Page 3 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

And she wondered why he spent so much time with Beth.

Smirking, he touched his pen to the paper, ready to start his thoughts on Mary Shelley’s work, but his eyes drifted back to the partially folded pages of Cora’s letter. He could hear her voice in those words, he swore, though she possessed no sort of communion spell or otherwise to enchant the parchment.

Ignoring the spot of ink left by his hesitant hand, Owein described Blaugdone Island again.

Today the sea is especially curious about what lives on the land; the waves crash hard on the steep southern side of the isle in an attempt to jump into the grass, only to slither back down, leaving minute bits of salt in their wake. The deer like it; they lick the stones near the coast often. I wonder how the deer got here, if someone, long ago, maybe before my time, placedthem here to hunt, or if the deer wandered over just before the island separated from the continent, forever stranding them in the bay. It sounds like a sad story, but it’s not; until recently, they had the entire island to themselves, free from predators. Baptiste doesn’t hunt them anymore, either. Even he knows the place would be melancholy without fawns every spring.

There are a lot of saplings about, their leaves growing big, the oncoming summer coaxing them into deep greens, almost emerald-like. And the flowers are in bloom. The breeze passing through them smells like perfume, a mix you couldn’t find on any woman’s neck. These flowers won’t smell strongly, but it’s a little something to help you see it, Cora. And you will, someday.

He glanced at the pressed flowers. A paltry gift for an English lady. Yet he was certain she would love them.

He went into a little more detail, naturally going into the construction on the lighthouse nearby, before moving on toFrankenstein. By the time he’d finished with his thoughts on the novel, he was five pages into the letter and his hand was cramping. Leaning back, he applied pressure to his thumb to stretch the tendons there.

One of the dogs barked outside.Newcomer,the sound relayed.

Take care, Cora. May your skies be wide and blue.

Here he was, talking about the weather again. He snorted and signed his name, theOandMoverly large, but he liked the look of it. He’d just finished folding the tome of a letter when he heard the barking again. Pausing, he tilted his head. He could tell, somehow, the slight difference in timbre between Aster and Ash, but this one sounded a little off, a little different, a little foreign. It made his chest flutter.

Grinning, he set the letter down and moved to the window, opening it with a shove. Down below sat a dark-colored dog that looked somewhat similar to a terrier mix, her nose pointed to his window. The dog barked once more before taking off to the east.

“It’s about time,” Owein mumbled to himself, the gentle words a contrast to his quickened pulse. He left the window ajar as he returned to his armoire and opened the bottommost drawer, grabbing a linen dress shoved in the back of it. He stuck it under his arm before opening the side of the house with an alteration spell, the siding warping and waving into a narrow slide, which he took down to the ground. After sealing the hole back up, he walked eastward with a stiff spine and awkward crick in his neck, moving toward the coast, around a copse of trees, and onward to where a natural drop of about seven feet formed. By the time he slipped down it, his body had righted itself again.

The dog waited for him, furry tail wagging in anticipation, ears perked.

“You were gone awhile.” He pulled out the dress, scrunched it up in his hands, and slipped the collar over the dog’s head. “Wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

He turned around. The breeze swept by, just as he’d described it—a floral, earthy scent no one could ever hope to bottle. It smelled like rose and columbine and mud and sea, with a thousand other notes too subtle to describe but too potent to ignore.

“I always come back,a chara.”

Owein turned, meeting the gaze of a woman transformed.

Chapter 2

June 13, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island

Fallon smoothed out the wrinkles in the simple dress she had donned. Her dark skin, inherited from her Indian mother, contrasted with the linen cloth like the fissures of an aspen. Her wild hair puffed around her shoulders and cascaded to the small of her back, but any preened style wouldn’t have suited a Druid like her. Vivid green eyes shined with familiar mirth between rows of thick eyelashes, and her full lips curved with it. She was tall for a woman, of a height with him, and her dress fell just below her knees, showing half her slender legs. Perfectly modest, though Hulda would have fainted at the sight, surely. Fortunately, Hulda had never met Fallon. At least, not in human form.

Four years ago, Fallon, a Druid, had visited his family during their stay in England, though Hulda had only ever met the now-woman in hawk form. They’d returned to Blaugdone Island not long afterward, and unbeknownst to anyone in Owein’s family, Fallon had traveled across the entire width of the Atlantic Ocean to follow them there, merely because she found Owein interesting—or so she claimed. He had wondered, on occasion, if it was more than that. But it was speculation he never let himself dwell on. Fallon was kind, free spirited, and beautiful, but Owein had promised himself to someone else shortly after they met. So, in the end, her reasons didn’t matter, unless Coradecided to enact the mercy clause in their betrothal contract, allowing her to marry another wizard of her choosing, so long as he met her family’s approval, before she turned eighteen. If she had ... well, she’d kept it from her letters.

Cora would turn eighteen in August.

No one on the island knew Fallon was here. Sometimes she wasn’t; the Druid woman, a year Owein’s senior—physically—came and went as she pleased, sometimes staying longer, sometimes leaving for longer, either to explore the New World or to visit her kin back in Ireland. This time, she’d been gone nearly three months.

Owein understood Fallon’s need to roam, but he missed her, regardless. She was his dearest friend, had become one before he’d regained his ability to speak. She’d helped him overcome the darkness that had settled deep in his mind during his centuries as a house, stagnant, solitary, and anything but free. Fallon was an undimmable light, pure and simple.

Fallon grabbed her wrist and yanked down on her right arm, trying to get the deformation from her own alteration spell to vanish faster. Her magic worked differently from Owein’s; he could warp the objects around him, but Fallon could only warp herself. The Druids of old, so she said, could transform into any animal they desired. Fallon only had the two—a dog and a hawk—but that still made her incredibly strong. All the Druids were. Like the English nobility, they tended to keep to themselves and those like them, which had helped protect their magic over generations. Merritt’s magic could have made him a Druid, had he chosen that path.

Fallon’s shoulder popped into place. Sighing, she rolled her head one way, then the other. “What’d I miss?”

He shrugged and started walking toward the coastline. “Not much. Ellis is fat now—”

“So she’s finally cute?” Fallon jogged to catch up, clasping her hands behind her back.

Owein snorted. “She’s finally cute. I’ve read some books, studied some French”—worked on etiquette, but Fallon cared even less for table arrangements and hat tippings than Owein did, so he didn’t share. “Planted two almond trees.”

“Oh!” She danced forward and turned, walking backward on her bare feet so she could face him. “They’ll smell wonderful in the spring. Probably won’t grow fruit for a few years. How old are they?”

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