Page 109 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

“Librarians,” he growled. “Menaces, the lot of you.” He smiled against her jaw and then lifted his head when the Riders descended, surrounding Kerne. Antlered stags stomped their hooves very near his head. Spears lowered to keep him in place.

“Will you claim him as an oathbreaker?” Lachlan asked. “Or is he mine?”

“He broke his most sacred oath not to interfere. He is ours to punish,” one of the Riders replied. Lightning flashed between his antlers. The hounds barked. It was not a comforting sound. “And we are yours to command.”

Lachlan sighed. Pippa stared at him, then at the Riders. “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“He defeated our king. And now he takes his place.”

Lachlan did not look surprised, only resigned.

“You knew this would happen?” Pippa asked.

“Yes.”

“But…”

Lightning was already crackling over his head. “Arcadia can rule the Owl Court. But you can still be a queen, if you like.”

“No, thank you. But what about your tenure? You love being a professor.”

He kissed her temple. “I love you more.” He glared pointedly at the Riders. “I am not giving her up.”

They knelt as one. The hounds sat. The stags and horses lowered their heads.

Pippa grimaced.

Lachlan chuckled. “There she is.”

The Wild Hunt took Kerne away, along with the roiling clouds and the baying hounds. Only the moon remained, and Lachlan.

And the feeling of something prowling just out of sight, waiting. Hungry.

Pippa frowned down at the Labyrinth. “Kerne was right. His spell is still cast. My wish did not undo whatever it was he did before he took me. How did you know to be waiting here anyway?”

“I read it in a book,” he murmured with a wink. “It was part of the spell. I knew he needed you alive right here in the Labyrinth. I had a better chance of catching him unaware if I waited for you.”

There was a flutter of tears in the back of her throat. “I thought you were…gone.”

He shook his head. “Where you go, I go, remember?” The Labyrinth below them shivered with an unnatural wind. Branches cracked. “That spell needs untethering, and we don’t have time to find the anchor in that maze. Not before it does damage. You know what you have to do.”

One last reach for her magic, for the ember and the spark and the flame.

She would choose the fire before it chose her.

“Just a bit more,” she whispered to the ashes in her ribcage, the sputtering flickers of her magic.

For too long of a moment, nothing happened.

Pippa feared she had no magic left. She had used it all up. Lachlan needed her. The lake below was the color of blackberries and bruises.

No.

She could do this. Would do this.

If he could give up everything to save her, she could do this one last thing.

The grass at her feet began to smolder. The waves turned white with fire instead of crashing foam. The green hedges caught like lace curtains too near a candle. Flames swept through the needles, over the ground, biting at the shore until the air was thick with heat and drifting ash. Smoke turned into moths and owls and thorn trees.

The magical anchor she could not see heaved the ground, cracking it. The hedges collapsed.

Lachlan grinned at her viciously. “Burn it all down, love.”