Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Secluded in the rose courtyard, I stared up at the weeping willow tree I'd managed to grow tall enough that the descending arch of its canopy brushed the top of the wall. The supple branches and their yellow-green leaves brushed against the dark gray stone like a caress—a promise that my touch would join it as soon as I was strong enough to climb.

Growing the tree had been an exercise in restraint and no mistake. I could've dissolved another chunk of the cursed net from my oak tree, turning that proverbial maxi dress into a mid-calf poodle skirt, but then the willow wouldn't have been strong enough to grow. There was a give and take, like of a fisherman not overfishing the seas. Take too much, and it would never provide for you again.

All the other potted plants that crowded the cramped space had been drained halfway, some to lift part of the curse, more to grow the willow. Individually, none of them had had the vitality of a rambler rose, probably because their roots weren't allowed to grow deep with wild abandon, but together, they'd been enough to disperse another few inches of net surrounding the oak tree of my magic.

Weak, I forced myself to rise on trembling legs and staggered to the willow tree swaying in the evening breeze. I pressed my hand against its trunk, then my forehead.

"I'll be back tomorrow," I whispered, then I rang the little gold bell to be released from the courtyard. I was cold and could just as easily meditate on becoming one with my magic in the bathtub with a glass of mulled wine.

Though hob grog would be better , a little voice inside me insisted.

Wait, what?

I wasn't given the chance to explore that wayward thought before the old wooden door was unlocked and shoved open. It wasn't Mrs. Bilberry coming to collect me this time, but the fae king himself. The delight on his face was quickly replaced by outrage.

"What did you do?" he bellowed, brushing me aside and storming inside. He sputtered, turning a full circle in the cramped walkway between all the pots. His fingers knotted into his coppery curls like he was seconds away from ripping his hair out. "Why is this all still green?"

Glaring, I picked myself up from where I'd fallen, brushing the dirt and terra-cotta fragments from the white fur coat. The orange mum I'd landed on now resembled a smashed pumpkin. "So I can draw from them tomorrow," I said curtly, adding (and very immaturely, too, though I couldn't help myself), " duh ."

"You were supposed to drain them! I could've had more delivered tomorrow! And why is this sapling a tree now?"

"Ossian," I said sharply, at the end of my patience, first because I was tired, secondly because of his rough treatment. "I'm not going to kill the equivalent of a forest just to release this curse. And the willow—I had to have a subject to test my magic on."

"That's what the cloch na wight's for," he shouted.

"Well I didn't want to interrupt my imprisonment to go test myself every few hours!" That was only half the truth, but I certainly made it sound like the whole truth. Escaping from this courtyard—and him—was becoming more appealing with every second.

"I should lock you back in here for the rest of the night," he snarled. "Until these flowers are ash and this tree"—he slapped the willow, the slender branches quivering with the impact—"is nothing but a toothpick!"

"Stop it!" I cried. "I couldn't even if I tried. I'm exhausted." I dashed the angry, hurt tears away from my eyes so I could glare at him. Had I known fated mates treated each other this way, I would've rejected that bond like a worm-infested apple. Chucked it right into the compost heap! "Why are you being such a beast? I've already made more progress in the last two days than I have since I was cursed, and this is a pace these plants and I can maintain. I'll have the curse lifted maybe in a week, maybe ten days—"

"Maybe? Maybe? " He seized my shoulders so hard I actually cried out. Green flared in his jewel-bright eyes, copper magic sparking at his fingertips. His handsome face was suddenly very, very ugly, and no golden haze could convince me otherwise. "You have no time to waste! Have you forgotten that the curse is only half of our problem? The portal must be summoned and anchored, a portal that needs to be found first, in case you're forgotten."

I shoved him away, green magic glowing at my own fingertips. "I haven't! And you're supposed to be the one figuring out all the preferred conditions and environments to do so instead of tinkering in your silversmithy. Or have you done nothing in your exile these past few centuries except feel sorry for yourself? Is that it?"

At those words, something inside me shifted, the freed part of my magical core rousing with a golden-green light. My ivy-green eyes narrowed as the magic at my fingertips strengthened, spreading to the entirety of my hands.

"Ossian." My voice was quiet, dangerous. I was a cornered bobcat in the face of a wolf, but I still had claws. "How many others have you given this sob story to? How many other witches have you fooled with talk of love and empty promises? Why is it that only a woman can summon and open this portal, Ossian? Answer me!"

