Page 66 of Woods of the Raven

“I had plans to watch him being taken and bled before I skinned him alive and had him roasted for my master. You’ll need to find me another.”

“I’m sorry, faun, you say? When was this?”

She purred, “I could find him, you know. I could slaughter every man, woman, and child in this town, and one of them, somewhere, while they begged for death, would confess that they were he.”

I highly doubted she had either the manpower or the time to carry out that threat. I suspected her master had tasked her with enabling him to come through the rift on Corvus sooner rather than later. Her time was running out. But either way, I had never been the type to frighten over hollow threats. “That would take a minute, wouldn’t it?” I grimaced for her benefit. “Don’t you have to move your master successfully through the rift at some point?”

She snarled softly.

“Speaking of, you wouldn’t want to give me his name now, would you? The faun I had the nymph torture and kill didn’t know, and Sola refused to say.”

Her scoff was loud—we both knew full well I was not in the torturing and killing business.

The vargr on my left stepped out of the darkness, no more than a couple of feet from me. I noted that he didn’t put a paw on my doormat—too much black salt and hyssop spread there over the years made that impossible. My wind chimes, which I blessed daily, were whipping around in the rising wind, and all that ringing was making the vargrs shake their heads in annoyance and, I suspected, pain. In the breeze, the chiming was continual, and they began to pace in frustration.

“Is this what you do,” Rulaine asked, “this small, tedious magic?” She was angry. I could hear it in her voice. She wanted me dead, and it had to be maddening to keep failing at that. “I could snap your neck like a twig.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But you’d have to get your hands around my throat first.”

“You don’t think I can?” She stepped into the light, so I could now see her. My surprise must’ve shown on my face, and her glower was instant. “Speak,” she demanded.

“I just, well, I thought you’d look like something out of a graphic novel, but you look like my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Sherman. I’m getting more of a cottagecore vibe from you than ‘dark mistress of the night.’”

“Looks can be deceiving. I could—”

“No, yeah, you’re right,” I agreed quickly. “I’m not what people expect either, so I get it.”

“I could show you my true form if you—”

“I already saw it, didn’t I? You look like a wendigo.”

She appeared perplexed, which was interesting on her features. “I know not what that is.”

“I have a book inside I could show you.”

Quiet grunt from her. “You think me stupid enough to willingly cross the threshold into your sanctuary. How foolish would I be?”

“Scared I might peel away all the evil and make you good?”

“Hardly,” she scoffed.

“Come on,” I said, reaching out for her. “Give it a try.”

She stepped back, lost in the darkness once more. “As though I would ever allow myself such familiarity with a mage.”

Interestingly, none of them had any idea who or what I was. Sola was dead and so had not been able to report back to her. Declan, the ex-faun, now human, had not spoken to her after he learned the truth either. She was basically going on bad information collected from heaven knew where. What was quite evident, however, was that everything the fae knew about me was gathered years ago when my grandfather was still alive. Most interesting of all was that they clearly had no idea what the lifespan of a human being was. And while witches lived a bit longer than normal folks, we certainly didn’t live as long as any fae. If she left my land and returned in two hundred years, she would absolutely expect to see me. That was nuts. They really needed to read some books on humans, like we read about them.

“You’re right,” I agreed, “what was I thinking?”

“You must—”

“The faun did say your name is Rulaine, but he didn’t know who your master is. Surely, with my weak, pathetic magic, you can tell me.”

She sneered. “My master is Threun the bloody, Threun the destroyer, Threun the orphan maker, and he means to come from our world into yours.”

The way she said it, with such flourish, like I should have wet myself right there, told me that whoever he was, he was a big deal in the fae realm. Unfortunately, the name didn’t ring any bells, so I couldn’t give her the dramatic reaction she was expecting.

“And how are you spelling that?” I asked her.