Revulsion churned inside me, fouler than any aroused by Christians’ nasty little crosses and the mortals’ toxic iron. How could I stand these fools, who turned in their need to the unfeeling heavens, and undid the work of true magic around them?
How could I love a man who put me aside?
I held my hand out before me, saw it as if a tree branch, cracking, dying, splitting in two. I felt the rose at the side of my throat growing thorns.
Thomas’s mouth fell open; horror-stricken, his face went pale. “My Bess, what is happening to you?”
I laughed without mirth, silver lightning lancing through the palm of my hand. “The bond is broken,” I told him. “And so ends the peace between us.
“You have made me an enemy of your very house.”
Twenty-Nine
My heart yet craved itsshepherd king. The words spoken between us did not matter; what his father demanded of him counted for nothing. I still felt his fingers lightly brushing the rose at the side of my throat, heard him saying, “I am proud of you, my Bess,” as no one ever had before, mayhap no one would again. I longed to feel my flesh pressed against his on our rough straw mattress, the dog Cullen curled in contentment on the cottage floor.
I deserved these things. I shouldhavethese things. I should demand Thomas recant what he said, that he would marry Margaret, that it was his duty to do so with his brother dead and he the baron’s only heir. My claim was not to be forsaken.I am not to be forsaken, said a voice inside me, a voice which frightened me a little, truly.
We have a bond.The thread of it still encircled my broken heart.
But Thomas was a free man. Thomas had a choice, and love would not allow me to take it from him.
And so, I would leave this mortal realm. Faery called, and I would go.
My heart of flesh pounded in my breast, and my feet slapped against the path, slick with wet and carpeted by fallen leaves. Tree limbs brushed against my clothing, and it felt like caresses, like I was something holy, and they wanted a touch. ’Twas comforting and alarming, both at once.
Then my vision changed, revealing the world beyond the edges of mere human sight.
Here and there tiny faces peeked their way out of the undergrowth, not wild beasts, or not only wild beasts, but winged creatures, twig-like men whose limbs had too many joints, delicate maidens who bore beasts’ heads like masks.
The Veil parted, and Faery poured out into the mortal realm.
Hair rose on my arms and legs, and the air around me buzzed with magic.
Three times I had resisted this call. I no longer understood why or how. The mortal realm was full of heartbreak and, regardless of our bond, the man I loved could not protect me from that.
He was only a man, after all.
“Were you ever truly mine, O Shepherd King?” I asked. “For all you loved me, I may have been only one of your light women in the end.”
Claim him,my inner voice commanded.His will is naught, fragile mortal he is. Take him for your own.
No.
I sniffled and shook my head. Love grew inside me, like a diseased plant I should long since have torn up, lest it infect the entire garden. Love could not protect me from iron, or the insidious cross. It could not give me the one thing I thought I had wanted. If I could, I would have torn the heart from my very breast, that I should not need to feel such misery any longer.
Instead, I headed home.
A heavy weight fell from me, something I could not bear to look at or consider, lest I find myself weeping at the loss. Better to lock that part of me away. It would be easier.
Ever had I been two people: the seeming of Bess Grieve, and the fae I was inside. With the parting of the Veil, Bess went silent, and my fae side took over. I ran for the joy of it, like a bounding hart or the currents of a river after a hard rain. My feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. I outran everything I had been, all the roles I had played, every expectation forced upon me, however unreasonable they might have been. From now on, I would be governed bymywill alone.
The world will be governed by your will alone.
I heard these words in the rustling of leaves, the call of nightbirds, and the whisper of the winds through the grass.
From far behind me came the sound of hoofbeats, and possibly, at the far edges of my awareness, the baying of hounds.
This stopped me short, breathing heavily, ears pricked up.Hunting on Samhain. What fools these mortals are after all.The Veil between mortal earth and Faery grew thin. The wise kept to their homes on this night, for, as Mairi Grieve told me, the Wild Hunt seeks its prey.
