Page 10 of Mated to the Mad Marquess

The skies darkened overhead. Distant thunder rumbled. Up the road, a horse bucked its rider and fled.

Harrow’s gaze lifted heavenward. “Ancestors save us,” he breathed. “It’s too late.”

Hrafn stepped out from underneath the awning of the makeshift stall. It wasn’t rainclouds that had caused the change in atmosphere as she’d first suspected. A charge built, heating her skin. Thousands of birds, ravens and hawks and finches, birds of every sort, descended from the clouds above them with a chorus of deafening shrieks. They funneled toward the village in a mad dive, looking like dark grains of sand flowing from an overturned hourglass to blanket the earth below.

The monster, Ezra gasped.

Hrafn gritted her teeth. “The monster is free.”

Hrafn had seconds to react. She lunged at Lindiwe as the first deadly flock swooped in and villagers sprinted for cover. Hrafn pulled the human to the ground under the stall, shielding her and her familiar with her wings outstretched. Protecting them from clawing talons and shredding beaks just as the screaming started.

Chapter 4

Malcolm

Malcolm arrived at the witch’s cottage early the next morning, his nose less crooked. His horse had carried him the entire way this time, unbothered by the broken tombstones. He’d prepared for a hike that morning, dressing down in a plain neckcloth and tan trousers, which were worn at the cuffs and knees. His long silvery white hair was pulled back in a queue. Solis wanted him to braid it the way his father used to, but his mortal valet didn’t know how to do it correctly.

He’d never spared so many thoughts for his hair in his entire life.

Malcolm explored, perusing the archways, peeking in through the windows of Hrafn’s thatch cottage. The logs near her garden had been picked clean of their mushrooms. Her smaller footprints led east. He’d wait for her.

Until the stars fall, we’ll wait for her,Solis said, and Malcolm chided him for coming on so damnably strong. They weren’t going to overwhelm her this time, and it wasn’t true anyway. He wasn’t so hopelessly sentimental. Not so soon like some fool fledgling with his heart on his sleeve.

Yes, we are,Solis said.

“Stop that nonsense,” Malcolm groaned. “You may be hopeless, but I know better.”

For hours the marquess waited with nothing but his shadow for company, the actions of a man thoroughly lost tofascination, not romantic sentiment, he insisted. Malcolm sat in a patch of tall grass, leaning against the wall of the cottage. Just as he was moments away from falling asleep, hoofbeats stirred him to attention.

Solis shrank to throw shade behind them, casting a proper shadow so as not to spook the stranger.

“My lord!” the wiry messenger called to him. He rode a Lunar mount between two towering pines. Lunar mounts had dark coats and were smaller than country horses, built for speed rather than work and light travel like his gray gelding.

Malcolm rose to his feet, wary. He steadied his horse who had been startled by the sudden intrusion, calming the snorting gelding with a firm pat on the side of its broad neck.

The young man licked chapped lips then started in, speaking rapidly. “Reedlet has been attacked, my lord. Twelve villagers are dead. Many more were injured.”

Malcolm’s thoughts immediately went to revolt. His neighbor fighting with tenants about rents must have triggered arguments. But then the young man continued, describing the wild assault of birds and magic.

The messenger pressed on. “The witch responsible has been taken to the city of River Row to be thrown in irons, awaiting the king’s justice.”

Solis rose in the air to hover in front of Malcolm, his panic as palpable as the stress pulsing through their veins. The messenger cowered at the sight of the phantom-like man.

The promise of coin stilled the messenger and kept him from bolting. The marquess overpaid the wiry mortal to take word to the king of the Lunar Court as fast as his leaner horse would carry him.

“I need our Lord King most urgently,” Malcolm pleaded. “Tell him to meet me at the Row’s prison posthaste, and to please take no action until I’ve spoken with him. And . . .” Malcolm hesitated a moment. “And tell him I requested that he leave his bride behind.” He swallowed the bile burning his throat, thinking of the Bloody Queen of Night and the many ways she’d earned such a title. He’d relied on her brand of justice in the past, but here and now it was the absolute last thing he wanted.

He had one chance to salvage this mess. First, his own heavy horse needed to be uncharacteristically swift. Then his old friend, Night, needed to be at his disposal and in a mood to be overly generous. Night was a good man, but Malcolm planned to ask for far more than he had a right to ask anyone, let alone his king.

Mate, Solis whimpered.

“I know, I know,” Malcolm said, mounting his steed.

* * *

It was nearing dusk when he entered the city, the prison walls in sight. Row Barrows, the iron and clay building was called, a dark and damp place he’d visited a few times before when duty called for him to bear witness to a hanging for a crime committed on his lands. The whole ride, he was having trouble getting those gallows out of his mind.

He’d had to trade his gelding out at the first stable he’d come to, and the Lunar mount he rode now was uncertain of his new rider. It made for unnerving travel.

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