Disgust marred his handsome features. "Every time," he growled, though more to himself than to me. At his throat, two dormant gemstones came alive as he called upon their magic. "Every time you free more of your magic, you remember . Despite that tonic and the powder. It's my own fault—losing my temper with you only negates my illusions, but you're an infuriating woman, Meadow. But your grandmother really was right. You need to be wooed. Daily, apparently."

"What are you saying?" I whispered. "I remember what ? And what about Grandmother?"

He dug his hand into the largest pouch on his belt, withdrawing a palmful of white powder.

"Is that Caer powder?" I gasped. From the way he'd so easily extracted it from that pouch, it was clear he'd used it many times before.

On me .

That realization killed any chance of escape. Ossian grabbed me, blowing the power straight into my eyes. But his was a bittersweet victory, for at the same time he struck, so did I.

I couldn't see anything with the white cloud consuming my vision, but I certainly felt the blast of green magic connect with the side of his face, of his flesh sizzling and shrinking like fish skin when hit with boiling water.

The fae king roared, but I barely heard him. My focus, my panic, all of my recent memories—they were being erased.

Scritch… Scritch…

The blue-eyed barn owl screeched in response, flapping madly against the ceiling like a moth against a window.

I know it was tasked to help me, but thistle thorns, I wanted to kill it for all the racket.

"By the Green Mother," I declared with my eyes firmly shut, "I'm going to blast the entire roof off and sleep under the stars. Then you'll have nowhere to tunnel and nibble and be a nuisance. And you, bird, can then take your creepy blue eyes somewhere else!"

Thrusting upwards with a glowing fist, I hit the ceiling with three quick blasts of green magic. The owl screamed, avoiding the blasts but getting caught in the deluge of plaster. The bird fell, and so did my tormentor, twisting through the twenty-foot fall to the bed with a yowl.

I choked on the cloud of dust, dispersing it with wide sweeps of my hands. It did little to improve the visibility in my room, and I realized with a start it was the middle of the night. That was the light of the December moon filtering in from the diamond-pane windows, not the gray glow of dawn.

Luminous amber eyes stared back at me in the gloom, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, striped fur and a long tail resolved.

A c-cat?

With a scream, I simultaneously threw off the covers and scuttled back against the headboard, wrenching my foraging bag onto my lap. The magical bolts that had destroyed a large chunk of my ceiling had left me drained, stupidly so. I should've held something back in reserve for this exact moment.

Instead, I held on to the censer with the feeble hearth ember with one hand while I rifled in my foraging bag with my other. Maybe the ember still had enough juice in it to protect me while my own magic recharged. Grandmother hadn't shared the specifics on how it even did that, and I wasn't sure if it was something I had to activate or if it was automatic. Even a blinding burst of light would grant me the valuable seconds to pull something of use out of my bag.

And as I searched, the creature smothered by the bed linens fought tooth and nail to worm its way free. At the foot of the bed, the owl lay unconscious, feathers fluttering with the movement of the struggling creature. There was a faint popping sound as claws punctured through the duvet, poking out like tiny silver daggers in the moonlight. At my panicked yelp, the bed linens thrashed furiously as yard after yard of fabric was hauled off the beast's head.

"Ha! Gotcha," I exclaimed, pulling the black tourmaline crystal free of the bag.

There was an annoyed growl, or maybe it was a victorious trill, and the striped cat freed itself, its fur sticking up in a staticky halo around its head.

"Gah!" I hurled the black tourmaline straight at it, those luminous amber eyes widening to coins as the crystal hit it straight on the pink nose.

" OW ," the cat yowled in a distinctly young male voice. He reared back on his haunches and covered his nose with velveted paws. "Why would you do that?"

I didn't know what to be more confused about: that the black tourmaline crystal hadn't activated or that there was a talking cat in my bed. The crystal hadn't worked against the bear, either, and it should have blasted each of them, for they were no friends of mine.

But pondering the faulty magic crystal would have to happen at another time. There was a cat on my bed. The fact that he was talking didn't surprised me in the least—every beast of Ossian's court could talk—it was the fact that he was, indeed, a cat. They were forbidden here, not just in the castle, but in the entire realm. How had this one, and a young one at that, been able to thwart the wards?

