“Your knight. I answer only to you, Lady Carys.”
“Please just call me Carys.”
“I answer to you, but you do not command me.”
Carys had never seen Cadell so cold. “I am asking you to think of the greater good and not just revenge.” She poked at his mind, trying to speak to his mind and his heart, but it was like a wall had slammed down between them.
Cadell said nothing, but his eyes locked her in place.
“I will never keep you from rescuing your children or protecting the vulnerable,” she said. “I will never forbid you from protecting me, but we will not take part in the death of random fae who had nothing to do with this.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, and Carys refused to look away.
“I will take your suggestion under advisement.” The dragon stood and walked toward the house. “Be ready to fly in an hour.”
Carys leanedout of the coracle, speaking mentally to Cadell as she and the dragon flew over the gently rolling landscape of Southern Anglia.Where is it?
Four o’clock,Cadell said.Do you see it?
She looked and saw a shimmering light over a dark green spot on the hills.Got it.“Duncan, fae fort at four o’clock—do you see it?” The high walls of the coracle protected them from wind, but Carys still had to shout.
“I see it,” he yelled. “Marking.”
Since sunrise, they’d spotted five fae forts that were not on any of Dafydd’s maps. They were eerily quiet, but the land around them was rich with magic. Forests had grown upovernight where there had been pastureland before, and the trees seemed wilder, the animals more bold.
Magic was reasserting its dominance over the Anglian landscape, and Carys was desperate to know what else was changing, but this was the Shadowlands and there was no national news.
Ravens and dragons were the fastest form of communication in times like this, but dragons had congregated in the Cymric Mountains to guard their young, and ravens were fae-friendly creatures with minds of their own.
Carys pulled her head inside the war coracle and looked across at Duncan. “We should land somewhere,” she said. “I hate to be the human here, but I really need to pee.”
Duncan snorted. “Things they don’t include in the fantasy movies, right?”
“I’m pretty flexible, but an isolated bush would be appreciated.”
Duncan looked up with a raised eyebrow. “You know every single bush or tree here has some kind of nymph of sprite, right?”
“If a sprite wants to stare at my bare butt, that’s on the sprite,” Carys said. “But we need to land.”Cadell?
The dragon was still being standoffish and cold, but at least he wasn’t shutting her out.
I heard you.
Seconds later, they were wheeling down in slow circles, aiming for a meadow on the edge of a wooded hilltop where sheep were grazing and two white-coated sheepdogs stood guard.
The canines stood at alert and let out a few barks as the dragon landed, but other than that, there was no one in sight as Carys ran for the edge of the forest, Duncan on her tail.
“I do not need an escort to pee!” she hissed.
“That’s what people say right before they get kidnapped by fae,” the surly blacksmith grumbled. “It’s not like I haven’t seen your pretty arse before, darling.”
“Seeing me in sexy context versus seeing me pee in the woods are two very different things.” She ducked into the middle of a thick bramble, keeping Duncan in sight as he stood near the edge of the trees with his sword drawn.
Carys did her business as quickly as possible, then stood to tie the laces on her woolen trousers, her back to Duncan and her eyes adjusting to the heavy shade of the forest.
It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing in the shadows.
Hidden between the trees and crouched in the bushes was a small group of fae, staring at her with wide eyes. A man and a woman stood on either side of an oak tree with bows drawn and arrows pointed right at her.