If he does not want to know the joy of mating, I will not tell him about it.
The Yeavering is large, and I know the direction he is taking, regardless of what he says. We’re going to the most dangerous of all the portals within the realm, the Yeavering stone.
What Warden intends doing there, I can only hazard a guess. It will be his way of getting into the Night Lands.
I’d rather eat my own wings than go to that place again, but if Tam Lin has taken Kaitlyn, I will follow her into the bowels of hell and not look back, not once.
She is all I want, all I need.
My Kaitlyn makes me whole.
But the Yeavering stone is a tricky portal, and after my experience with the witch, I’m not entirely sure how my new powers will affect it.
The stone might be strong, but the moon is stronger. And I’d prefer not to end up beyond the veil like last time.
Our surroundings change from scattered forest to open moorland. The wind whistles across it unfettered, lifting my wings and sending my scales drifting away.
“Do you ever stop shedding?” Warden growls. “It took me an age to get rid of them from the Shadow Keep.”
“No,” I say proudly. “And now I am mated, I will be able to shed on demand.”
“Your mate is going to love that,” Warden grumbles.
The road rises higher and higher into the moors until the unmistakable dark shape of the stone appears on the horizon.
It’s getting late, and there is the faint hint of a ghostly moon in the sky. Already I feel more prepared to take on whatever the Yeavering may have against me. Not just for Kaitlyn but for all who are against the Faerie.
Tam Lin made but one mistake when he took her.
He took her from me.
The stone itself is imposing, if you look at stone in that way. But with the moon at my back, I stand before it, daring the thing to do something.
“Are you ready, Linton?” Warden asks. “Once we’re through, we’ll have to cross all of the Night Lands to find the portal to return us.”
“If it takes me to my mate, I care not,” I rasp, pulling out a couple of daggers and feeling my antennae lift in the gathering gloom.
Warden trots close to the stone, turning his back on it, which seems somewhat foolish.
“Then it is time to go,” he intones, kicking out with a back leg and his hoof impacting on the stone with a deep, resonant ring.
“Take me to my Kaitlyn.” I growl at the stone as everything goes dark.
But the dark is the place all Bluecaps inhabit. We are perfect in the darkness. We were built for it.
I own it.
KAITLYN
The feeling has finally returned to my extremities, but at the moment, I’m pretending nothing is working. I’m biding my time, attempting to work out exactly what Tam Lin is up to and whether I can get any information out of him, either intentionally or unintentionally.
He strikes me as the sort of person who happily explains the plot, like a Bond villain with pointy ears and crystal wings.
So, a pretty unbelievable Bond villain.
One thing I do know is I will not be participating in anything he has planned. The first chance I get, I’m running as far and as fast as I can. Regardless of my lack of magic, I am not making any of this easy for him. He will find out how difficult humans can be.
If I’ve learnt nothing else from my sweet mothman, I have to embrace the chaos. Chaos got him results, and I will honour his memory.
