Everywhere they touched their spit sizzled on the freshly grown plants, turning them to ash and rot. Cries echoed throughout the forest in answer to this intruder in their domain.
“Emrys!” Amie’s voice trembled as she pushed her lights further into the wood, felt her energy draining surely. He did not answer her and Dameri had yet to make use of her crossbow.
What the deuce are they waiting for?
Her strength was quickly fading. Amie hardly understood her own powers or where they came from, but she knew when the gremlins’ scowls turned to eager grins she was in trouble.
“Dameri!” she tried, pushing harder through her hands, until the pulse of her energy rippled farther. Gremlins hissed the moment the waves of her inner nixy brushed them, cowered from it in fear. And Amie knew her companions were not there to help her or even protect her.
“This better not be some other stupid test!” No answer came and her protests were falling weaker on deaf ears. New determination rose this time not from her anger but a wholly unexpected force. Pulsing only slightly softer than her own, Amie delved into a deeper power hidden inside herself and pulled at it, shared her own to nurture it. Her creations grew stronger with every increasing moment, trailed and wove over her arms and her chest, through her curls and her leather tight clothes.
The forest, Amie instinctively realized, and the sudden rush nearly knocked her off her feet as its life force joined hers. Several gremlins kamikaze’d into her reclaimed turf, fried to gooey bits on impact, the core of silver light increasing by the second.
She could feel every creature in the forest, some corporeal and others invisible to the naked eye, could feel the roots of every tree and plant and the long memory of the forest. Only now did she understand her inherent gift and embrace it.
Opening her eyes, she laughed, saying, “Go ahead. I’m ready now.” With a sigh she let loose the tightly bound sphere of light and let it explode in a loud gale that swept through the trees. Too late for the gremlins, for the ones who weren’t taken over by nixing were caught by the Hunter’s bolts and the Trapper’s clean sweep after, until a clear dark film coated the earth in the wake of the dead.
The sound of Dameri’s crossbow exacting damage sounded in the near distance. Amie struggled to catch her breath and figure out why it was light as day suddenly. Emrys stuck his hands in the burrow after sweeping the field one last time. Amie frowned over his actions and asked, “What are you doing?”
“We set the trap and won back lands which have been kept dark far too long. Ye gave back the forest its memory, Jessamiene. Now it can grow freely again. So I must be certain we did not leave any evidence behind.” He winked at her before crawling, head first, into the foul tunnel.
Chapter 34
Flame Wreathed
Henry and Emrys flanked Amie on the road leading back to the castle. Amie was relieved they were not spending the night at Xcalibure. Before they had left Dameri began talking of trapping yet another mythical creature. Emrys explained that after so long trapped in the Borderlands, humans tended to lose a bit of their sanity. It was simply programmed in them to die and when their bodies no longer could they unintentionally put themselves into dangerous situations.
While not making sense scientifically, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out the odd couple was ancient. Judging by the stories Dameri heaped over Amie’s head all afternoon, Amie was willing to bet their time had taken place just before the Middle Ages. Yet Dameri talked about her homeland as if she had seen it only yesterday. Sometime soon Amie was going to sit Henry down and squeeze the answers out of him.
The trip to Xcalibure had been educational, and it was worth it to see Emrys emerge from the monsters’ burrow covered in black goo. But something had got under her skin ever since she climbed trees with Arthur, a tugging sensation stemming from the back of her head she couldn’t quite shake. She kept twisting her father’s ring for the rush of comfort it offered with every brush of the stone against her fingers. The closer the horses drew to Wenderdowne, the more at ease Amie felt. Now she was itching for some peace of mind before the ball Morcant was dead set on throwing her.
Slaine was all peals of laughter as he pried his sleeping Master from his horse. Winking at Amie, he supported Henry in their drunken stumble back to the house with a shake of his head. “Still haven’t learned how to level Hawkeye’s ale, have ye, lad?” he said.
