Page 25 of A Beastly Court

“Quit moving. It looks like two ferrets cage fighting in there.”

“But I have itches! Plaster dust is worse than burdock burs,” he complained.

“And why were you in walls anyway? Were you pretending to be a mouse?”

He wormed around until one amber eye stared up at me through the hole like I was an idiot. “Of course not. We were hunting the mice in the tunnels, not pretending to be them. We had to get them all before I made contact—couldn’t have them running off to tell the fae king that we were there, now could we? It had already taken us weeks to figure out how to get into the castle and into the east wing without being seen, and Ame wasn’t going to let all that work go to waste because a mouse ratted us out.”

All beasts obeyed their king, and mice above all others would be the first to go running to Ossian that there were cats in the castle. “How’d you even get inside without being seen?”

“We used your chimney,” he said proudly. “The mortar was crumbling higher up, so we wiggled a brick out and then the hunt was on.”

Well thank the Green Mother I hadn’t been able to successfully light the fireplace! I could have set the entire ceiling and roof on fire! It would’ve caught all the air in the tunnels and—

I paused just outside the great hall double doors and yanked the foraging bag up to my face so I could hiss, “You said there were tunnels? In the walls?”

“Loads,” Sawyer replied. “And peepholes too. Far more in the east wing than anywhere else, which is so weird since it’s only you in there.”

“Do you want Cernunnos to find out? He’s got eyes and ears everywhere no doubt.”

The honey badger had been right! But why was Ossian spying on me? Was he spying or just making sure I was okay?

“H-he’s just being cautious,” I murmured. When I tried to convince myself of a reason why he was being so cautious in his own castle that had the same amount of wards around it as Hawthorne Manor, I came up empty.

“Are we getting anything to eat before we sneak out?” Sawyer whispered, startling me from my unsettling thoughts. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah.” My voice wavered. “Stay quiet now. Ossian’s not the only one in the great hall.” I gulped, feeling the old fear come back. “There’s a bear in there too.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The double doors opened as I raised my hand to seize the handle.

Yelping—my day seemed destined to be full of this annoying habit—I stumbled back as Ossian appeared in the doorway. He caught my flailing hand and yanked me close, grinning.

I think I would’ve screamed in fright had it not been for the golden haze of our fated mate bond. It looked like the left side of his face, from the crest of his sharp cheekbone to his ear and the corner of his eye, had been scalded. The puckered flesh was healing before my very eyes, albeit slowly, more of the gemstones in his necklace twinkling away.

His wound was immediately forgotten in the wake of the golden aura emanating from his skin. It was like sunshine breaking through a day of endless rain, and I gasped as warmth flooded through me, erasing the shock of his appearance away like a wave over a footprint in the sand. That warm flood pulsed in time with my own heart, and a second throb joined the rhythm from deep within my abdomen.

“Ossian,” I choked, stumbling over the syllables. My hands, pressed against his chest, fisted in his linen shirt, the V of his collar straining and revealing even more of his golden-hued chest beneath. I felt a nearly irresistible urge to kiss that skin, to taste it with long sweeps of my tongue. By the Green Mother, what had gotten into me this morning? “What—”

“Good morning, love,” he purred, leaning down to press his lips against mine.

It was… not gentle, but it wasn’t the bruising kind of kiss I knew him to give. This Ossian was gentler, magnanimous. He didn’t protest when my hands slid from his shirt up his neck and into his copper curls. H-he was letting me touch him? My heart fluttered at his vulnerability.

His arms encircled me and lifted me up against him. My fingers knotted into his hair as his tongue teased a caress against mine. A second later, the unyielding doorframe bit into my back as Ossian trapped me against the wood, his hands hastily yanking my legs up around his waist. At his throat, the big blue gemstone on his necklace glowed like a tiny star.

For a moment, as he kissed down my neck, I had the strangest thought: I’d like these kisses better if he had a beard.

How ridiculous. High fae were never bearded. And yet…

Ossian claimed my mouth again, forcing every thought from my head with that golden haze.

I moaned, that throb in my abdomen beginning to pound. Thistle thorns, it hurt. It hurt denying myself, my passion for him, my lust. I should just submit to this want, let all my inhibitions fall away—

At the far end of the great hall, the grizzly bear bellowed.

I shoved away from Ossian with a strangled cry, fear replacing the mindless desire. Green magic sprang to my fingertips. Shock replaced my fear almost as quickly as it had the desire. The color was noticeably richer than it had been when I’d blasted the holes in my ceiling. The only variable that had changed? That blue spark between Sawyer and me.

Forgetting all about the bear and Ossian, I stuck my two fingers back into the foraging bag and touched the cat hiding inside. Deep inside me, the oak tree of my magic rustled its leaves trapped under Grandmother’s curse.