Chapter Twenty-Three
I wake in a narrow cot in a one-room stone cottage. Across a rough wooden floor sits a small hearth. A low blaze burns cheerfully in it, with a pot of fresh-brewed tea set nearby. The place smells of woodsmoke and bergamot shaving soap—Conrad’s scent. It startles me how easily I recognize it.
Pushing out of the bed, I find my limbs languid; the sleeping spell he put on me had cast me into a deep and dreamless slumber, and my mind struggles to emerge from it.
I’m still in the elaborate gown Morgaine had thrust at me.
In this rustic place, I feel completely ridiculous in it.
My wrist bears the slight indentations of the ribbon that had bound Conrad and me together.
But for these details, I would think the events of yestereve a strange dream.
My hand flies to my lips and finds them no longer swollen, but the memory of Conrad’s kiss is no less dim in my mind.
Fates, I kissed him.
And . . . I did more than that.
The night’s events come swimming back like a bad dream, including the part where the faerie’s mind-altering spells had sent me spiraling into a lustful frenzy.
Did I really rub myself all over Conrad North like a cat against a tree?
Oh, Fates.
Blearily I stumble to the door.
The tiny cottage sits in a forest glen awash in nodding snowdrops.
The delicate white blossoms rustle all around me, growing in thick patches up the banks and around the trunks of the oaks.
Their fresh, cool scent gently sweetens the air.
Waves of them roll off through the trees where they vanish into banks of fog.
The light is weak, the day barely begun, and the stone circle is nowhere in sight.
Conrad sits on a mossy stone nearby; he seemed to be drowsing, but his head rises when I sit up, his eyes grimly fixing upon me.
In his hands is clasped a tin cup of tea.
He no longer wears his faerie suit, but a tweed waistcoat, plaid kilt, heavy boots, and a scarf and coat of the same brown wool—the clothes he wore when I shadowed him to Elfhame.
“Good morning, Miss Pryor,” he says, and he sips his tea, as if this were any ordinary morning. But his eyes never once stray from me, dark with mistrust.
I stare back at him speechlessly, trying to reel in my spinning thoughts. Trying not to remember the way my lip had been caught between his teeth just hours ago . . .
Snatches of faerie music still tumble through my head, measures and melodies only half remembered, already fading. But when I think of the faerie queen, she is searing and vivid in my memory, unforgettable.
As is the memory of Conrad’s hand gripping mine, his eyes locking with mine, his fevered whispers in my ear.
“You hexed me,” I say, my voice a dry rasp.
He has the decency to at least seem chagrined. “How are you feeling?”
“What is this place?”
“’Tis an old hunter’s shed, not far from the circle. I stay here, sometimes, when my work demands I stay close to the fae.”
“What is going on? What happened last night? Who are you and what is your business with the fae? Why did you hex me?”
“You were riddled with memory-erasing magic,” he explains calmly.
“The effects didn’t fade just because you stepped out of Elfhame.
The only way to be sure your mind repaired itself was to put you into a deep sleep, and it had to be done quickly, or your mind would have unraveled like an old frayed hat. ”
I bite my lip; he’s right about sleep being the best recovery from a mind-altering spell, but still, anger at his methods courses through me.
“I demand a full explanation,” I say. “Shall we start with the fact that there is an entire faerie realm hidden in your back garden?”
He rises, putting down his cup. There are dark circles around his eyes, the whites around his irises bloodshot.
I gather he hasn’t slept at all, not since before the attack by Lachlan’s servant.
There is still a faint dust of silver in his hair, and as he rakes his fingers over his head, it rains onto his shoulders.
“I will be asking the questions, Rose. If that even is your name.”
“Of course it’s my name!”
“Are you truly from London?”
“I am.”
“You went to the Perkins Charity School?”
“I did.”
“And why are you here, on my land?”
I start to reply, then realize how easily he’s pulling answers from me, how I’m giving them without a thought. I become aware of a slight tug at my navel, as if a hook has been sunk into me, and I look up then and see it: a wide complicated knot strung between the rafters of the cottage.
A truth knot.
My stomach twists. I lurch forward, but Conrad crosses to me in an instant, stepping into the doorway just as I am trying to leave it. His hand meets my waist, and he traps me against the jamb. When I try to break past, he only gives a grim smile and holds me more firmly in place.
