Page 23 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Chapter Six

Lachlan brought them to the edge of the moors, purple hills stretching all around them, dark clouds heavy above. In the distance, the sea murmured and hissed, a soft, haunting song. A threat.

It was achingly beautiful in a way that befuddled and bewitched. It made her want to weep at the beauty even as the hairs on her arms prickled. Something with too many eyes watched her from the shadows.

A dog howled, a piercing sound like a hunting horn. An owl landed on Lachlan’s shoulder, snowy feathers pristine. “Come,” Lachlan ordered Pippa.

She should run again, even without a library to run to. She was reasonably fast on her feet. Maybe? While she had made her wish at the Well, she did not see what it had to do with Lachlan. Or why he would drop her into an oubliette. Why he even had an oubliette.

He seemed to sense the very moment she gave in to her urge telling her to run, run, run.

His hand wrapped around the back of her neck, stilling her before she had even moved. “We don’t have time to play.”

The press of his fingers and the lilt of his voice were like gossamer threads binding her to him.

“This is all very dramatic,” she said mildly. Mostly because her heart was pounding and her palms had begun to sweat. The iron around her wrist went cold, then hot, then cold again. The rest of her followed. “Are you going to tell me where we are?” she asked.

He turned her around. “We are at the Tithing, Miss Cavendish.”

Had she really only made her wish a few hours ago?

Everything was starting to feel like a dream. A nightmare.

And a part of her could not stop thinking of the peach she had plucked from the feast table.

Lachlan had brought her to an old hilltop fort, the ramparts long since grown over with grass so green it glowed, and red and white roses so thick that the perfume was almost enough to make her stop smelling peaches. Petals drifted in the air. There was a circle of trees in the center of the flattened hilltop, the branches intertwined to create archways. Vines draped over them like a flower crown. There were more roses around the tree roots, around Pippa’s feet. So many roses, thorns gleaming.

Around that inner sanctum was a circle of rowan trees. The red berries hung like jewels, crowded against blossom and branch. Another circle lay inside, this one made of iron, and then, finally, a ring of red toadstool mushrooms, the kind witches were warned against entering. Pippa halted, trying to remember her rhymes. Warnings against making wishes. How to escape into shadows and cracks between worlds. If there might be another book lying about.

This is what came of leaving the house without a book in one’s pocket.

Lachlan sent her a chilling, unreadable glance. “No time for that, either.”

She could only blink at the concentric rings. “I’m so sorry my perfectly normal reaction to being abducted and dropped into an oubliette is interfering with your schedule.”

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

She frowned. “I don’t think it’s worth anything at all.”

“No,” he agreed, and led her over the circle of iron nails.

The mushrooms were next, red with white spots. Poisonous. Said to bring visions, hallucinations, passage to Elphame. Or death.

“There are treaties in the bower,” Lachlan murmured. “The Courts cannot move against each other, neither Summer nor Winter. Not the Solstice Courts, nor the Equinox Courts. Not even the Seelie against the Unseelie.”

As she was not Fae, it was small comfort. “And witches?”

“Let’s see, shall we?”

No, no comfort at all.

Fear was a strange thing.

Pippa felt far away from her body, from her thundering heart and trembling limbs. She was too close to the thoughts whirling inside her skull, run and hide and beg, and then there were no thoughts at all.

She was in the Faery world, after all.

Sometimes, just sometimes, awe superseded everything else. Her panic paused, just for a moment. There was simply no space left for it. Stepping into the toadstool ring was stepping from another world into yet another world. There was a soft whisper in her ears, the brush of wind against her face, rose petals. Magic. Rowan and iron: these were used in the witching world to break enchantments, to protect against spells and curses.