I did not let that thought slip out, and the Horned One and I stood face-to-face.
“You know why I have summoned you,” I said.
The Horned One lowered his head. “You call upon a pack of wolves to return your missing sheep.”
From the Host behind him, one of the hounds leapt forward, snarling, blood and rot dripping from its maw.
I snarled back, then straightened. “I trust these wolves will not harm the lamb. If they do, they will taste the ire of the queen.” Will strong as stone, solid as the mountains, never to erode.
Shadows moved swarm-like beneath the Horned One’s hood, not a face, not a skull, something worse. “The land hungers,” he said. “Samhain is near. You deny it at your own risk.”
My insides were devouring themselves even as we spoke. “I deny it not.” And I patted the little knife I had tucked into my girdle. “I have made arrangements. But it will not be this one. He is mine.”
Mine forever.To hold and guard and keep safe like the last glimmer of kindness and humanity inside me. That was what Jamie meant.
A noise I cannot describe came from the Horned One; disapproval rolling like stones down a mountain, the growling of the hounds, and the grinding of bones. “At your bidding, we will keep our appetites in check. While we can.”
This was the best I would get from him. The finding of Jamie must be done quickly. I would not endanger his life.
And so, at the head of the Hunt, I passed through the Veil between the worlds.
We found ourselves on the edge of the wood, once so familiar to me, now gone peculiar and strange. I heard the rush of the Ettrick water, saw the ferns and mosses, and the greenery given way to russet and gold. The air was tinged with man’s woodsmoke, as I recognized from years before. I even tasted a hint of the toxic iron, though it was far away and closed up in the mortals’ homes. It behooved none to be out this night, when the Veil grows thin, and we faery folk do ride.
But one young boy wandered alone, less afraid of the creatures haunting the wood than of the queen in whose house he dwelt. There was little enough flesh left in my heart, but it cracked as I thought how lost he must feel.
I rode quickly, steeled myself against any softness or sympathy that might bleed through my mask, for the Hunt were as half-tamed horses who needed a tight rein to maintain control. Softness to them was as weakness, so I pushed it down, though their scent of rot and carrion made my gorge rise. Yet underneath it all I smelled green grass and sweet porridge, a warm and familiar scent.
Jamie.
The Horned One pulled his steed to a halt beside me, cocking his head. “The hounds have scented him and one other. Who else would dare to wander the woods of Carterhaugh on All Hallows’ Eve?”
I sniffed the air. “I smell nothing.” Nothing except Jamie, and beneath it roses, fleshy, tinged with blood and salt. I had torn one such from around my throat; it planted itself in Carterhaugh, and now it grew there still.
Then I was hit by something beyond smell. A sensation. Being simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by something that sizzled like fat in the fire, crackled against the cold dry air. A sense of wrongness, not moral wrongness, not sin, but as if two beings never meant to be in the same place suddenly rubbed against each other like flint against steel. Rub too hard and too often, and we would ignite sparks.
“Bess Grieve,” I whispered aloud. “Somehow Jamie has found Bess Grieve.”
I had never thought to see Bess again. When I freed her, when I gave her all I knew of Mairi’s tutelage, it was meant as a parting gift, to enable her to make her own life away from Faery and its kind. But she was Jamie’s true kin, perhaps the only one among them who was worth anything in the end. I was only the cuckoo in his grandmother’s nest, taking Bess’s place temporarily, that was all. Perhaps it was best that I turn back and go home to Faery.
I could not leave without the boy. Without him, there would be no guard against the Unseelie inside me, nothing more to preserve what had ever been gentle, kind, and good.
At my back, the hounds slavered, leaping forward, barking, and oozing rot. Samhain pressed upon them, as it did us all. They smelled mortal blood and would feed.
The hounds were of Faery and Faery was of me. The same hunger gnawed at my insides, and I thought, if I saw my face in the well at Carterhaugh, it would be as cadaverous as the Horned One himself.
“The boy tastes sweet,” said the leader of the Hunt. “The strongest Teind is a consort, a king, or one the queen loves.”
“I know!” Hunger gnawed at me, clawing at my insides, roaring through my head. I promised Jamie would come to no harm.I will not be forsworn.No fit ruler of Faery would I be else.
Some part of my heart was still flesh. Some part ignored the compulsion to feast, only wanted the boy back in my palace, and back in my arms.
I kicked my horse into a gallop. “By oak and ash, yew and willow, by the blood of my mother Una and the kinship we share, take me to the last piece of my heart.” And we surged forward, swift as though we rode on the back of the wind, leaving the Wild Hunt in our wake.
But one cannot outrun the Hunt. Not forever.
The tangled woods parted before us as my horse ran, over moss and fern and ruddy fallen leaves, to a place of roses surrounding a well. Amadan’s well. My roses. A riot of oxblood on crimson, as if someone had tried to pluck one and pierced their skin on its thorns.
Before the well stood a young boy with ruddy-gold hair, not yet old enough to apprentice, but close to it. Beside him stood a woman, an ordinary woman, roundish and shortish, wimpled but with, I knew, the same shade of hair. And beneath the wimple bloomed a rose as red as those that curled around my ankles. Her kirtle was green as the forest around her, her round face pleasant and sweet.