“Be still, Miss Pryor, and let me do my job,” he says gruffly. Framed in the doorway, he looms over me, unmoved by my glower. “Forgive me. But I cannot allow you to leave just yet. Now, why are you here?”
I resist. But my abdomen is tightening, making me nauseated, and before I can stop it my mouth opens and words spill out, drawn by hooks of magic. “I am here because you won’t let me leave!” I point furiously at the spell strung above. “I did not agree to this interrogation! Take your hand off me!”
Truth knots are powerful and difficult to Weave, and also entirely illegal without a court warrant.
His hand remains on my waist, gentle but unyielding. “This will not take long, and if you have nothing to hide, you’ll be free to go.”
I try to think of a way around the magic, but he doesn’t give me the chance. His questions fire as rapidly as arrows, and I am forced to deflect as best I can, giving him only just enough truth to satisfy the spell’s demands.
“Did you seek out Ravensgate and my family on purpose?”
“No. I had never heard of you, nor this house, before I met you on the road that day.”
“Do you mean me or my sister any harm?”
“Of course not!”
“Did you know of my association with the world of Elfhame?”
I shake my head. “I knew nothing of it, not until I saw you open that portal.”
“Why are you in Blackswire?”
“I am awaiting my . . . employer.” I expect the truth spell to stop the word cold, but it slides off my tongue anyway.
And I remember, then, before we ever left London, Lachlan telling me to Weave warming knots into his carriage in exchange for my new wardrobe and threads.
It had been such a little thing, a moment I’d forgotten as soon as it was over.
“And who is your employer?”
“His name is Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch.”
“And what is his business?”
I manage to think my answer through before replying truthfully, carefully: “He is a cloth merchant. Can I ask a question now? What about: How many strong children shall I give you, oh laird of Ravensgate?”
His cheeks flush again; for all his sternness, how easily he blushes.
“That’s not the issue,” he growls. “What do you do for this Lachlan Murdoch?”
“I fetch things. Run errands.” Even as I say the words, growing more confident in them, a feeling like eels crawling through my body makes me squirm. I have all the answers. They come so easily now, every lie carefully packaged in truth, smuggled through the web of the knot strung above me.
As if that had been the plan all along.
As if my cover story had been particularly crafted just to pass this test, purely to satisfy Conrad North.
“Why were you in Elfhame?” he asks.
“I followed you. After the fire, I was curious where you might be going in the middle of the night, injured as you were.” I find if I speak slowly, I have more time to think, to pry up enough truth to satisfy his questions.
“I went in and those wolf-spiders chased me and . . . it’s a blur after that. Did she heal your hands?”
He brushes aside my question, not to be distracted. “And what are your intentions toward the fae?”
“Toward the fae?” I laugh. “I intend to have as little to do with them as possible, of that I can assure you. I have quite had my fill of immortals.” That, at least, is the pure truth. “Why do you guard the faerie queen’s door like a dog? How thoroughly under her thumb are you, oh Gatekeeper?”
Conrad tugs me closer, his hand gripping my hip. His face is inches from mine, his eyes probing me. Does he imagine I am lying, despite his truth knot? “Are you acquainted with a faerie named Manannán?” he asks. “He is also called Oirbsen, and Mac Lir.”
“I’ve never heard any of those names.”
“The Briar King?”
I shake my head. “No.”
A crease deepens in his forehead. I wait in silence, clutching my ridiculous skirt, wondering if he’s satisfied. If Lachlan’s defenses have held firm.
Then he relaxes, letting out a breath, and I know it’s over.
“Is that all?” I ask thinly. “Are there any other intimate details of my life you’d like to pry out of me? Or are you going to take your hand off my hip?”
“I apologize,” he says. “But I have one more thing to check. May I touch your hair?”
“My . . . ?” I realize then what he means. “There are no spells braided in my hair.”
He gazes back impassively. “May I?”
“Oh, help yourself, then!” I have nothing to hide. At least, not there. And it’s not as though he hasn’t already helped himself to my lips.
As if you didn’t offer them up to him like ripe berries in your palm, a traitorous voice whispers in the back of my thoughts. I brush it away, irritated and flustered all over again.
It was only for show. We were literally kissing for our lives. Conrad made it clear that it didn’t mean anything more.
His free hand slides up the back of my neck and into my hair, his fingers cradling my skull. Even with warning, I find I am not prepared for the intimacy of his touch, and I go rigid, my spine rising off the doorframe.
