Page 73 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
My desperation only made them snicker again.
“Amy, you must keep moving!” Briar called through the rising swarm. “Stay on the King’s Road! You’ll reach a tavern—the Thorny Rose! Stop there tonight, and Iwillfind you!”
“Briar!”
“Don’t be afraid, Amy!” He’d drifted much too high, his voice an echo on the wind. “You’ll be fine!”
After he and the sluaghs disappeared beyond the timberline, I collapsed to my knees in the wildflowers, cooing birds and peeping frogs accompanying my sniveling.
A frightening new page had just turned in my story. For the first time ever, I was on my own.
Fourteen
Rainpeltingmyhood,I slogged along the muddy King’s Road. A spring tempest had broken out an hour before sunsdown. At the first clap of thunder, I’d scowled up at the billowy sky. “Really?”
Now, I was close to a second nervous breakdown.
As soon as my ankle pain receded, and I’d gotten my shit back together—after my first nervous breakdown—I’d dashed down the King’s Road. Iwouldreach the Thorny Rose Tavern that night. At all costs. I prayed to Danu that Briar was already there awaiting me. I didn’t know if I’d survive another day on my own.
Besides my general lack of food and water (Briar usually provided both), I justknewharbingers were hounding me. I saw evil in every shadow, heard the ominous clicking of bogeybats in every woodnote. I’d passed one other traveler on the road, and mother save me, he must’ve thought me insane.
He was probably a simple farmer, but at the time I was certain he’d been sent to kill me. When he got within speaking distance, I scrabbled up a flowering magnolia like a squirrel, weirding him out if his expression were any indication.
Now, I rounded another sodden bend in the road, my dress having absorbed every puddle I’d crossed. Being so drenched, the symphony of fiddles, drums, and raucous laughter cutting through the rain was Goddess sent.
“It’s here, it’s here, it’s here!” I stumbled past a copse of overgrown boxwoods into a clearing, where an ivied tavern of rustic stone construction stood before me—a beacon of salvation. The wooden sign above the arched door clattered in the wind. A sign marked by a red rose with one thorn. I squelched toward the tavern, its windows aglow.
When my feet shuffled over the threshold, the merriment I’d heard from outside dulled to an awkward hush. Eyes turned on me in a mix of reactions: shock, distress, awe, and scorn. None of them belonged to Briar. A once-over informed me he wasn’t there.
Relax,I commanded my hammering heart.Just because he’s not here now, doesn’t mean he won’t show up. Just be thankful for the shelter.
The party crasher that I was, I burrowed into my dripping cloak, lending timorous greetings to those I passed on my way through the smoky-sweet tavern.
Suspended orbs of light (magic, I guessed) glinted amongst cascades of wisteria hung from the rafters, illuminating passage to the bar. Muddy moss mottled the floor planks, my soppy boots only worsening the mess. The troubadours fiddling by the blazing fireplace muffled my squishing. Their song—about someone named Bluebell Shanty and something called bane bonnets—was like coffee after a mid-terms all-nighter.
By the time I reached the bar, most of the tavern patrons had forgotten my presence and returned to their earlier revelry. The few who continued watching me did so with unrepentant distrust.
Trying my best to ignore them, I peeled off my hood and wedged myself between a pair of husky, bearded feyrs. If not for their average heights, I’d have assumed them two of the seven Dwarves. Both muttered and inched away from me, hugging their tankards like I might snatch them. But I wouldn’t let that offend me.
“Excuse me,” I peeped to the wench behind the bar. Her skin was a gorgeous shade of teal with eyes to match. She’d pulled her pitch-black tresses into a bun, which was stuck through with a spray of wheat. In a dress like mine, an apron clinging for dear life to her bulging waist, she turned toward me, rusty springs in her throat as she laughed at some ribald feyr’s naughty joke. Her bulging cleavage jiggled as her mirth subsided. By the time she addressed me, her mouth had flattened into a tight line—all humor gone from her dimpled face.
She bowed her head. “How can I serve you, lady?”
Why does everyone call me lady when I’m dressed like a pleb?
I leaned on the bar, exhaustion striking me like a mallet. Somehow, I retained the wherewithal to change my accent. I went British again, confident I wouldn’t screw it up. “Have you seen a feyr with short auburn hair and bright green eyes? Tall. Handsome. Pale like me. Danann like me.”
One of her thick brows arched as she swabbed her knotty bar top. “Not that I recall, lady. But I ken why you’d be looking for a fella what looked like that.”
I managed a smile in return.
“What I can’t ken is how you let him slip through your fingers in the first place.”
I would’ve laughed if I’d had the energy. Instead, I exhaled and leaned harder onto the bar, making the Dwarf to my right stomp away with his drink.
“Never mind Bogpie,” the wench tutted, swatting my hand with her damp rag. “A right auld curmudgeon, he is. Tell me more about how you lost this pleasant fella.”
“He’s my travel companion. When we stopped on the King’s Road today, we were attacked by sluaghs.”
