With a brief glance at Tam Lin, who is, of course, watching me, I pull the other dress over my head as the first descends to the floor, and with some luck and wriggling, I manage not to expose anything of myself to the Yeavering.
Not that the new dress leaves much to the imagination. It is lacy, if lace was made by a spider on LSD, and while it covers the main areas, most of the rest is being chilled by the elements.
“Perfection,” a voice whispers out of the dark, immediately behind one of the wavering torches.
It doesn’t sound like any of the Redcaps. In fact, it sounds like…
“Linton?”I whisper.
Is it his ghost? Does the Yeavering play such terrible tricks on those who have loved and been loved?
A pair of glowing red eyes blink into the darkness.
“I like your new outfit,” he says.
“Linton! You’re alive?” I hiss.
“I promised you I would protect you,” he rasps. “I would never leave you, my Kaitlyn. You are the light, the flame, the moon, and the darkness. You have all of me, wings, scales, antennae.”
My heart soars to the stars.Linton is alive! He is here!
“And you have my spicket.”
Warmth blooms through my chilled muscles. Linton is truly here. I doubt a ghost would mention hisspicket.
Or this is the Yeavering and anything could happen.
The glowing eyes move to my left, and a hand curls around one of the standing stones. Linton, it would appear, is very much alive. How will remain a mystery until we can get away from Tam Lin.
LINTON
My Kaitlyn looks even more stunning than I remember her. Sadly, she is no longer in the dress which matches the colours on my wings, but what she is sheathed in makes me want to put my spicket in her instantly. However, the unruly appendage will need to wait.
I have a Faerie Lord to dispose of, and even now he covets my female.
“Tam Lin wants to do something to me in order to get this supposed power from the Night Lands,” Kaitlyn whispers at me. “I think I might have been able to get his Redcaps to leave, but I’m not sure.”
“There are no Redcaps,” I reply, thinking of the pathetic collection I disposed of a short way down the valley. The ones too busy fighting among themselves about “treasure” to notice my presence. “Not anymore, unless he has others.”
“They’ve gone?” she says quietly, peeking over her shoulder at Tam Lin who is presently doing something next to a pile of stones topped with a Kaitlyn sized slab of slate.
“In a manner of speaking. I also brought the Barghest and the Brag. The Wyrm was busy,” I say with a snarl.
“You brought Warden and Reavely?”
“They followed me,” I grumble. “I told them you were mine and there was no reason for them to come to the Night Lands, but they insisted.”
The sound of her voice is music to my ears.
All I want to do is hold her and never let her go. I need her in my arms, but I have the foul Faerie who thinks he can kill me and take my mate to deal with first.
Tam Lin has made the gravest of errors. He thought he could take whatever he wanted. He thought he was better than the monsters of the Yeavering.
He thought he could be king.
He is going to discover how very wrong he is. He will be another Faerie to lose his wings.
Because a Faerie without wings is a dead Faerie, one way or the other.
