Page 112 of The Filigree Key

The Stag Man staggered back a step in disbelief. “You should be dead!”

“Coalition enforcers are built different,” Arthur replied, his voice hoarse and harsh from disuse.

Was this one of the secrets Arthur had kept locked away in his mental vault?

Gripping Faebane by the hilt, the bear shifter tore the magic blade free of the stone floor. A magic blade of iron, the only metal that could kill a high fae with a mere scratch. And with no more copper smoke ring directing its movement, it could obey a new master.

Ossian tensed, readying for a fight, and (I suspected) for the first time since he’d been banished to the mortal realm, he trembled.

In the pregnant pause that followed, where even the mewling cries of the distressed Brothers seemed silenced, Sawyer was the first to act. Hooking every paw into the silver weave of the collar, the tabby tomcat shucked the infernal thing and launched it across the great hall. The sensation akin to a farmhouse door bursting open from a blast of summertime wind flooded into me. My familiar released a joyous trill and leapt into my arms.

The moonstone clicked against the floor like a skipping stone and slid to a halt against the bear shifter’s toes. Arthur lifted his foot and crushed the moonstone beneath his heel. Then he returned his burning amber gaze on the Stag Man.

“And it’s pokeberry juice.”

“Wh-what?” Ossian stammered.

“That’s what got into them.” Arthur jerked his chin at the eight Brothers writhing in their seats or on the ground. “In high doses it’s severely toxic. In the lower concentration my mate put in that frosting, it’s like an abdominal grenade.”

Tension tightened the bear shifter’s shoulders, the tendons in his forearms standing out in stark relief as his fingers squeezed into a fist around Faebane’s hilt. “But it’s nothing like the reckoning you’re about to receive at my hand.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Chaos erupted in the great hall.

Before Arthur took a single step, the Stag Man threw his head back with an ear-shattering bugle.

His summons were cut off when glowing green vines clobbered him in the gut and knocked him back into his chair, but the damage was already done. The faelight minions that had been milling in the courtyard stampeded into the great hall, every fang and claw bared to rip into the bear shifter’s flesh.

In the heartbeat that followed, where time and the pandemonium seemed to freeze, I lunged forward and seized the plum in one hand and the lid of the ceramic jar in the other.

Another heartbeat passed: Ossian rocked forward to leave the chair, copper magic blooming in his palms and a snarl twisting his mouth, and I rammed the magical equivalent of a sledgehammer through the cloch na wight.

The illusion of the plum shattered with a burst of white light, and the wight in the shape of a shadowy wolfhound sprang free with an eerie howl. Gwyn launched herself at the Stag Man, flattening him against the chair and pitching it back onto its rear legs.

In the second he stole to bash the wight away and right his chair, a horrid stench filled the air. Two globs of bubbling dough gripped the rim of the ceramic jar and heaved a feral sourdough starter to the surface.

“Sic him, Bruno.”

There was a flash of white and a heavy slop of a sound, and suddenly the Stag Man was covered in bubbling bread dough. It clung to him like glue, fusing him to the chair and engulfing him in stink, stick, and slime. With a shout, he tried to blast himself free, but Bruno merely absorbed each magical burst and doubled in size. It couldn’t withstand more than a few hits before the wild yeast expended itself, but he didn’t know that. The Stag Man’s eyes bulged in fear as the starter climbed over his mouth, smothering his scream.

Different screams lifted into the air.

The Brotherhood momentarily forgot their twisting guts in lieu of what was happening to their hands. Angry hives and bulbous pustules covered every inch of exposed flesh. Their skin was horribly inflamed and swollen, and, as I watched, the rash spread to their necks, their ears, their faces. Everywhere they had touched themselves during dinner.

“Ha!” Flora crowed, pausing to punch a faelight coyote’s snapping jaws away. “That’s what you get. I laced the table with poison ivy sap, losers!”

No wonder my friends hadn’t succumbed to the same infection—the oils of their own fur and hair had protected them.

Shari shrieked then, spinning a tight circle and clobbering a Great Pyrenees in the face with her quilled tail. Daphne kicked the dog away, Cody and Emmett flinging cups and cutlery after it.

“Not to tell you your business, miss,” the beaver said, flinging a platter like a frisbee, “but I think it’s time to go!”

“Daphne, get them out of here,” I shouted. “Arthur!”

The man was fighting for his life amidst the faelight beasts, but with only a thin rapier and no fangs or claws of his own, it was a losing battle. The wight swirled around him, able to partially deflect some of the worst strikes, but the pure spirit wasn’t exactly corporeal.

“I got him,” Sawyer cried, racing across the tabletop. “Get the key.”