Her protector was most reluctant to leave her side and only obeyed once she smiled up at him coyly and offered, “Promise I’m all yours tomorrow morning. But I need some time to think.” Amie was a hundred percent certain she hadn’t pulled the wool over his eyes. It was to her mystery he seemed satisfied and, for once, eager to return to the castle. She watched his retreat with narrowed eyes.
What’s he up to?
Once the soft tread of his boots had faded behind the closed door to the kitchens she pressed her forehead to Beans’ nose and said, “You are so lucky you don’t have to deal with one of those.” Bean breathed his sweet hay breath onto her neck. Giggling, she perked up and raked her nails across his belly. “Guess you’ve got me there. I’m not exactly a piece of cake either.”
Bean whickered softly and nudged her hair, but when he started nipping at it she broke away. “Hey! I happen to like my hair! You don’t see me coming at you with a pair of scissors…”
A strong hand clamped over her mouth from behind, interrupting her scream, pulled her away from Bean and behind the stables. Before she could protest she looked up and caught a glimpse of a familiar cap. Without a word he pulled her to the secret door, on through to the subterranean underworld and straight into his cottage.
Once they were safely behind the other side, she jerked her hand from his and shouted, “What the deuce was that? Dearg, you don’t just grab people without letting them know you aren’t a crazed psychopath, okay?” Her heart was racing painfully for the second time this day. Nettled nerves shot, she did not protest when he silently unclasped her cloak and set it on a nearby hook for her. Wringing his hat in his hands, he veered a safe distance from her, into his little kitchen. Amie followed, wondering why he seemed so frazzled, until she recalled the fact Emrys had ridden Ambrose to Xcalibure. It was no secret Emrys was probably Dearg’s least favorite person in the Hollow.
Dearg must have seen him go, maybe even helped him get ready, she thought with a shudder.
Sitting on a chair, so ancient the seat bowled out to mold to her buttocks, she watched him set the tea kettle over the makeshift iron stove. She smiled because no one used iron around Wenderdowne except for him. How refreshing to see someone so different from everyone else she had met. How surprising it turned out to be the one person she had the least expectations of.
Softly, she tried to peel back his armor and asked, “So why did you just kidnap me? We could have talked out there.” She watched his shoulders tense and his hand lift to comb carelessly through golden hair.
“No time for pleasantries,” he finally offered. “Not safe when they could be listening.”
Her eyebrow quirked into a graceful arch as she said, “Would it really be so terrible if they knew about my visits?”
Dearg turned to face her so quickly she would have missed the movement were she only human. His azure eyes were ablaze with golden flecks and such intensity, she was surprised by his mouth-tilting grin.
“I am not afraid of them, Amie.” His unspoken threat was loud and clear.
They are afraid of him. “But why?” she mused aloud and realized she was asking a different question.
Clutching his discarded cap, Dearg wrung it out to its full capacity before flinging it across the room to land on the hook behind her head. As if he couldn’t bear to hold it in any longer, he said, “I do nay like people and they do nay like me. Sidhe, hobgoblins and one crazed Tuatha are not enough of a threat to silence me. But they fear for you, Amie, like their long lives depend on it.” Lowering his eyes to the ring on her finger, he murmured, “I on
ly wanted a bit more time, ’tis the long and short of it.”
Softly, with new understanding, Amie nodded. Thinking of the fact he separated himself from society, a habit she was inclined to share, she said, “So you remove yourself from the equation, keeping everyone at a distance. I get it. I like it.” A frown sharpened his profile, though he tried to hide it by tending the kettle. Biting her lip nervously, she pressed on because she sensed she had hit a sore spot and because she truly was curious. “So does Slaine live here too? Where does he sleep?”
His grin widened until it seemed to split his face in two. “Further back in the cave,” he said. Which meant he knew but was not about to tell Amie.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she pressed him further. “What exactly are you two keeping back there?”
Dearg glanced over his shoulder while fiddling with the steaming kettle. “You shall wish you had never known, but someday I am going to show you, Sidhe bloodletting opinions be blithered.”
