Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PIPER

I can't move.

From the mutinous, fearsome look on Ga'Rek's face, he can't either.

Wren and Caelan are likewise frozen, and it takes me a moment to think around my fear and notice that there are three huge forms in the middle of my carefully planned dance floor.

"You have summoned us, and we come to collect," a voice booms out.

The words must diminish their spell, because the crowd around them begins to scream and push each other in an effort to get away.

Nerissa's eyes glow where she stands at the edge of the dance floor, her gaze meeting mine.

The eerie feeling of déjà vu comes over me, and I try to raise my hand to cover my mouth.

One of the cloaked figures raises a hand, a hand tipped in talons, and the crowd falls silent again, freezing.

The vise of power clamps around my hand, staying it from reaching my face or anything else.

Nerissa's eyes glow brighter.

She's working a spell.

As one of the few truly powerful witches in our coven, she can work her magic without a word, without any potions or ingredients.

My attention flicks back to the cloaked, terrifying figures in the middle of the dance floor.

Nerissa makes a garbled sound, and her eyes have lost their glow.

"It has been a long, long time since mortals have summoned the likes of my brothers and I," the middle figure intones, and I shudder as he pulls back his hood.

Antlers jut from his head, arching back. His eyes are the deep green of primeval forests, mist-covered and ancient. He straightens, his gaze drifting to me, then through me, like he's pierced straight to the heart of my power.

"You request our power, our assistance, at the autumn solstice. You call us forth with charms," his eyes cut back to me, and horror pools in my stomach, "and the promise of new life."

The hulking figure on the right pulls his hood back, and it's the face of the most beautiful man I've ever seen—until his face shifts, turning into a desiccated skull. "With the promise of new life and protection, a pact is drawn. We give the power of the Elder Gods of the Elder Forest?—"

"In return for the Witch Brides of Wild Oak Woods." The third figure pulls his hood down, and I can't look away. He's a swirling maelstrom, a mass of shadows and storms, violent and unpredictable as nature itself. Eyes like burning embers in a face that constantly shifts.

It's so surreal that it takes me a long moment to absorb what they've said.

"You have three weeks to prepare your chosen witch brides, or the Elder Forest will overrun Wild Oak Woods."

"I am promised to the Elder Forest." It's such a soft cry of a proclamation that at first I think I've imagined it.

But it's the duchess. The duchess, who looks so young and frightened that my heart might break for her.

The shadow man crooks a finger, and in the blink of an eye, the duchess, in her cream-colored gown, is at his side, her face terrified yet resolute as he wraps an arm around her.

They disappear without smoke or sound, like they were never here at all.

Two Elder Gods remain.

"Three weeks," the horned one intones.

Then they disappear, too.

The spell binding our movement melts away in horrible seconds, and my hands fly to my ears, because I know exactly the charm that called them here.

And Wren made them for me, with instructions from a dream.