It was a real working medieval fortress.
The mortar between the stones was original, centuries of weather showing in the variation of the joints. The arrow loops were positioned at practical angles, not decorative ones. Someone had patched a section of wall recently—she could see where the new stone met the old, the repair competent but not matching, exactly as medieval masons would have done it. Quick. Efficient. Built for defense, not aesthetics. And the men on the walls were watching her with expressions that held no tourist-attraction friendliness. No customer-service smiles. Just wariness, and weapons, and the calculating attention of soldiers assessing a potential threat.
These are men carved from violence, she thought, and the phrase felt true in a way academic language rarely did.Not actors playing soldiers. Soldiers. Real soldiers who have killed people with those really sharp swords.
She should be terrified. She was terrified—her hands shaking, heart hammering against her ribs. But beneath the fear, something else stirred. Something that felt almost like hunger.
Because she was an archaeologist who had spent her entire career studying this period through fragments. Pottery shards and burial goods and the bones of people she would never meet. And now?—
Now she was inside it. Breathing the same air they breathed. Hearing the creak of the same leather, the ring of the same iron, the specific quality of hoofbeats on a wooden drawbridge that no sound recording had ever quite captured.
This is real, she thought, and for the first time, she didn’t try to argue herself out of it.This is all real. And I’m here. However it happened, whatever madness brought me here—I’m elsewhere.
The smell hit her next. Smoke and livestock, cooking meat and something else beneath it all, something organic and old. Then the sounds of dogs barking, men calling to each other, and the ring of metal from somewhere she couldn’t see. And under it all, the rhythm of hooves on packed earth as their party entered the courtyard proper.
Real. It was all real. The horse beneath her, the man at her back, the medieval fortress pressing in from every side—all of it real in a way she couldn’t deny.
This isn’t a reenactment. This isn’t a movie set.And yet, she couldn’t voice what had happened because if she did, it meant that magic was real, after all. And if magic were real, did that mean the fae existed? Would one of them find her, punish her for impersonating them?
She’d told herself that for the past hour, clinging to rational explanations even as each one crumbled. But she knew film sets. Knew the seams, the artifice, the places where the illusion broke down. There were no seams here. No cameras hiding behindtrees, no crew members checking their phones between takes. Just rain-soaked stone and firelight and the weight of centuries pressing down.
They passed through the gatehouse, and Elodie found herself in a courtyard full of people who stopped to stare. Servants in rough-spun wool. Soldiers in mail and leather. A woman carrying a basket of bread dropped it in shock, loaves tumbling across the mud.
Every eye found her. Every mouth went slack.
She heard the whispers start. Words she couldn’t quite catch, but the tone was unmistakable. Full of fear, wonder, suspicion. She was still wearing the costume from the party, though rather bedraggled, the wings crushed and dragging, her crown of flowers reduced to a few sad stems tangled in her hair—she knew exactly what she looked like. A faerie queen, the men in the forest had whispered.
The silent man dismounted smoothly and then stepped over to her, reached up to lift her down. She tried to protest—she could manage herself, thank you—but her legs gave out the moment her feet touched the ground. He caught her without hesitation, one arm around her waist, and steadied her against his side.
Strong. He was strong in a way that felt natural, as if carrying wounded women through castle courtyards was simply something he did. Up close, with the torchlight flickering across his face, she could see him clearly for the first time.
Beautiful. And terrible.
The scar started beneath his left ear and carved a brutal path across his throat to his collarbone—pale tissue, puckered and old, the kind of wound that should have killed. His face was all hard angles with sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, a mouth pressed into a thin line that looked like it had forgotten how tosmile. Dark hair hung past his shoulders, wet from the rain, and his eyes?—
His eyes were the gray of forged steel, cool and assessing. Watching her. Seeing everything.
“My lord!”
An older man hurried toward them, weathered face creased with concern. He wore finer clothes than the servants, and he moved with the authority of someone used to managing chaos. “We heard there was trouble with bandits—” He stopped short when he saw Elodie. “What in God’s name?—”
The words started translating in her head and sounded different than she’d expected. The silent man—my lord, she noted—made a series of quick gestures. Not sign language as she knew it, but clearly communication. The older man’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline.
“You found her in the forest? Dressed like that?”
More gestures. The older man looked at Elodie with something caught between wonder and fear.
“Come inside,” he said finally. “Both of you. Before the whole castle sees.”
They entered a great hall that belonged in a museum. High ceilings disappeared into smoky shadows. A massive hearth dominated one wall, fire roaring against the chill from the stone. Rushes covered the stone floor—she could smell them, herbs mixed with something less pleasant—and trestle tables lined the space, a few servants eating a late meal who scattered at their entrance.
The lord moved immediately to the corner nearest the hearth, positioning himself with his back to the stone wall. A fighter’s instinct, Elodie thought—her brain still cataloging details even through her shock. He could see every entrance from there. Every potential threat.
The older man dispatched orders. “Hot water. Food. Have someone prepare the east chamber. And for the love of heaven, get Lady Margaret’s clothes?—”
“I’m not—” Elodie’s voice cracked. She tried again. “I’m not a lady. And I don’t—I don’t understand what’s happening.” A thought snagged. “Who is Lady Margaret?”
Bertram’s expression softened with something like grief. “Lord Gareth’s sister. She passed two winters ago, but her things remain. You’re of a size with her, I think.” He glanced at the lord, whose jaw had tightened almost imperceptibly. “She would have wanted them put to use.”
