Page 28 of Mountain Man's Muse
EveStar thrust it back. “Open a gate. Run while the queen is distracted.”
Once she’d been too afraid to run, and now, when she most wanted to… “I can’t. Not without him.”
In the space by the throne where she had been standing only moments ago, a ring of mushrooms sprouted with unnatural speed. And then Josh was there. In the court. Standing tall beside the deadly fae queen.
Chapter 11
His head spun, like a middle-of-the-whisky-bottle moment, but Josh blinked hard to clear his wavering vision. No, not wavering. The vision in his scarred eye was eerily intense.
For a second, he thought he had landed in a movie set. Everything was so… Too much. The outrageous visuals—pointy ears, giant butterfly wings, glowing glowering eyes—made him wonder what kind of mushrooms exactly had been growing in his bedroom.
But he hadn’t imagined Adelyn. He hadn’t. He still felt her in the tips of his fingers, still tasted her on the back of his tongue. And Adelyn wasn’t the sort to run from make-believe.
He lifted the iron-tipped spear, and the figures nearest him pulled back with a murmur of dismay.
One moment he had been standing in his empty bedroom and now he was surrounded. And if at one time, he entertained the notion of fairy princesses, these beings destroyed that childhood illusion forever. He had come upon a mountain lion once, feasting on the remains of a calf. While the cow lowed plaintively in the distance, Josh had stared at the beast. It stared back: hungry, deadly, and utterly indifferent to him.
He had shot at it, but it had been too quick. And though it had runaway, he knew it could just as readily have run at him if it believed him weak prey.
These fae were the same.
With the pistol in his right hand, the spear felt strange and unwieldy in his left, but he cut it in a slow circle around him, forcing them back another step.
He strained for a glimpse of Adelyn in the crowd.
And caught a glint of emerald eyes. She lingered behind a distant pillar. He wanted to call out to her, but she’d said names could be dangerous.
“Poor man, you seem to have lost your way.” The voice was silk over steel, slicing and beautiful, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from rising to the dais nearby.
He had registered the throne-like setting, but in his need to find Adelyn, he hadn’t paid attention. He did now.
Adelyn had called her a queen, and even in the heart of his rugged individualism, he understood. She exuded a sheer power that made his legs tremble with the urge to lower himself.
Not likely. He locked his knees and swung the spear across his body, partly to make sure the tip wasn’t pointing at her—no sense angering a reigning monarch, after all—and partly to aim the pistol more discreetly.
But he couldn’t run, not without Adelyn. He wouldn’t let her walk away without knowing if he was the only one to feel…
But the queen had him in her sights now. The blackness of her eyes cracked with fissures of scarlet like the coals in a hot forge. “What have we here?”
Shit. Even the giant cat with its mouth full of blood hadn’t wanted to toy with him like this. He wished he hadn’t whispered Adelyn’s name aloud as he stepped through the fairy ring, but his heart had been in his throat—pushing her name to his lips—as he longed for her.
Too late. “I am…” Standing in this chamber of beautiful horror, he felt less than nothing. But he had let too many he loved walk away without a word. This time he would speak. He straightened, locking his elbow so the spear filled the space between them. “I am a prince from the land of Oregon, and I have come to reclaim my love.”
With a hushed gasp, the crowd drew back another step, even farther than the iron had pushed them.
The queen did not flinch though. “How tiresome that your love left you behind. Not even your iron could keep her in place.”
He didn’t flinch either, but he knew she’d seen something of the remembered pain in his face because she smiled. He pictured the mountain lion’s bloody fangs when it snarled at him.
He straightened. “In truth, she might not have known how I felt when she left.”
“Ah, in truth, you say?” The queen swept a hand to encompass the room. “Then by all means, proclaim yourself now, and let her step forward if she feels the same.”
The way the queen saidfeelsraised his hackles, and Josh shook his head. “And have you kill her where she stands? No. I’ll find her myself.”
He took a step forward and the crowd fell back again. His heart thudded hard. Would Adelyn be willing to come through the pain and the exposure of having her glamour stripped away by the iron? Should he even ask it of her?
He did not say her name aloud, only whispered it in his head with longing. Could she hear him somehow? Did he believe in such magic?