“Easy, lass,” he says, as if I were a restless mare. “I’ll be gentle.”
His eyes stay locked on mine as his fingers conduct their search, carefully and thoroughly examining every strand by touch.
With his other hand gripping my hip, I have no choice but to endure. Unable to withstand the accusing heat in his eyes, I lower my gaze and find it snagging on the warm pink cushion of his lips. Fates. I’m not making that mistake again. Defiant, I meet his eyes, unwilling to let him see me flinch.
The sensitive skin of my scalp prickles under his fingertips, shivers racing down the back of my neck, running straight to my core. My nerves light like threads flooded with magic. I find myself glancing at the thick dark waves of his hair, wondering what it would feel like to . . .
I wrestle my thoughts back to safer ground, glaring harder at him.
His fingers move to the hair behind my left ear, softly riffling through it as if he were thumbing the pages of a fragile book. If I had tied any spells in my hair—counter-wards against truth knots, for example—he would have found them.
There are, of course, none.
He concludes his thorough examination with a gentle stroke through the hair at my temples. By now my neck is hot, and I can feel sweat tracing down my spine. I realize I’ve stopped breathing, my stomach drawn taut as bowstring, and it seems something more than just his hand is holding me in place.
Something warm and fluttering behind my rib cage.
Something that terrifies me down to the toes curling in my faerie shoes.
“See?” I whisper. “I did not lie.”
“Aye, but I had to know,” he murmurs, his hand against my neck, the hot pad of his thumb on the soft, sensitive skin below my ear.
“Are you satisfied, laird, or is there more of me you have to search?”
His gaze drops to the low neckline of my faerie gown, his fingers tightening ever so slightly on my hip.
My heart flutters treacherously, and I inhale the snowdrop-scented air, my beaded bodice glinting as it rises and falls with my shallow breaths.
I watch his face as his lips part and a low, soft sigh rumbles in his chest.
Then he pulls back, releasing my waist and rubbing his thumb over his fingertips, as if they’ve gone numb from pinning me against the doorframe for so long.
Breathless and flushed, I rake my hair over my shoulder, smoothing it out. “Is it my turn now? Who is the Briar King? What is your business with the fae? Would you like to have a sit under the truth knot?”
There is another question pressing against my teeth, but I bite it back. Why did you kiss me a second time?
He glances away, his mouth twisting. “I didn’t want to question you.
But I have a job to do, and I had to know if you were any threat to my family.
I’m sorry, but I can’t let anything, or anyone, put Sylvie in danger.
” Before I can ask another question, he slips out the door, rubbing his palm on the rough plaid of his kilt.
“I’ll leave you to tidy yourself up. Your old clothes are folded by the bed.
Leave the gown and other fae things here—I cannae have Sylvie asking questions about them.
And don’t dawdle. Breakfast will be served soon, and Mrs. MacDougal will be expecting you. ”
I clear my throat, my head still spinning. “Where are you off to?”
“I must patrol the estate.”
He looks so weary, his eyes dogged by shadow.
“How long has it been since you slept?” I ask, in a slightly gentler tone.
He leans in the doorway, every bit of his exhaustion evident in his face and his limp. “I have a duty to perform. My feelings about it are quite irrelevant. You would not understand.”
I do understand, as he would know if his truth knot had been more successful.
Though I would not call my obligation to Lachlan a duty, his will nevertheless binds my own.
He drives me half mad with his surly attitude and his prejudiced ideas, but I suspect I understand Conrad North more than he could possibly imagine.
“Is this about the fire-bears?”
“Aye, if you must know. Someone is testing the border, trying to get in. I must find out who, and how many they are.”
“Why—?”
“Enough.” He glares at me irritably. “If you know what’s good for you, lass, you’ll march yourself down to Blackswire and take the first coach back to London.”
“What?”
He drops a coin purse into my palm. “That will cover your fare and beyond.”
“You want to get rid of me?”
He looks away, his face taut. “The queen of the faeries knows your name. You’ve seen her realm; you know where her doorway stands. So now you must get as far away from here as possible. She is not to be trifled with.”
“You’re saying goodbye.”
He stares at me, his eyes weary. “I will walk with you back to Ravensgate, and then, Rose Pryor, aye. We must say goodbye.”