If any of themhadoutwitted a fey and escaped a sealed bargain, it should have been passed down as a powerful family story. Given the bigoted views that had reigned unquestioned in previous centuries, it would have been considered a proud achievement rather than a guilty secret. But when I half-turned my head to catch my historian brother’s gaze, he shook his own head in a quick negative, his brows knotted.
Amy said, her tone gentle, “As head of the family, I’d like to extend our sincere apologies if any of our members have mistreated you. I’m certain we can come to a new agreement that—”
“Oh, Mrs. Harwood.” Grass rustled around my feet as that unearthly voice shivered with anticipation. “Did you think I’d brought any of you here totalk?”
With a sudden lunge, the sharp-thorned noose yanked tightly shut around my ankles. My feet skidded out before me on the grass.
I flung my arms to my sides in absolute trust as I fell. “Now!” I bellowed.
Amy and Jonathan seized one arm apiece, holding me back with all of their strength as the vine tried to drag me forward. Sharp thorns pierced through my stockings into my skin, but I wasn’t listening to my own moan of pain. Behind me, four young women had started shouting out a spell any Great Library graduate would recognize, while another five recited the spell we’d written together this afternoon....
And dazzling light erupted through the nighttime woods a moment later as golden bells pealed deafeningly all around us like the sound of my overflowing pride.
Crying out in surprise, the woman exposed before us stumbled back half a step into the lush spread of purple bluebells that covered the ground. As she threw her hands to her pointed ears, the noose loosened infinitesimally around my ankles.
I could never have mistaken her for a human. Her loose brown hair was streaked with green, leaves grew from its tangled strands, and her arms were as long and thin as a sapling’s branches. Her tattered green and gold gown, alone, was surprisingly familiar in style—but only from portraits painted a century ago.
Still, none of her odd and startling beauty could hold my attention after I caught sight of the tree just behind her, where a thick mass of green covered a long, lanky shape...that was unmistakably human.
“Wrexham!” I yanked my arm free from Amy’s grip and seized the supper-knife from Luton’s hands. As little as magicians might like to think it, magicwasn’tthe only weapon against magic, after all.
The half-eaten chicken leg from Luton’s dinner sailed away, burying itself under bluebells, as I slashed myself free from the wicked, stabbing noose. I clenched the knife handle in my fist and leaped forward, ignoring the slide of fresh blood down my feet as I aimed for that tree and the long, familiar shape beneath the vines...which wasn’t moving, even now.
Why wasn’t it moving?
Closer, closer—
Long, strong fingers grabbed my arm and thrust me off-balance, jagged fingernails digging into my skin like claws. “You can’t have him!” Orange-flecked green eyes glared at me. “Your family stole my love. Now I have yours, and I’ll kill him in front of you. Do you haveany ideahow long I’ve waited for this revenge?”
I glared back at her. “My familyneverharmed or abducted any fey from these woods!Wefollowed the rules and—”
“Youlied,” she spat, pulling me closer. Her breath tasted of moss and blood. “Helied every time he saw me! I should never have let him walk in my woods. He swore that he loved me, but your family wrapped around him like a curse! He spun me dreams of living together in Thornfell in secret, under their noses, and he tricked me into believing him. He swore he would be true forever, but then heleftmewithout a single word! I meant nothing to him. Nothing did, in the end, except your blasted human rules and your Harwood pride. He—”
“He?” Through the heat of confusion and rage, sudden clarity pierced. I turned in her grip to meet my brother’s shocked gaze as my students gathered around him and the others like an army. “Wait a minute,” I said.
This mysterioushehad walked in these woods.
He hadn’t dared introduce her to our family.
“Can you be talking aboutRomulusHarwood?” I asked in disbelief.
My enigmatic ancestor had baffled the world with his insistence on living here and his refusal to marry any of the women his sisters suggested to him. He’d sighed in his journal over his mysterious love—whom he could never reveal to his sisters. Finally, I understood why.
“Did he boast about it?” Her face twisted with pain. “When he left me forever without a farewell, did he laugh about how he’d managed to break an immortal fey’s heart?”
“He didn’t laugh.” Jonathan stepped forward, his voice low and his expression awed. “And he didn’t leave. Madam—forgive me, I don’t know your name. He only called youhis belovedin his journal. But didn’t you know? He died. He was only eight and thirty, but the influenza took him within days. Physicians were summoned, and magicians, too, but none of the magic in our family could save him.”
The claw-like nails around my arm dug in with such a spasm of force, I gasped out loud and blood seeped from my skin. “You’re lying to me again!” she snarled. “Humans arealwaysdeceitful. You think you can trick me with your words, just as he did—”
“We haveevidence,” I gasped, breathing shallowly through the pain. “We can prove it.”
Thank goodness my family never discarded old books...and thank Boudicca I’d brought along our family historian after all.
“Just wait,” I told the woman who could have been family, “and we’ll show you.”
16
In the eerie stillness of the splashed-bright night woods, it seemed that Jonathan might never return.
