Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I stared at the dormant fireplace without truly seeing, the tongs shaking in my white-knuckled grip. I'd had my future right there , and now it was gone.

"Gah! What is that?" the tabby tomcat cried.

Blinking, I scuttled away as the ashes in the fireplace started moving. An invisible hand was writing in all capital letters, P-R-I-M-A-L —

Primal? What in the name of all that was green and good in this world did that mean?

"Meadow," the cat pleaded.

"Shhh!"

The invisible hand was writing again—a W —then Daphne's shrill whinny wrenched my attention away. "Meadow!" she screeched. "They're too close. I… I think I smell Cernunnos too!"

"These southern fields here have my particular attention at the moment. But I'll also let the orb guide me." With how the farmhouse and the embers had reacted to me, it was no wonder his magical homing device had diverted him.

But the writing—

Sawyer clawed at my ankles. "Meadow, come on !"

With a hiss, I dashed the furious tears from my eyes and replaced the tongs. It had to look like I'd never been there. Then, on instinct, I snatched up a dead coal and threw it in the censer, snapped it shut, and jammed its hook down on my belt.

I wrenched the back door shut, replaced the braided rug, and raced out the front, the tabby tomcat at my heels. The door squeaked as I closed it behind us, either protesting the violent tug shut or complaining that I was leaving so soon.

On the opposite side of the white picket fence, Daphne pawed at the ground, a robin fluttering above her head. "Quickly now, dear!" she trumpeted. "We must flee!"

I paused only for a moment to scoop Sawyer up and drop him into the bag, then I was dashing down the garden path. The three big pixies from earlier rose at the sound of my haste, the big one Dart quickly interpreting the situation and racing upwards to scout the sky. It chimed in distress, pointing westward, the very direction we had to go.

I didn't bother with the garden gate—I braced myself on the gate post and vaulted over it, stumbling on the landing but not enough to twist an ankle. The two other pixies, Flit and Zip, I remembered, zoomed to my shoulders, clinging to the fabric there with their slender fingers. Daphne held still for only the time it took to get on her back before she surged forward into a gallop. Gertrude the robin would've been left behind had I not plucked her out of the air and cradled her gently to my chest.

"They're coming from the west, upwind of us," I shouted into Daphne's ear. "Quick, head for that forest east of the apple orchard. We can use it for cover."

The white mare served to the right, hooves thundering through the dead wildflowers as she sped to the forest. Zip left my shoulder then, zipping here and there like a dragonfly over the trampled stalks and grasses. In the wake of its passage, the flattened foliage rose, obscuring the hoof prints.

It's hiding our trail!

The magic proved strenuous for the pixie who should've been hibernating, and at the edge of the field, it lost altitude and disappeared into clover, exhausted. On my shoulder, Flit let out a flute-like wail but didn't go after its kin.

Once concealed in the trees, Daphne slid to a halt, her chest pumping like a bellows. I slid off her back to alleviate the strain, releasing the very agitated Gertrude, and after Sawyer muscled his head free of the foraging bag, we all looked out from the cover of the cedars and spruces back towards the farmhouse.

"Do you see him?" I panted. "Do you see Ossian? Smell him?"

The mare shook her head. "I can't smell him now, but—"

"Quiet now," Sawyer hissed as the Brotherhood came into view.

Alec and the Brotherhood weren't so cliché as to be riding in on matching black horses, but they themselves were dressed all in black and the intimidation effect was just potent. I was too far away to discern what they were shouting at each other, but a portion of them dismounted to investigate the house while the others circled the property.

Dart attacked.

The pixie whizzed like an enraged hornet, biting and scratching and pulling eyebrows and plucking out nose hair, all faster than the eye could track. No matter how much the Brotherhood swatted, the pixie was always faster and evaded their hands.

Until Alec's fae markings came alive on his skin and bluish-green ropes like ivy vines sprang from his fingertips. Dart wasn't fast enough to evade those, and they wrapped around its slender body like python coils. With a flick of Alec's wrist, he flung the vines and pixie through the air.

The delphinium floral wards activated, and the pixie slammed into a blue shield that rippled like the surface of a pristine lake disturbed by a stone. Instantly the silver-green skin turned the mottled purple of rotting fruit, and a reed-like wail rose from its throat as the pixie fluttered to the ground like a forgotten petal.

I covered my mouth to smother my horrified cry.

Alec and his Brotherhood laughed, opened the gate, and let themselves into the garden.

This time, Flit sprang from my shoulder with a chime of anger.

"No," I whisper-shouted, clawing after it in panic. "They'll get you too! Get back here!"

