Page 61 of The Court the Fae Forgot
Or, more likely if my prior experience with the Wildness was any indicator, a life of their own.
Deep ruts were dug into the ground, signs of wild boar far larger than the ones already a danger to men who wandered across their path in regular forests. My mind went immediately to Zev’s threat the night they came for me, images of faerie fiends making me press harder into Shiel’s protective hold.
I turned my head to follow the trail of the horses’ hoofprints behind us, only to watch as one by one, the earth settled into them, erasing any path we might have hoped to follow.
The other fae were watching too.
A chill settled over us.
From the way Shiel’s arm tightened around me, and from the look I caught Zev and Finch sharing, I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
All at once, three pairs of hands reached for their swords.
This was it, the moment the Wildness attacked us. There would be no escaping it now.
Before so much as the scraping of steel could shatter the silence, however, there he was, suddenly before us.
Cloaked in shadows, shining with a dark light of his own beneath the trees—the Lord of the Wildness.
The dark fae.
Icarus.
I knew the moment I saw him, the moment I felt the wall of his glamour slam into me with a power that nearly knocked me off the horse, that I’d never met this fae before. Not in person. I’d have never doubted whether his presence was real or just another delusion if I had.
He was tangible, present in a way that made all the rest of the world feel like a dream.
Icarus surveyed us with hooded eyes, his arms slowly lifting in a gesture of welcome that felt anything but.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to come to me.”
Shiel’s hand tightened even more around the hilt of his blade. “Lord Icarus,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “We’re sorry to trespass in your domain. We’ll be leaving right away.”
“So soon?”
Icarus, who had a moment before stood beneath the base of a tree, was suddenly standing right beside our horse. That black shadow followed close at his heels. He reached out a hand toward the horse, her eyes rolling wildly in their sockets as he stroked the length of her nose with his long, shining claws.
“I’m surprised it took you this long, honestly,” he said. “The Wildness kept trying to pull you to me, you know. In times like this, we fae need to stick together. Yet you still chose the company of humans. I can’t help but wonder, why is that?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
He was too busy looking at me, his eyes raking over my body, suddenly naked in nothing but the flimsy shift I’d fled in.
“Is it the girl?” he asked, the way he looked at me so familiar that it made both heat bloom within me and something icy shiver down my spine at the same time. Sure, this was the fae that I’d met twice now, but did he recognize me? Had we met at all, or was the version of him that I knew only an illusion?
“Astute as ever,” Shiel said, and though his voice was measured, there was still a hint of uneasiness in it. His one hand still tight around my belly and the other on his sword. “We were on our way to the Southern Court to celebrate Midsommar when we found her. She’d been enslaved to a human family—no knowledge of her own family, her own court, her own people. We were hoping the Lady there might be able to help find out where she came from.”
I was surprised by how much Shiel told him, despite the lies peppered in with the truth.
Icarus had begun to circle us. As he did, I heard the rustle of birds in the trees overhead. I tilted up my head to see ravens, dozens of them, beginning to gather in the branches above us. Even as I watched, more had begun to gather. They watched us with black, intelligent eyes.
Fae birds, I guessed.
Fiends as likely as anything else.
Icarus stopped, at last, once he’d come back up to the front of our mare. “I find it hard to believe that you didn’t want to spend the festival with your own people. Surely, even your court has felt the aftershock of the glamour. At times like this, our people need their lords more than ever. I’m surprised you would abandon yours so readily,LordShiel.”
I froze, the hand around my waist suddenly feeling like a shackle.
