Chapter 5
Elodie was standing in Lady Baldridge’s garden watching the May Day revelers dance around the ribboned maypole in the fading evening light. No matter how much she’d tried, she still couldn’t get used to calling the elegant woman Constance instead of Lady Baldridge.
She’d smiled so much her cheeks ached. The first of May, Beltane, the old traditions called it, the threshold between spring and summer, when the veil between worlds grew thin.
She’d smiled at the folklore of it all as she’d wandered toward the back of the property, drawn by the wild roses climbing an old stone wall.
A few minutes later, the sky turned the color of a bruise. Wind whipped through the grounds with enough force to send party decorations flying—paper lanterns torn from their strings, flower crowns tumbling across the grass. The maypole ribbons snapped and tangled.
Guests scattered toward the manor like startled birds.
“Everyone inside!” someone shouted in the distance, but Elodie had gone farther than she’d realized and was too far from the house.
The other guests were already streaming toward the manor’s welcoming lights, but she’d have to cross the entire length of the garden.
For a moment she debated, but when lightning split the sky, thunder rumbling across the land, Elodie ran.
Her faerie wings caught the wind like a sail, yanking her sideways.
She stumbled, kicked off her impractical embroidered slippers, and kept going.
Rain hammered down in sheets so thick she could barely see three feet ahead.
The ground turned to mud in seconds, sucking at her bare feet with every step.
Another flash of lightning, close enough that the hair on her arms stood up. The thunder that followed was immediate, a crack that seemed to shake the very earth. She needed to find shelter. Now.
At the far end of the stone wall there was an archway, some kind of garden folly or decorative ruin. If she could just—
Her foot caught on something—a root, a stone, her own ridiculous gossamer hem—and she went down hard.
Her knee slammed into a rock with enough force to make her cry out.
Blood welled up, hot against the cold rain.
The necklace burned. Elodie gasped, her hand flying to her throat.
The fire opals were glowing, pulsing with a light that had nothing to do with the lightning overhead.
Heat radiated from the gold, intense but not quite painful, spreading through her chest like—
Like—
The lightning struck. Not near her. Through her.
Or that’s what it felt like—a column of white-hot energy that lifted her off the ground and turned the world inside out.
She heard herself screaming, or maybe that was the wind, or maybe it was something else entirely—a sound like a thousand voices whispering in a language she couldn’t understand.
Colors exploded behind her eyes. Blue and white and gold, spiraling, pulling—and then there was nothing.
She woke face down in the grass. For a long moment, Elodie lay there, breathing. Her whole body ached, and her knee throbbed where she’d scraped it. Her throat felt raw, like she’d been screaming.
What just happened?
Lightning strike. She’d been hit by lightning, that had to be it.
She should be dead—or at the very least, seriously injured.
But when she carefully pushed herself up to a sitting position, everything seemed to work.
Arms, legs, fingers, toes. Her vision was blurry, but that cleared when she wiped the rain from her eyes.
Wait. It wasn’t raining anymore. Elodie blinked, looking around. The storm was still there—she could see it roiling on the horizon, lightning flickering in distant clouds—but here, the sky was merely overcast. Dim evening light filtered through a canopy of trees.
Trees. Not the garden then. She was in a forest. And the trees looked different.
Not different as in dead or dying—but as in too alive.
Ancient oaks surrounded her, branches heavy with leaves, their trunks so massive it would take three people to circle them.
Hawthorn burst white with May blossoms along the clearing’s edge.
Bluebells carpeted the forest floor in a purple haze, and somewhere nearby, a nightingale sang.
This was not Lady Baldridge’s garden. The garden was gone, as was the manor.
The maypole and the dancers and the fairy lights, all gone.
“No.”
The word came out as a croak.
“No, no, no.”
She scrambled to her feet, turning in frantic circles.
The clearing she’d found herself in was small, surrounded by ancient oaks that looked nothing like the manicured grounds of Baldridge Manor.
The grass beneath her bare feet was thick and soft, studded with wildflowers—primroses, forget-me-nots, the last of the wood anemones.
