Page 47 of Stolen Threadwitch Bride
What if Rose wasn’t safe?
“I’ll find you,” she’d promised. Gods, what if she came after me? I shivered, eyes stinging. Pale flesh and empty eyes andclack clack clack. She could use a knife and her fists, but what use were they against just one sluagh, never mind a pack of them?
I wrung my hands, drowning in questions and useless thoughts.
None of this worrying would help anyone and sleep was still a million miles away.
So I crept to the window and peeked out. The sliver of waning moon was high in the sky, spilling pale light onto the inky world and through the crack in the curtain. It lit the clock on the mantelpiece. Four o’clock.
I’d be up in a few hours and with the moon in this phase there was no danger of the Wild Hunt, even if they did somehow cross Ly’s borders. He’d told me how the land was warded so none of the monstrous, dangerous fae could enter without his invitation, the Wild Hunt included.
I dressed in warm, dark wool and took the offering from my underwear drawer. A smooth round rock as big as my palm. I’d covered it in two layers of felt and one of silk taffeta before embroidering into it Frankish knots and warmth. It had to be cold living in a lake and even cold-blooded creatures like adders and grass snakes sought heat, basking in the sun. Surely a Lady of the Lake would be the same.
The creeping was almost over before it began, because the moment I opened my door, I had to stifle a shriek at the huge shape pooled on the floor outside.
But then red glowing eyes opened and a great furry head rose, ears, paws, and tail flickering into life. Fluffy. She sniffed my hand and pushed under it when she found no treats. Apparently a scratch would do.
“Good gods, dog,” I whispered, “you scared me half to death.” Stroking her soft, warm ears slowed my heart until I was ready to proceed. She followed me all the way—silent, thankfully. If Ly had stationed her at my door to keep me in, she wasn’t doing a great job.
I put my boots on at the kitchen door and reached the stables within a few minutes. As part of my riding lessons, Ly had shown me how to tack up the hind, and she waited patiently for me to do so, apparently unconcerned by the dark.
As we rode for the lake, I kept one eye on the setting moon. In the story, the Lady of the Lake hadn’t appeared until the moon was up. As long as it remained in the sky, I had time.
The lower edge of its crescent brushed the forest’s highest branches by the time I reached the lake.
What had been slate-blue water in the day now appeared inky black, glinting with ghostly moonlight. The willows’ tangled branches dipped in the surface, fracturing it and sending confusing ripples in every direction until it looked like there were faces in the depths, pale and lifeless.
I clung to the hind’s reins, the leather biting into my skin. But she wasn’t afraid; she stood there, placid, one ear flicking as though bothered by a mite. And Fluffy sat at her side, apparently unconcerned.
So I steeled myself and dismounted. I tethered the hind to a birch a few yards from the water’s edge, just in case she did get spooked and tried to run.
“If we’re running, we’re doing it together.” I stroked her nose. “And after tonight, I think you’ve earned a name. How about Luna?”
She didn’t argue, so I patted her neck and approached the lake, Fluffy so close she brushed my leg. Kneeling, I held out the embellished stone and lowered it into the water.
As always, my gift didn’t work on me and did nothing to blunt the water’s icy edge.
It was cold, colder than the stream the night I’d fled the sluagh, colder than the snow that had fallen on Ly and me on our journey, colder than ice or death or the bitterest winter wind.
Once I’d caught my breath from the shock, I called out: “Lady of the Lake, I call to thee.” That was what the woman in the story had said three times, so I did the same.
The third time, a V-shaped wake appeared, cutting through the choppy ripples, coming this way.
I bit my lip, fighting every instinct to run as my heart threatened to explode and my insides turned liquid.
Fluffy gave a soft whine, ears flattening, but she stayed at my side.
A pale shape rose from the lake, water sloshing off it… offher, I realised, catching a glimpse of long hair the colour of bone and sheer cloth clinging to small breasts.
As slender and willowy as Sylvie, she stood before me. But where Sylvie was silvery sun-bleached wood, the Lady of the Lake was sun-bleached bone. Wide cheekbones, full lips, and angled eyes the colour of algae—she was beautiful.
Her slender fingers ended in long, pointed nails the same colour as her flesh, making me shiver with the memory of the sluagh. But she didn’t clack them together, instead her fingers bent and straightened in constant, elegant motion, like she was testing the air, feeling how it was different from the wet world she inhabited.
“Even in my reckoning of years, it has been a long while since one of your kind called on me.” Her voice was a ripple of water, a breath of wind, the plop of a kingfisher diving for prey. “Do you have an offering?” Eyes bright with anticipation, her mouth stretched wider, wider, wider into a smile that revealed many sharp teeth.
Every hair on my body rose, and I dragged in breath after breath before I could speak. “I… I do.” I lifted the rock, an icy drip sliding down my arm.
Her pale brows rose as she cocked her head and surveyed my gift. “And what is this?”