She laughed at the vehemence behind his curse and followed him as he took their ready tea to sit before the steadily burning fire. “Someone needs to make a catalogue of all the things you people say. I could publish a dictionary and make a fortune.” Kicking her feet up onto the wooden stool before her chair, she sighed after sampling her tea. Few men knew how to make a decent spot of tea and after a night spent hunting gremlins in the rain, this was heaven.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and gripped the cup between his hands. She felt the full force of his hidden charisma when he asked her, “Where did they take you this early eve, Amie? You were gone much longer than you should have been.”
“Dameri wanted me to learn how to hunt gremlins, but Emrys thought…” She froze when he set his cup back on the rickety table between them and dropped his face into his hands.
Growling, he said, “Hunting gremlins, simple as pox, aye?”
Amie watched, transfixed, as flames leapt from his fingertips without burning off his face.
“What sort of nixed fools assume the Emerald Eyes capable of anything? Manipulative, conniving bilge scum…” Coming up for air at the end of his tirade, he eyed her for one steady second, before snatching the cup from her hands and pulling her to her feet. “Come hither, Amie,” he said, “let me see.”
Smoke tendrils escaped his touch, as his fingers coasted over her hands and arms. Once he pushed her waistcoat aside he lifted her wrists and turned them over.
“Just as I thought,” he hissed, then he pressed his fingertips to a nasty black spot.
“What the heck is th—ouch!” Amie exclaimed as heat enveloped her wrist and seared beneath the skin. Pulling away to allow the flames to douse his hand once more, Amie gasped to find the black spot erased. The golden flames reflected in his pale blue eyes as he watched the filmy pus burn and singe to ashes off his fingertips. She watched him make a large fist, through which the flames extinguished into smoke.
“Goblin spit,” he explained. “Spreads like a plague among humans. Were you not half-blood it would have already claimed you.”
“Why would Dameri go hunting something that could kill her so easily?” Still tingling from the fire Dearg had used to heal her, Amie sank into her seat and sipped her tea to ward off her sudden chill.
He stood before the fire and leaned against the mantel with his hands. After staring long at the ancient carvings, he said, “Humans do nay live forever. It is part of their blessing and curse on this earth. After too much time in the Borderlands they tend to grow a bit muddled in the head.”
“So I guess this means I’m going to go crazy too, huh?” she said, teasing him in hopes of another glimpse of those curious eyes of his.
Dearg’s answer did not match his rigid posture. “Only time can tell.”
The cottage door opened with a bang and sharp gust of cool damp air, nearly startling her cup out of her hands. Dearg peeked over his shoulder when a booming voice echoed the thump of the door.
“Boy! Where did ye get off tailing back here when there still be work to finish afore first light? Eh? Lad, where are ye? I—oh! Well, pardon me Lady Wenderdowne, but I was nay expecting to see you here this eve!” Slaine Cutterworthy’s eyes were wild with suspicion and surprise.
His cloak and boots were a muddy mess, betraying the ragtag life he led. His hat was in his hands at once, cloak quickly torn asunder while he continued to laugh at them. Dearg flinched, for Slaine was not the sort to laugh quietly. All of his glee and mischievous nature was in his bellow as he set his things to a hook and returned to them. As though the aforementioned chores had been forgotten, he pulled a small chair from the corner and sat betwixt the hearth and the Lady.
Pipe immediately out and tampered with, Slaine proceeded to steadily puffing away and only then said, “I see ye have been busy getting up to that mischief I heckled ye about, Milady.”
Amie’s eyes tellingly roved to Dearg, who still had yet to greet his elder relative.
In a tight tone, Dearg finally answered his earlier question. “Uncle, I am finished for the eve. There shall be work aplenty during the festival.”
Slaine puffed his pipe, never taking his eyes off the Lady. “So,” he said, “this is where ye been caught sneaking away to these past nights, eh, lass?”
Tea cup frozen in place, she replied, “Um…what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His one sharp eye focused in on her. “Aye, ’tis precisely what he said all those years ago.” This got Dearg’s attention though he stubbornly stared into the fire and moved not an inch to join them.