"U-uh…"—I grasped for an answer to what I thought was a very obvious question—"Because you're a cat?"

" Sheesh , Meadow. If that's how you—"

"How do you know my name?" No sooner did the words leave my mouth did I realize how stupid they were. Everyone knew I was Ossian's mate.

"Ame told me," he replied as if I knew exactly who he was talking about. With a swipe of his pink tongue, he licked a paw so he could start smoothing down his fur. He wasn't all stripes—he had a whitish chin and a tawny belly and his feet were entirely black on the bottom. At his movement, the moonlight caught on a disk of opalescent white hanging from a golden collar around his neck.

"The caliby?" he continued between licks. "She's like a calico and a tabby mixed together. Anyway, she found me knocked out in a garden bed and told me to find the witch whose name was on my collar. Said it was very important." He chuckled to himself. "Didn't even know I could read until she showed me my reflection in a puddle and the letters made sense."

He lifted his chin so the moonlight could illuminate what I now knew to be moonstone. SAWYER was written in a cursive hand that I recognized. Grandmother? But how? "It says ‘Sawyer.'"

"Oh, heh, that's me of course." The tabby tomcat gave the moonstone disk a tap with his claw, and it spun around to reveal the other side.

Property of Meadow Hawthorne. Again, in Grandmother's handwriting. But since when did I have a cat? I wanted to clutch my head, to fight through the maelstrom surrounding the memories of my past, but the Hawthorne hearth ember was still clutched in one hand and I needed the other hand to defend myself against my bedroom intruder.

My very cute bedroom intruder.

"See?" he said, padding across the bed. "It says I belong to you. So that must mean you must belong to me too."

I froze as he padded right onto my lap, shocked at his both his trustingness and his audacity, but also afraid Ossian would burst through the door this very instant and accuse me of treason. But he didn't, and the little cat plopped down, curled his tail around his feet, and craned his head to look up at me with (I had to admit) the most adorable expression. Seriously, his eyes sparkled.

My hands hovered out to my sides, hesitant to touch him and encourage this behavior. Yet, how could something so undeniably cute and downright darling be forbidden? Plus his fur looked so soft.

"This feels better already, doesn't it?" he asked me. Hesitantly. Hopefully. "I felt like a piece of me was missing, but now, not so much."

"I-I…" I didn't know what to say. What to even feel.

His amber gaze flicked to my unoccupied hand still hovering in the air. "You can pet me, if you want. I don't bite anything but prey and mean people," he told me proudly.

"O-okay."

Slowly, I bought my hand closer, pausing a whisker's length away from him to entertain a slew of second-thoughts. Ossian had expressly forbidden cats from his realm, and now there were two of them galivanting around. It hadn't been Sawyer's amber eyes I'd seen in the ceiling yesterday—those had been yellow. Those had to have been Ame's. That aside, why was there a cat with my name on his collar, and in Grandmother's handwriting too? By the Green Mother, had she sent him here to further sabotage me? To anger Ossian against me? I knew my choice to stay and love Ossian had broken her heart enough to curse me, but had I angered her so much that she'd send a cat to seal my death? Why—

Sawyer thrust his head under my hovering hand.

And just like that, a blue burst of light zapped each of us.

The young tomcat hissed and sprang away from me just as I dropped the censer to cradle my hand against my chest. But as quickly as the pain of the zap came, it dissipated, and then we looked at each other with new eyes. Memories of him had broken through the maelstrom lock on my mind.

"I know you, little cat," I whispered. "Sawyer… Blackfoot. It's still a little murky, but you love tuna treats and you're really knowledgeable about crystals and you hate—" Lunging forward, I yanked the moonstone collar off his neck and threw it to the end of the bed beside the unconscious owl.

The tomcat shook, smoothing down the fur I'd mussed by removing his collar, and bounded into my arms with a joyous trill.

I caught him without reservation this time, cuddling him close. Inside, that hollow piece inside my heart began to close.

He roughly nuzzled his head under my chin, and my fingers kneaded into his loose baby fur. It was such a familiar exchange of affection, yet it felt so new.

"Ame said something like this might happen," he said, purring so loudly it vibrated through my skin and into my bones. "I didn't want to believe her. To hope. I was so lost—"

Scooping him up under the armpits, I yanked him away and up to eye level. "Tell me everything," I said.