Page 77 of The Filigree Key

Gripped in his fist was the neck and scruff of a striped tomcat.

Between one blink and the next, the little cat came alive as some kind of paralytic spell lifted. With a yowl, eighteen claws unleashed themselves and slashed through the air. Fur bristled and amber eyes blazed, but the Stag Man’s grip was iron. He held the thrashing cat aloft as if he weighed no more than a pea.

Sawyer!

Magic rooted me to the ground even as my heart drove me forward. My fingers dug into my hips where they were perched to keep from shaking. Magic boiled beneath my skin, waiting to be unleashed. To protect what was mine.

Say something! I shouted at Sawyer. A spell. Anything!

But of course, without us bonded as true familiar and witch, he couldn’t hear my thoughts.

Wetting my lips, I cocked my head to the side and feigned indifference.

“A cat?” Misty Fields asked. “Why would a creature forbidden in your court spur me to do better?”

“You don’t know this cat?” The Stag Man’s jewel-bright eyes drilled into me, willing me to crack.

Only a perfect lie could protect both of us now. “Should I?”

“Caught him sneaking about this morning.”

“And should I know something about that too?” I asked, bored. “Ossian, whatever this is, wrap it up. I’m going to have lunch and then try again, okay?”

Frown lines appeared below his copper curls, his eyebrows bunching. “You really don’t know him.”

“I really don’t see why I need to repeat myself.”

“Huh,” he mused, lowering his hand. “Then you won’t care if I do this.”

The Stag Man hurled the cat into the river, the brown waters swallowing him like a stone.

“Sawyer!” I screamed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

My bare feet pounded against the forest floor as I ran downstream, my dress flapping at my knees. The purple canes of wild blackberries clawed after my legs and rocks growing out of the ground scraped my soles, but I felt nothing. Nothing but hot panic boiling through my veins.

“Sawyer!”

The tabby cat’s head broke above the surface, mouth wide and gasping, eyes wide as coins. His mewl became a gurgle as the current sucked him back under. The river charged over a rocky shelf, dropping only three feet but plunging its entire force onto a cluster of boulders that squatted there like gigantic frogs. I saw a flash of stripes then a head as Sawyer sucked in another lungful of air.

“Here!”

A vine shot from my hand with the speed of a fired arrow, dozens of tendrils spurting from its length. Each could wrap around a clump of fur, a toe, a whisker, a paw, a tail. The tomcat saw it, amber eyes blinking rapidly against the frothing water. All he needed to do was not go under again and the vine would do the rest.

A silver spear shot through the vine.

Not a spear. A root.

My magic burst into glittering green sparks, and the silver mallaithe retracted its tentacle-like root back below the surface.

Those seed pods Ossian had thrown into the water . . ..

The river churned with two new currents, the V-shaped wakes of the fae hunting trees angling straight for my cat.

Oh my Green Mother.

“Swim, Sawyer,” I screamed. “Mallaithe!”