Page 19 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Chapter Five

The air was different: sharper, sweeter. Darker. It was tart raspberry and rich chocolate. It was the burn of salt, the bite of mint. Fire kindled deep in Pippa’s ribcage, flickering curiously. The iron of her bracelet seared into her and she clenched her back teeth against the familiar pain.

Above her, the ceiling was made of woven branches, thorns glittering, delicate, pale blackthorn blossoms glowing. Silver and iron birdcages hung from the boughs. They were empty but no less chilling for it. The walls were painted with owls.

It wasn’t just Elphame.

It was Thorn House.

Lachlan had taken her to his home, his rath under the hills, stealing a human like any Fae lord of old. The stories referred to Faery, to Elphame, as a hidden country under the hills, but they really just meant away.

Far away.

Elsewhere, entirely.

Tithes and treaties notwithstanding, none of this was right.

He watched her quietly, expression chillingly unreadable. She darted to the windows, which soared high and arched to a point, worthy of any cathedral. Iron scrollwork locked over the glass, decorative but also impenetrable to mortal or magic attack. Beyond lay a garden of thorn trees glittering with ice and frozen, perfect flowers, heavy with tattered mists. The white rabbit peeking from under the hedges had antlers and red ears. His teeth were too sharp.

And there were owls.

Dozens of owls, perched in trees, on the garden wall. Gliding on the currents of wind, the sky an impossible purple. The stars were all wrong. They made patterns and told stories she could not read. It sent a primal shudder into her bones.

“The owls really were yours,” she said.

“Yes.”

He’d been watching her. Why? For what possible reason?

“Take me back.”

“No,” Lachlan replied, mildly, as though bored. He tracked her with that strange silver eye. His face was too fierce, too delicate, too much like stone. He was all of the contradictions of the Fae.

Panic and confusion clawed at her. “Why am I here?”

“Because it was necessary.”

She could not tell if he was amused. Remorseful. Impatient. His expression did not change, stayed remote and dark and sharp all at once. He watched her for a long, long moment, long enough that her mouth went dry. It was like being watched by one of the owls. Something you knew had the power to eat you up, bones and all.

The thunder of horse hooves, and the howling of dogs, sounded again.

He turned his head suddenly, that silver eye flashing.

He closed his fingers around her elbow as he kicked a hand-knotted rug off the floorboards. A clever trapdoor lay underneath, only discernible when he nudged one of the pieces of wood that made a pattern. When he yanked it open to shadows, Pippa struggled harder, trying to free herself. The windows rattled as if those invisible horses thundered closer.

Lachlan merely dragged her forward.

And then he dropped her into the darkness.

She landed on a soft bed, the juxtaposition of falling and the fear lancing through her, stealing her breath. There was not enough air left in her lungs to scream up at him. Or to beg.

“Don’t eat the fruit.” It was all he said before dropping the door shut over her head. The sound of its locking shot through the shadows like snow suddenly crashing off the roof. It reverberated through her teeth and her bones and her blood.

Those Faery stories weren’t just stories, after all. The treaties weren’t quaint traditions.

They were warnings.

People in novels got straight to it.