Page 117 of The Filigree Key

In the same second, the filigree key struck the veil, and the gossamer film crystallized. A silver filigree lock formed around the key, a bolt shuttled into place, and the opal door appeared once more.

The Stag Man’s face disappeared mere inches from mine.

A boom on the other side of the portal startled a yelp out of me and a backwards scuttle of steps. I tripped over the hem of Ossian’s cloak I still wore and fell flat on my back. Supine for only a second, I lurched into a sitting position with magic boiling from my hands in anticipation of an enraged high fae pouncing down on me.

But the way was shut.

I waited a shuddering breath or two, eyes and magic glued to the portal, just to be sure.

No Ossian.

Then something tickling my nose jerked my attention upwards.

Fine white strands—severed hair—drifted down onto my face like torn pieces of spiderwebs.

Daphne. Her tail had still been in the portal when I’d locked it behind us.

With a heave, I rolled onto my hands and knees and then upright, stooping once to reclaim Faebane where I’d dropped it. Where the iron point had embedded in the earth, there was a scorch mark. I’d heal that patch later, after I checked on Daphne.

The white horse was nowhere to be found.

Instead, a tall woman in a buckskin skirt and a fringed shawl I hadn’t seen in a long time was examining the shorn end of her long white braid. It was a good foot or two shorter than I remembered it, and the majority of Shari’s macramé held. Beside her was an elderly gentleman in denim overalls, squinting and wiping his wire-rimmed spectacles, and a twiggy old man in a plaid shirt, khakis, and suspenders stretched out his popping back.

Beside them was a forty-something brunette with wingtip glasses, frantically looking in her pockets for a piece of yarn and a crochet hook so she could craft away her anxiety. And seated in the lush grass amidst the tiny star-shaped flowers was a garden gnome bawling her eyes out.

“I miss my fangs and claws,” Flora sobbed. “Where did all my muscles go?”

“At least you have your magic back, dear,” Daphne consoled her.

Flora sneezed once, twice, the third time knocking her flat on her back. She wailed again. “And I’ve got allergies again!”

“Shhh,” Sawyer hissed, pouncing the pint-sized gnome and pressing his paw over her mouth. He cast a wary look over his shoulder, ruddy nose sniffing. “We’re not alone.”

“No, you are not,” agreed a regal voice.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

There was a rustling of fabric, and twelve midnight-colored cloaks and hoods were swept aside to reveal twelve high fae.

They stood seven feet tall, all powerfully built but not bulky, and each clad in tight-fitting leather that at times seemed brown, then green, even black. The colors shifted like shadows and sunlight through a forest. As mesmerizing as their clothes were, it was nothing compared to their faces.

Ethereally beautiful. Stunning, just like Ossian. And, just like him, their skin glowed with a magical golden aura. Their hair and eye colors ranged as much as any human’s, but each sported similarly pointed ears.

My mother’s warning rose in my mind, cautioning against anthropomorphizing the fae. ‘They might look like us, but they are not human. And to confuse them as such would be a deadly mistake. Theirs is the magic of deception and illusion, designed to lull and distract, then strike.’

In their hands were spears with metal heads that gleamed with an inner radiance.

Spears they lowered and trained on us.

“She wears his colors,” one of them hissed, jabbing his spear at me. Or rather, at the cloak I wore about my shoulders. This one spoke in Faerish, but my basic understanding of Gaelic allowed me to understand the gist of what he was saying. “Kill her, Fionn. Kill her now.”

“Our orders are to kill the Banished One should he ever return,” the one called Fionn replied in the same language, the owner of that regal voice. He swept purple eyes over me. “And this most decidedly is not him.”

“Ossian, friend of Ossian, what does it matter?”

“Quiet, Ler.”

“The Stag Man is no friend of mine,” I snapped. Sweeping my hand at my friends, who had all shifted closer together, I said, “And no friend to any of us here.”