Flit ignored me, zooming for farmhouse. It stayed low to the grass, unseen, and when it arrived, it didn't spare a moment to check on Dart. No, its attention was on the Brotherhood's horses. The pixie flitted from ear to ear, whispering something, and the horses in turn flung up their heads and reared. From all those neighs and flailing hooves, you'd think a swarm of horseflies had just attacked them. The Brothers who had circled around the farmhouse returned on their own horses only to find the madness catching. Each rider was unceremoniously bucked off, and, as a herd, the horses dashed back the way they had come, heading for the safety of the castle's stables. Flit did not return.

Beside me, Daphne released a soft neigh. "There's not a creature on this earth that a pixie loves more than a horse. Guess it's mutual. What allies you have, dear."

That was all the prompt I needed to mount back up. I had to protect this ally, my friend, plus the little cat hidden away in my foraging bag. The pixies' sacrifices would not be in vain. By the Green Mother, I hoped Flit was looking after Dart and that Zip would recover soon. Daphne picked her way slowly through the forest, headed deeper in so her white coat would make her less likely to spot, trusting me and Gertrude the robin to watch her back.

No Brother or fae king came after us, and the Brothers' angry shouts were quickly swallowed up by the trees.

Wetting my lips, I turned my gaze to the darkening sky and would've shivered with the approaching night, except I didn't feel cold. In fact, I felt pleasantly warm. Aaand your body is experiencing shock, apparently . "Daphne, I think we should turn—"

"Oh my, what's this?" she exclaimed softly.

I leaned out over to the side, since I couldn't see over her ears, and started when I found a full-length mirror standing in the middle of a clearing. It had the most ornate frame, composed of what looked like oak, rowan, ash, and cherrywood all fused together and carved in random designs of thistle leaves and brown-eyed Susans. Encircling it was a ring of moonflowers, crystals sticking out of the foliage gleaming white and channeling power.

Anti-frost wards?

"What's a mirror doing all the way out here?" the mare mused.

"Maybe you should touch it," Sawyer suggested to me.

"Go touch a suspicious mirror abandoned in a moonflower grove in the middle of the forest?" I gave him a surly look. "No thank you."

I did, however, slip from Daphne's back and crouch down to sweep my hand over the nearest moonflower. A memory had surfaced from the maelstrom—a hallucination about Violet during a moonflower-milk bath. That, coupled with the facts that my foraging bag had been spelled to keep things fresh and I had an entry concerning moonflowers in my notebook, made me pluck one such flower free. "I think this can help me. Scooch over," I told the tomcat, settling the flower in between his front paws. "Don't crush it."

"Oh sure, touch a random glowing flower in the woods but not a mirror?"

"Mirrors are… in-betweens. Gateways," I remembered aloud, then leaned against Daphne for support as another memory fragment loosened from the maelstrom—a demon with red eyes. Just what had I gotten into out here? As much as I didn't want to admit it, I was glad Grandmother had locked that memory away. Grabbing the mare's mane, I swung myself onto her back.

"‘Mustn't-touch-its,'" I clarified, "unless you know what you're dealing with."

"I only meant it could maybe free some more of your memories," Sawyer sulked. "That was your—our—farmhouse back there. And I think this mirror is yours too. Otherwise why would that diamond ring on your finger be glowing?"

"It's what?" Yanking my hand to my face, my eyes widened as the five rubies embedded in the gold band were indeed glowing. The intensity only increased when I stretched that hand out closer to the mirror.

"What would you like to do, dear?" Daphne said, swiveling her head back in the direction of the farmhouse, ears flicking.

The abandoned farmhouse with its lit hearth, a (clearly magical) mirror in the middle of the woods, a glowing ring… So many questions. So many memories Grandmother had stolen from me.

I pulled my hand back, the light of the glowing rubies dimming but not dying out. "We go—" I was about to say home , but suddenly, the castle didn't feel that way. "To the castle," I finished. As much as I wanted to stay and puzzle this all out, it simply wasn't safe. I had to think of my friends.

The Brotherhood was still out there, minus their horses, but something had alerted them of our presence in the first place. And it was getting dark. The Big Nasties of the realm would become bolder under the cover of night. We had to get back before Ossian came looking for me in the rose courtyard.

Daphne didn't need to be told twice. Gertrude scouted the way as we turned west in the direction of the castle, the mare breaking out into a trot through the woods until she could find a deer trail and move at a faster pace.

Over my shoulder, I watched the moonflower grove and its mirror slowly get swallowed up by the trees, then turned a frown down to the cat hunched in the foraging bag on the mare's withers.

"You said this was a diamond ring," I said, bringing my hand with the ring in question in front of his nose. "These are rubies." Rubies that had lost their glow now that we were no longer near the mirror.

The little cat reassessed the ring and shook his head. "No, they're not. They're diamonds. They only look like rubies. Something changed them."

My pulse fluttered as a lump lodged in my throat. Something? Or some one ?