“Who?” she found herself asking.
Leaning forward in his chair, pipe poised in hand, he said, “Why, your father of course! Caught him by the skive of his suspenders one night, hopping through them woods as if none of us knew where he’d been!” Shaking his head, he glared at her as though she were the reason for her father’s mischief. “Some nights I wondered after it happened whether there was more to the story than even Iudicael knows. But ’twas he who discovered them, and in his jealous anger lost his senses, drove him mad it did…”
He puffed on his pipe, smoke filling the space between them in thick ginger-scented clouds. Amie was on the edge of her seat without contemplating why. That creeping feeling was back again, the one she thought she had left behind with Xcalibure.
“While they fought the enemy crept in,” Slaine continued, “quiet like, knowing the long awaited day had come. Set the place ablaze like a torch and Drustan knew they was after the key.”
A key…Amie thought of the key hidden in her dress pocket. The same key she had found on an old Texas street, which just so happened to bear her family crest, had become her good luck charm lately. What if it meant something more?
“But if he fled they would follow, sure he knew this as a hydra lays her eggs,” Slaine said, turning to face his nephew. “And better to follow him to the darkest ends of the earth than see the home he so loved destroyed. I think, were it not for you, Jessamiene, he would have let them catch him at last…”
“No more,” Dearg seethed with a twist of the head, as if Slaine’s telling was too painful.
Amie frowned at his reaction, and when she looked back to the storyteller, he was watching her with a disconcerting grin. Dredging up the courage, she finally asked, “Why doesn’t anyone like to talk about that night? What’s so terrible about the fact no one got hurt?” Both Cutterworthys froze and Amie hesitated. “They…didn’t, did they? Dearg?” Her casual use of the stable hand’s true name elicited a grimace from the boy.
Slaine’s owlish eyes widened and he appeared to relish when Dearg visibly flinched at his words. “Ah, so that is the way it is, eh, boy? Thought ye could just rewrite the future and the balance and order of things, did ye?”
“What are you talking about?” Amie turned to her first friend in the Hollow and struggled to hide her exasperation.
Slaine continued as if she had never spoken. “Clever little laddie ha
st finally decided to grow up after all.” Cackling merrily, with a slap of his hand to the wood of his chair, he stood and limped to Dearg’s side. “Well done!” he said, clasping his shoulder with a crooked finger grip. He breathed smoke into the air about their heads. “But mark me, boy, you’ll find spreading your wings difficult under Master’s watchful eye.”
Breaking from his elder’s grip, Dearg clenched his fists and fled his cottage with a slam of the door.
Amie stood to follow, confused why he should be so upset, and turned sharply at Slaine’s laughter. “I don’t think you should make jokes at other people’s expense. It’s not fair.”
The old man’s eyes gleamed and Amie froze when smoke fled his fingertips to join that of his pipe. “Dangerous times these are, Jessamiene Wenderdowne,” he said. “But are ye so certain you’re on the right side?”
Anger took the place of her fear of the smoke escaping his fingertips. And she tried desperately to ignore when Slaine called after her one last time.
“Beware, Jessamiene, for that boy is the most dangerous thing ye have yet known.”
…
“Dearg!” she called out once she found her way back to the stables, whipping her head madly about for any sign, sight or scent of him. Her nose told her to follow the trail of smoke flooding her nostrils. She found him at the back end of the deepest darkest stalls, propped against the wall. His hands were held out in his lap, flames dancing, coating them like a second skin, reflecting the twin golden orbs in his eyes.
Amie sank onto the floor at his feet and caught her breath.
His eyes flickered to hers as he offered, “My uncle has always been a meddlesome monger.”
“Never would have guessed y’all were that closely related,” she said.
His lips twitched but he gave no comment. For a long moment all she could do was hold her knees to her chest and stare at the fire leaping from his fingertips and shooting embers into the shadows. Whatever Slaine had said to upset him Amie wanted to help him forget, having had plenty of people in her life who were keen on pushing her along with their own agendas.
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