Even the air smelled different—cleaner, somehow, full of promise.
“Hello?” Her voice was thin against the wind. “Is anyone there? Hello?”
No answer. Just the rustle of leaves and the distant rumble of the retreating storm.
Elodie reached for her pocket, glad the faerie gown had pockets, groping for her phone.
It wasn’t there. She must have dropped it when she fell.
Of course, the lightning had probably fried it, anyway.
The necklace. Her hand flew to her throat and found only bare skin.
The necklace was gone, the priceless piece of jewelry must have fallen off when whatever happened in that storm.
The blood drained from her face. “No.”
She grabbed at her dress, searched the ground around her feet, even ran her fingers through her tangled hair in case it had somehow gotten caught. Nothing. The fire opal and emerald necklace was nowhere to be found.
Panic threatened to close her throat. Elodie forced herself to breathe—in through her nose, out through her mouth, just like the meditation app she’d downloaded and only used once had told her.
Facts. She needed to focus on the facts.
Fact. As far as she could tell, she was no longer at Baldridge Manor.
Fact. The necklace was gone, as was her phone.
Fact. Her faerie queen costume was soaked, plastered to her body, and she was barefoot.
Fact. It was getting dark, and she had no idea which direction to go to get back to the manor.
She’d never been good with directions. If someone asked her which way, she’d confidently say, “Turn right,” and of course it would be the wrong direction. Elodie adored the maps app on her phone and hadn’t gotten lost in years.
“Okay.” She was talking to herself. This was fine. Talking helped her think. “Okay, Elodie. You’re an academic. You solve problems for a living. This is just... this is just a temporary problem.”
She turned in a slow circle, trying to get her bearings. The storm had come from the north—or was it the east? If she could figure out which direction she was facing, maybe she could spot that castle ruin or—
A sound cut through the evening air. Steel on steel. The unmistakable ring of sword meeting sword. Elodie froze. Voices followed—shouts, grunts, a scream that cut off with horrible abruptness. The sounds of battle, coming from somewhere beyond the trees.
Close. Too close. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but in which direction? The fighting was ahead of her, but she didn’t know what was behind. If she ran blind in the forest, she might stumble straight into something worse. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head and this was all a dream?
The clash of weapons intensified. She heard hoofbeats now, and what might have been orders being barked in a language that sounded almost like English, but rougher, the vowels shaped differently.
Medieval English, her brain supplied, completely unhelpfully. That sounds like Middle English. Possibly late twelfth century, based on the phonetic patterns.
Lady Baldridge had gone all out with the entertainment for the party.
Or, Elodie was having a nervous breakdown.
That was another explanation. The lightning strike had done something to her brain, and now she was hallucinating an elaborate medieval fantasy while she lay dying in Lady Baldridge’s garden.
Except the ground felt real beneath her bare feet.
The warm evening air carried the scent of May blossoms and damp earth.
The blood on her knee had started to dry, pulling at her skin.
If this were a hallucination, it was the most detailed one in medical history.
The sounds of fighting stopped. Silence fell, broken only by the wind in the branches and Elodie’s own ragged breathing.
Then she heard the sound of heavy footsteps. Coming toward her. She looked around wildly for somewhere to hide, but the clearing offered nothing—just open grass and the ring of ancient oaks, but that’s where the sounds were coming from. No cover. No escape.
Figures emerged from the trees.
The last bandit died badly.
Gareth pulled his blade from the man’s chest and let the body drop into the bracken. Around him, his men were finishing the work—quick, efficient, the way he’d trained them. No prisoners. Bandits who preyed on travelers near Greywatch lands didn’t warrant the expense of a trial.
He cleaned his sword on the dead man’s tunic, taking stock.
Five bandits. None of his own men were injured beyond scrapes and bruises.
A good outcome. Sir Miles was already directing the cleanup, his gruff voice carrying through the trees as he ordered bodies dragged off the road.
The air smelled of blood and churned earth.
Gareth sheathed his blade and turned toward the horses—