The vision vanished, yet Amadan remained too close, clouding my senses. His scent got in my head, making it difficult to think. “Step away,” I said quietly.
He edged closer. “I am not yours to command.” It was a dangerous whisper, seductive as the call of the woodlands, sliding beneath my skin. “Not until you take what is yours.”
“Step away.” I repeated it and placed my hand against his chest.
I did not shove him away from me. I did not have to. From my fingers, green spread across the gold of his tunic, threadlike tendrils, green veins, green vines. The tips of his curls shone verdant as the vines grew up his torso, changing his garment to green. Autumn became spring in an instant, and even the gold and russet around him turned pale green.
Only for a moment, and it was gone. He was autumn perfection again.
Amadan blinked and shifted his weight. Seemed almost awkward, as if he did not fill his entire skin. “Would you command the very seasons?”
I supposed I would. I just had.
My liege,the wolf growled in my head.
“Bess-you-seem,” Amadan breathed at the same time. “You are wasted healing the scrapes and scratches of these gnat-like creatures.”
Power still thrummed in my veins, overwhelmed my senses, even more than did Amadan’s intoxicating scent and seductive ways. “You stay away from Thomas Shepherd,” I commanded, while it still flowed through me.
Amadan opened his mouth in protest.
I cut him off before he could speak. “I will keep him away from your forest. Should Thomas venture there, I understand he is fair game. But you will not seek him out to do harm. I order you to leave him be.”
“I will leave the shepherd be,” Amadan consented, “until you are done with him, and care not whether the wild beasts should tear him limb from limb.”
Never will that happen.
He was not finished. “In return, I want you to deliver Glenna Baker’s child.”
I blinked in surprise.Thiswas why he brought me here? “Of course. She is my friend.” And who else could do the job? Glenna carried a half-fae child.
“You promise to deliver it?” Amadan repeated, very carefully.
“I have said so. But where are they living?” Had Rufus Baker not cast her Glenna out of his home? Had she found one who might give the infant his name?
Amadan’s lips curled without parting, as if he held something back that amused him greatly. “You let me worry about that. Only promise, when I summon you for the birth, you shall come.”
My face twisted in confusion. “I shall.” As I said it, I felt as though heavy chains now bound me, heavy as iron and only slightly less toxic.
What has just transpired?
The Dark Fool did not appear to notice. “Good. I will not have my offspring baptized. Who knows what it would do to a child of the fae?” His smile was crooked and his eyes danced with malice. “Mab forfend one ofmyblood brought to harm.”
“Of course.”
“We are agreed, then. I will notharmthe shepherd, and you will deliver my child.” But he didn’t seem finished. As he spun away into radiant nothingness, he continued to stare at me, like I was a puzzle he had yet to solve.
Twenty-Four
It took scarce more thana day for Evander Douglas’s leg to go from a swollen, streaky-red mass down to smooth, pink skin. Within a sennight, he was lumbering around the manor house as usual, stealing morsels from the kitchen, and gaming with the other knights in the great hall at all hours of the night. In short, he was good as new.
I should have been impressed with myself. Relieved to have healed something as incurable as elf-shot was reputed to be. A simple illness should be as nothing after that.
My mind lay elsewhere. I kept thinking back to the forest when I placed my hand upon the Dark Fool’s chest. The life, rich with possibility, numinous and verdant, that had radiated from my outspread fingers, turning autumn into spring. “Would you command the very seasons?” Amadan had asked me.
I had. What that meant, I was scared to find out.
To Evander Douglas, I was the woman who had saved his life. “Bess Grieve,” he boomed, when we sat to dine, shouting halfway across the great hall, and drawing the attention of everyone around. Then he swung his leg out from under the table and shook it for my approval, a display that would have been unseemly were it not for his innocent pride. “Thanks to you, I am dancing as good as ever.”
