Chapter 5 #2
The sky split open. One moment, clear twilight filtered through the canopy.
Next, clouds boiled from nowhere, black and swollen with unnatural speed.
Lightning cracked so close Gareth felt his hair rise.
His destrier screamed and reared, and around him horses bolted, men cursed—“Merde! God’s blood!
”—someone cried out to the old gods for protection.
Gareth caught his mount’s reins and forced the animal steady through sheer will.
His eyes swept the chaos, counting his men, assessing threats.
The storm had come out of a clear sky. Everything about it felt wrong—the copper taste in the air, the way the thunder seemed to come from the ground as much as the sky.
Then he heard it. A woman’s voice, thin against the fury of the storm. Calling out. Not screaming—calling, as if expecting an answer.
He signaled Miles. Then he moved into the trees, following the sound. The clearing opened before him like a wound in the forest. Lightning illuminated everything in stuttering flashes—ancient oaks, rain-flattened grass, and in the center, something that stopped him cold.
A woman. But not like any woman he’d ever seen.
She was made of gossamer and moonlight, or so it appeared in the storm-light. Her gown clung to her, soaked through, pale fabric that seemed to shimmer faintly. Flowers crowned her hair—bedraggled now, but unmistakably a crown of blossoms. And on her back were what looked like wings.
She was turning in circles, talking to herself in an accent he’d never heard, words tumbling out faster than rain.
“—not possible, this isn’t possible, okay, don’t panic, there has to be an explanation—”
Behind him, Hugh’s voice cut through the thunder. “Christ’s bones. Is that—”
“Fae.” The whisper came from another man.
“One of the fair folk.”
“The faerie queen.”
“We shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t look upon—”
Gareth held up his fist.
The men went quiet, but he could feel their fear—that primal terror bred into every child raised on tales of the hollow hills, of mortals stolen by the fair folk, of bargains made and souls lost. Even his battle-hardened soldiers were crossing themselves, making signs against evil.
He didn’t believe in faeries. The Church taught they were demons in disguise, or at best, dangerous spirits to be avoided. His own experience taught him that the only monsters in the world were men.
And yet. The woman turned again, and lightning caught her face—pale, frightened, tears streaming down her cheeks to mix with the rain. Not the face of a demon or a spirit. The face of someone lost, terrified.
She was on his land. That made her his responsibility, no matter what she might be. Gareth stepped into the clearing.
The scream she let out would have done justice to a bean-sidhe. She stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet—another flash of lightning showed him dark shapes on the ground behind her, fallen branches perhaps—and landed hard on her backside in the mud.
“Stay away!” She scrambled back, hands raised as if to ward him off. “I don’t—I don’t have anything, I don’t know where I am, please—”
He stopped. Looked down at himself.
Ah.
He was covered in blood. Fresh blood, some of it still wet enough to gleam.
His sword was sheathed, but the violence of the past hour clung to him like a second skin.
He knew his face showed nothing—three years of silence had taught him to reveal nothing—which meant he probably looked like death itself walking out of the storm.
Slowly, deliberately, he held up his empty hands. Palms out as he would to a wounded animal.
She stared at him, chest heaving. The strange wings on her back had twisted in her fall, one jutting at an angle that looked painful. Water streamed down her face, and her hair hung in heavy ropes around her shoulders.
“You’re not—” She swallowed. “Are you going to hurt me?”
He shook his head. Once, definitive.
“Do you—” She stopped. Started again. “Do you speak English? Parlez-vous francais?”
A desperate edge crept into her voice. “I don’t know where I am. Somehow I got turned around from the manor. You don’t understand, I need to find the necklace I was wearing. I had a phone, I—”
She was babbling. Fear and shock, he recognized the signs.
He took a single step forward.
She flinched but didn’t run.
Another step, then another. Moving as he would toward a spooked horse—slow, steady, no sudden movements. When he was close enough to touch her, he stopped and held out his hand.
She stared at it for a long moment. At his scarred knuckles, the calluses on his palm, the blood still flecked across his wrist. The rain was washing most of it away, pink rivulets running down his forearm.
“You’re not going to hurt me?” Her voice came out small. A child’s voice, despite the fact that she was clearly a grown woman.
He shook his head again.
“You promise?”
He didn’t smile—smiling felt like something from another life—but he inclined his head. As close to a solemn vow as he could offer without words.
She reached out and took his hand.
Her fingers were cold, trembling, delicate against his battle-worn grip. He pulled her gently towards him, steadying her when she swayed. Up close, she smelled of something unfamiliar—sweet, artificial, nothing like any soap or perfume he knew—and beneath that, simple fear-sweat.
“Thank you.” She wiped rain from her eyes with her free hand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t know what’s happening.
I was at a party, and there was a storm, and I fell, and now I’m here and my phone is gone and, I’m going to be fired for sure for losing a priceless necklace, and I think I’m losing my mind—” She took a great, heaving breath.
A crash of thunder swallowed her next words. She yelped and pressed closer to him, instinctively seeking shelter. Gareth looked over his shoulder at his men, still hovering at the treeline, still watching with wide eyes.
He made a sharp gesture.
Miles recovered first, barking orders. Within minutes, a mare was brought forward—a steady creature, good temperament—and Gareth lifted the strange woman onto her back before she could protest. She gasped and clutched at the horse’s mane, clearly unfamiliar with the animal.
“Wait, where—where are you taking me?”
He swung up onto his own mount, taking the reins of her mare, and urged the horses forward. His men fell in behind them, a silent escort through the forest.
The woman twisted to look at him, rain streaming down her face. “You haven’t said anything. Why won’t you talk to me?”
Gareth met her eyes. Hers were green as forest moss, wide with confusion and fear—but not, he noticed, empty of courage. A flicker passed through his chest. Recognition, perhaps, though he couldn’t have said of what. He touched his throat briefly, then shook his head.
Her brow furrowed. “You can’t speak?”
He didn’t confirm or deny. Just nudged the horse to a faster pace.
Behind them, the clearing was already disappearing into the rain and the dark. The woman looked back once, searching for something—
But there was nothing to see. Just rain and trees and the fading rumble of thunder. Whatever had brought her here had vanished without a trace.