ache in my thighs.

After that dreadfully inconvenient second I’d stolen to catch my breath, the fae attendant turned sharply on her heel and followed the light of her ring. A faint beam protruded from the blue cabochon like a compass’s arrow, though this arrow did not necessarily point north.

The forest at the bottom of the valley was wilder, much less purposefully grown or trained than the one we’d passed through from the portal. The fae had no trouble seeing in the dark, but I, being mortal, very much did.

And it was dark . The Court of Beasts had no artificial light. There was nothing to illuminate our way except the stars and the setting moons (all mostly hidden from view due to the trees) and the occasional firefly (or the Elfame equivalent).

“Must you stub your toe against every root and step on every branch and collide with every sapling?” Laoise hissed.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk.”

“If I don’t say something, your crashing through the forest will alert every mallaithe in a hundred leagues of where we are. Honestly, weren’t you taught to pick up your feet as a child?”

“It’s stupid dark out here and now I have to worry about getting eaten alive by fae hunting trees? I thought this place was safe!”

“The inner and outer groves are perfectly safe, thanks to the lesídhe, but we’re not in those groves anymore. So. Be. Quiet .”

“You talked to me!”

“Shhh!”

“If she doesn’t mellow out, she’s going to turn into another Ms. Harris one of these days,” Sawyer muttered. He dropped down from where he’d been riding on my shoulder and padded a few feet in front of me. “Can you see me well enough to follow me? I won’t let you trip.”

Had Sawyer been a white cat, or orange, maybe. But as the blur of black-and-brown stripes he currently was? Not a chance.