Page 5 of Beyond the Faerie Gate

“I need to get home.” I push away from the trunk. “I have to get out of here. Everyone’s lost their minds.”

“What’s happened, dear heart?” Titania croons, sweeping up beside me.

“They believe I’m some kind of fairy!” I hiss. “I don’t know how they could even—Surely if I had magical powers, I wouldn’t be sick all the time. I would’ve just healed my father rather than spend all that time tending him on his sickbed. I certainly would’ve done something about Colbert.”

I stop my rant when I realise all three of them have gone deathly quiet. They stare at one another, their matching purple eyes narrowing as they tilt their heads and shrug in a silent round of conversation.

“They… they are crazy, right?” I demand. “There’s no way…”

“Rose, you’re tired and exhausted,” Mab begins after several long moments, her brows creased with compassion. “We’ll help you back to your house, and then in the morning you can face the situation with fresh eyes.”

“This way.”Maeve strides through the trees without making a sound, leading us.

I’ve barely made it a hundred yards when a huge hand clenches around my waist, spinning me around so harshly I squeak in surprise. My nose is assaulted by the scent of unwashed man. The odour is so foul that I almost gag.

It should have been impossible for such a big man to sneak up on me, let alone the dozen or so roughly armoured raiders behind him.

Then again, I was yelling and ranting in the middle of the forest, not paying attention to my surroundings in the slightest.

Why should I? Our village has never been attacked in all the time I’ve been alive.

The balding man holding me shakes me like a rag doll before tossing me towards the other men.

His voice is rough and nasally as he announces, “This raid’s already proving fruitful, lads. Women wandering around ripe for fuc—”

I duck out of my new captor’s arms and yank my knee upward, just like Maeve taught me. There’s not much force in the blow—I’m far too weak—but his reaction assures me that it’s worked.

I’ve never used the move on a real person before, so the high-pitched yelp he emits shocks me, almost as much as his collapse to the ground.

The other men seem just as shocked as he was, but they’re faster to recover than I am. All around me, hands reach for their weapons.

“Don’t just stand there. Run!” Mab orders.

She doesn’t have to tell me twice.

But my body is already worn out. I barely make it a hundred yards before I trip over a root. My arms windmill in the air, keeping me upright, but the men pursuing me laugh at my expense.

This is fun to them, I realise, bile rising in my throat.

They’re barely bothering to jog as they follow me through the forest.

I can see the edge of the trees ahead. Hopefully, we’re near the village. The market. Somewhere with people.

We’re not soldiers, but there’s safety in numbers, right?

I burst free of the woods into a familiar place, but it’s not the village. It’s my own deserted back garden.

“Help!” I scream, trampling my neatly planted rows of herbs as I run through, praying that someone is nearby. “Someone help me!”

The blacksmith’s cottage is quite far out from the main village, but someone might be wandering past on the main road. A trader perhaps.

I don’t expect a huge sand-coloured wolf to come barrelling out of my cottage in answer.

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