Twenty-One
Hell truly did exist, and William was in it. Five days of hard riding and Ada was nowhere to be found. He’d come across Brothwell, dead, and he’d seen Brothwell’s men scouring the woods for him, but Ada was gone. She had not made it to the nunnery, and he wasn’t sure where to go from here.
The two silver-eyed, silver-haired nuns who were seeing to his horse and getting him food before he rode out were peculiar at best, mayhap crazed at worst. They giggled to themselves as they shot odd looks at him over their shoulders. He wanted to leave, but they were dawdling bringing his horse back to him.
He cleared his throat. “Did ye say the stable master was fetching my horse?”
“Aye,” the nun replied, arching her eyebrows at the other nun.
William frowned, his ever-increasing worry making him irritable. “I’ll just fetch the animal myself,” he blurted. Every moment he waited here was a moment that Ada could be in danger.
“Nay!” the nuns bellowed in unison. The slighter of the two practically pounced on him. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back down onto his chair. His brows dipped together. There was something very odd about these nuns.
“She’ll be here any minute,” the slighter nun mumbled.
“Ada?” he asked, confused. To his astonishment, the nun nodded. “But ye said ye had nae seen her. Why did ye—”
“She’s here!” the heavier set nun exclaimed, clapping excitedly and grasping the other nun. They seemed to practically float to his chair and glare down at him. “Ye must nae muck this up,” the heavy set nun chided, to which the other sister nodded.
“We ken ye ken yer heart, but ye must ensureshekens ye ken it,” the slighter nun said.
Just as he was untangling her words, the thin nun looked to the other and asked, “Hortense, shall we tell him?”
He felt his lips part in shock.Hortense.“Hortense?” he said, the meaning of the name making his thoughts spin for a moment. “Hortense and Portense?”
Portense nodded and Hortense said, “Aye.”
“She dunnae have her gift any longer.” Portense set her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “What think ye of that?”
He stood at the sound of horses in the courtyard of the nunnery. He started to move to the door, but the nuns both said,“Stillande,”and he found he could not move his legs.
“Ye’re fae,” he said, disbelief coursing through him but acceptance of the truth flowing alongside it. It was an odd feeling to know something to be true yet find it almost impossible to believe.
“Aye,” they said in unison.
To hear it confirmed that these were the fae who so long ago gave Ada the gift that made her the King Maker rendered him momentarily speechless.
Then Hortense said, “Banished here by our father until we set our mess right with nae anyone to aid us but our dogs, the woman—Esther—whom we compelled, and our misconceived gift to Ada.”
“Esther?” William asked, baffled what Ada’s companion had to do with aiding the fairies.
“’Tis a long story,” Hortense said.
“One that must wait until Ada is present,” Portense added.
“Hella and Freya areyerhounds,” he said slowly, his awe growing. That explained a great deal about the creatures.
“Aye,” Hortense said. “Now ye did nae answer my sister’s question. What do ye think of Ada nae having her gift any longer?”
“I’m glad,” he replied honestly. “All I want is her. If she’ll have me…”
The fae smiled at each other, and Hortense patted at her eyes, which filled with tears.
“That remains to be seen,” Portense said. The fairy waved her hand, and he could suddenly move.
Without hesitation, he was out the door and surging into the courtyard just in time to see Thomas helping Ada down from her horse. In that moment, William didn’t give a damn how she came to be in Thomas’s company. Instead, he was focused solely on her. He drank her in as she dismounted. Her hair tumbled in wild disarray over her shoulders, her gown was filthy and torn, and when she turned toward him, she gasped and he saw that she had a split lip and a purple bruise on her left cheek.
He crossed the courtyard in a breath, catching her hand as she raised it to hide her cuts and bruises. William met Thomas’s eyes, and Thomas shrugged. “Turns out the importance Ada felt I had was to rescueher.”
