Page 189 of Sigils & Spells

“Um… come in?” I didn’t know what to do with myself as the door creaked open. Should I sit in the chair? Sit on the bed? Stand with my hands behind my back? Maybe strike a pose? I settled on standing in shock, because I didn’t have the time to make a choice before the door was open.

In the doorway stood the mushroom Fae woman. She’d changed, and the leather armor from before had been replaced with a silver breastplate over a floor length gray-blue gown. She still held the bow, arrow knocked, but pointing at the ground. I took an unintentional step back, like I had in the stables before, but despite my ass being a lot closer than before, I still bumped into the desk.

“Lyrei.” came a lilting voice from the hallway. It turned up at the end, like a mother gently chastising a rude child. I gripped the edge of the table, my fingernails digging into the wood.

The mushroom woman, Lyrei, glanced to the side of the door, and stepped into the room. She moved to the side, so the doorway was free, never taking those huge eyes off of me.

Lyrei cleared her throat, and said in a loud clear voice, as if announcing to a stadium. “Her Ladyship, Maeve.”

And Maeve stepped into the doorway.

I didn’t know what I’d expected. But what I saw made my heart stop in my chest. I remembered her from my dream. In the beginning, she’d been a woman with dark hair, blue eyes and fair skin, but at the end, it looked like a tree had started growing inside of her, and she’d stretched up above me and screamed, her mouth an endless cavern that seemed to glow from the inside.

She was as tall as the doorway, and huge branches that jutted from her head like antlers forced her to duck as she stepped into the room. Her face was almost human. She had glacial blue eyes like the Fae woman in the forest, and skin the same shade of green. The resemblances ended there.

Just as she had in my dream, it looked like Maeve had a tree take root in her and grow through her skin and along with her bones. Parts of her skin were green, but others were made of bark and branches. She wore a low cut dress that showed her chest, which was made of what looked like a tangle of roots that seemed to untangle at her clavicle and curved in parallel into the shape of her neck. Instead of blackness between the gaps of the roots was a pale green glow. Branches grew out from her shoulders, forming a kind of arch behind her head like a Medici collar. Small leaves and tiny white flowers grew from the branches.

In my dream, she’d been terrifying, but standing in this red and gold room, she was beautiful. Beautiful in an eerie, serine way.

“Julian.” her words seemed to float from her mouth like a thick heavy smoke that curled into tendrils as she smiled. “Lovely to see you up.”

The paralyzing fear that iced in my veins at that voice wasn’t quite paralyzing enough to stop me from being stupid. I cleared my throat. “So, uh, does she announce you like that for every room you go into? Like what if you have to pee?”

For a moment, that serene, untouchable smile faltered, as shock and frustration chased each other across Maeve’s face.

She ignored my question. “I take it you’ve read my letter?”

Maeve motioned to the letter that was still open on the table where I’d tossed it. I didn’t know how to answer. I looked back at her.

“Your friends are safe in my dungeon.” she smiled. “For now. Take as long as you need to decide, my love.”

She took a step towards me, and I was almost surprised to see the shape of legs move through her skirt, as I half expected her bottom half to just be the trunk of a tree. I gripped the desk harder as she stopped too close for comfort. She was so much taller than me, and she stood so close I had to look up to see her face.

“I know you’ll make the right decision.” Her voice was different from the last sentence, like suddenly a dozen people were all speaking through her lips, all of them telling me that I knew what the right choice was. All of them telling me what might happen if I made the wrong one.

I couldn’t react. My heart stopped in my chest and I could only stare at her, barely breathing. Maeve smiled down at me, the faint glow from her chest pulsing as if in time with some Fae form of a heartbeat. I watched what looked like a small yellow butterfly flutter between the antler branches that grew from her head, landing on a new clump of small white flowers.

After what could have been a moment, or an hour, Maeve pulled away from me, turning back to the door.

“I will know when you make your choice, Julian.” her voice was sing-songy again. “Come, Lyrei.”

Seeing her from behind for the first time, I saw what I had at first taken for a gossamer black cape, but as she strode towards the door, I watched it flitter just a little bit, and I realized it wasn’t a cape, but two giant wasp wings.

The guard stepped out of the room, and once Maeve had ducked under the doorway, Lyrei gave me a curt nod and slammed the door shut.

I pressed a hand to my chest and sank to the floor, a breath rushing out of me. “Holy shit.”

That squeaky toy like bark greeted me, and I watched the sugar glider Alice scuttle out from under the bed and crawl up the leg of my jeans. She perched on my knee and stared at me with those beady black eyes.

Somehow, I knew what she wanted.

“I’m okay. Just…” I took another breath. “Maeve is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.”

The sugar glider nodded. When I didn’t move, her nose twitched and she ran back over to the bed, and crawled under it.

She barked.

“What?”

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