She tried it on. The fabric was lighter than air, the gold thread catching the lamplight and making her skin glow. The wings were surprisingly comfortable, anchored by cleverly hidden straps. And the crown of flowers made her look like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting—not beautiful, exactly, but interesting. Otherworldly.
She felt ridiculous. And yet, she also felt, for the first time in years, pretty. The necklace was still in her pocket—she’d meant to return it to the collection room, but somehow kept forgetting. She pulled it out now, looking at the way the opals caught the light. Before she could talk herself out of it, she clasped it around her neck. After all, Constance said she could wear it to the party.
It settled against her collarbone as if it had been made for her. Elodie stared at her reflection in the mirror, the gown bringing out the gold and copper in her long wavy hair. A faerie queen stared back, dressed in gossamer and gold, wearing a necklace that seemed to pulse with inner fire.
“Just for the party,” she told herself. “Then back to being sensible.”
She didn’t notice the way the sky outside had begun to darken, clouds massing on the horizon, didn’t hear the first distant rumble of thunder.
No, Elodie was too busy looking at a woman she barely recognized, wondering when she’d stopped letting herself dream.
CHAPTER 5
Elodie was standing in Lady Baldridge’s garden watching the May Day revelers dance around the ribboned maypole in the fading evening light. No matter how much she’d tried, she still couldn’t get used to calling the elegant woman Constance instead of Lady Baldridge.
She’d smiled so much her cheeks ached. The first of May, Beltane, the old traditions called it, the threshold between spring and summer, when the veil between worlds grew thin. She’d smiled at the folklore of it all as she’d wandered toward the back of the property, drawn by the wild roses climbing an old stone wall.
A few minutes later, the sky turned the color of a bruise. Wind whipped through the grounds with enough force to send party decorations flying—paper lanterns torn from their strings, flower crowns tumbling across the grass. The maypole ribbons snapped and tangled.
Guests scattered toward the manor like startled birds. “Everyone inside!” someone shouted in the distance, but Elodie had gone farther than she’d realized and was too far from the house. The other guests were already streaming toward the manor’s welcoming lights, but she’d have to cross the entirelength of the garden. For a moment she debated, but when lightning split the sky, thunder rumbling across the land, Elodie ran.
Her faerie wings caught the wind like a sail, yanking her sideways. She stumbled, kicked off her impractical embroidered slippers, and kept going. Rain hammered down in sheets so thick she could barely see three feet ahead. The ground turned to mud in seconds, sucking at her bare feet with every step.
Another flash of lightning, close enough that the hair on her arms stood up. The thunder that followed was immediate, a crack that seemed to shake the very earth. She needed to find shelter. Now.
At the far end of the stone wall there was an archway, some kind of garden folly or decorative ruin. If she could just?—
Her foot caught on something—a root, a stone, her own ridiculous gossamer hem—and she went down hard. Her knee slammed into a rock with enough force to make her cry out. Blood welled up, hot against the cold rain. The necklace burned. Elodie gasped, her hand flying to her throat. The fire opals were glowing, pulsing with a light that had nothing to do with the lightning overhead. Heat radiated from the gold, intense but not quite painful, spreading through her chest like?—
Like—
The lightning struck. Not near her.Throughher. Or that’s what it felt like—a column of white-hot energy that lifted her off the ground and turned the world inside out. She heard herself screaming, or maybe that was the wind, or maybe it was something else entirely—a sound like a thousand voices whispering in a language she couldn’t understand. Colors exploded behind her eyes. Blue and white and gold, spiraling, pulling—and then there was nothing.
She woke face down in the grass. For a long moment, Elodie lay there, breathing. Her whole body ached, and her kneethrobbed where she’d scraped it. Her throat felt raw, like she’d been screaming.
What just happened?
Lightning strike. She’d been hit by lightning, that had to be it. She should be dead—or at the very least, seriously injured. But when she carefully pushed herself up to a sitting position, everything seemed to work. Arms, legs, fingers, toes. Her vision was blurry, but that cleared when she wiped the rain from her eyes.
Wait. It wasn’t raining anymore. Elodie blinked, looking around. The storm was still there—she could see it roiling on the horizon, lightning flickering in distant clouds—but here, the sky was merely overcast. Dim evening light filtered through a canopy of trees.
Trees. Not the garden then. She was in a forest. And the trees looked different. Not different as in dead or dying—but as in too alive. Ancient oaks surrounded her, branches heavy with leaves, their trunks so massive it would take three people to circle them. Hawthorn burst white with May blossoms along the clearing’s edge. Bluebells carpeted the forest floor in a purple haze, and somewhere nearby, a nightingale sang. This was not Lady Baldridge’s garden. The garden was gone, as was the manor. The maypole and the dancers and the fairy lights, all gone.
“No.”
The word came out as a croak.
“No, no, no.”
She scrambled to her feet, turning in frantic circles. The clearing she’d found herself in was small, surrounded by ancient oaks that looked nothing like the manicured grounds of Baldridge Manor. The grass beneath her bare feet was thick and soft, studded with wildflowers—primroses, forget-me-nots, the last of the wood anemones. Even the air smelled different—cleaner, somehow, full of promise.
“Hello?” Her voice was thin against the wind. “Is anyone there? Hello?”
No answer. Just the rustle of leaves and the distant rumble of the retreating storm. Elodie reached for her pocket, glad the faerie gown had pockets, groping for her phone. It wasn’t there. She must have dropped it when she fell. Of course, the lightning had probably fried it, anyway. The necklace. Her hand flew to her throat and found only bare skin. The necklace was gone, the priceless piece of jewelry must have fallen off when whatever happened in that storm.
The blood drained from her face. “No.”
She grabbed at her dress, searched the ground around her feet, even ran her fingers through her tangled hair in case it had somehow gotten caught. Nothing. The fire opal and emerald necklace was nowhere to be found.
