Page 3 of Mountain Man's Muse
She held out one wrist in mute evidence.
The Ruiner shrugged. “I have nothing against cruelty. It might help in the task I’m giving you.”
Adelyn stared down at her slippers. “I don’t suppose you want to write a poem?”
“Hardly. I need you to find a thief.”
“I am no hunter.”
“All the hunters I have sent have...not returned. This particular thief is a hunter himself. He took one of the queen’s sylfaniia and is hiding in the sunlit world. I want you to find them.”
Adelyn shuddered. “If he kills your hunters—”
“He won’t kill you. Quite the opposite. Your helplessness will inspire him to bring you closer. When you find him, contact me. Ankha wants words with the missing hunter and his sylfana. Perhaps words of a poetic nature, though I doubt it.” He smiled, inviting Adelyn to share his amusement.
She never wanted to hear another poem ever. “Why would I help you?”
“Because you must, to end your exile and return to the faedrealii which justifies your existence. Your choice, musetta.”
She stared down at her mangled wrists. Somehow, the damage felt deeper. “As you command.”
“Ankha’s handmaid will prepare you.” Raze grasped her chin to tilt her face upward. “Do not fail me, musetta.”
“Is that not one of my choices, then?” She could not turn her face away, but she closed her eyes.
Raze left when the queen’s handmaid arrived. EveStar brought Adelyn a satchel with salve for her wounds and spores to open the way between the worlds. Tiny will-o’-the-wisps orbited around them as they headed down a little-used corridor, and Adelyn wondered if she’d ever see that serene, flawless glow again. Her sob sent the closest wisp spinning on the eddy of her breath.
The handmaid peered at her. “Is this your first foray to the sunlit world, child?”
The sunlit world. The name sent chills across Adelyn’s skin. She clutched her veils around her, but the spider silk felt as light and revealing as…well, spider silk. “My first exile, yes.”
EveStar smiled vaguely. “Such an adventure.” The handmaid’s ethereal golden beauty was rightly called timeless. She was one of the few to endure the Iron Wars and the brutal court battles that spawned the steel-born fae. Ankha kept her as a reminder of a lost era. And maybe as a warning. None of the iron-born left the faedrealii. Ever.
Adelyn’s burst of envy at EveStar’s pristine silk slippers was eclipsed only by her desire to stay in the court too. “I am hunting a hunter who will likely slaughter me.”
The handmaid clicked her tongue. “Why, I’ve heard a dozen fae have chased after the runaways, never to return. And now a musetta sweet as yourself is cavorting with a dark hunter? How times have changed.” The soft gold of her eyes glinted with something much harder, something angry.
Unease twisted in Adelyn’s belly. Rumors of insanity haunted the iron-born. Some whispered the handmaid pierced herself with iron to burn off the cold guilt that so many had perished when she had not. “Nothing really changes here,” Adelyn soothed. “Which is just as it should be.”
“Maybe youshouldchange, considering,” EveStar shot back.
Adelyn stiffened in shock. “You know better than most, the fae were devastated in the last upheaval. These fugitives can’t risk revealing us again.”
The handmaid’s vague smile returned. “Change yourself? Is that what I said? Ah, words are slippery as serpents. I meant, be sure to change your glamour, child, lest yet another human sees you and falls in love.”
Adelyn winced at the reminder. Damn her eyes for inspiring that odious ode. And damn her pointless preoccupation with pretty slippers that kept her from asking the handmaid about the sunlit world. After all, EveStar had walked among humans back when the fae had been known and feared and revered. Now she never left the faedrealii; how was Adelyn, small and steel-born, supposed to survive?
Before Adelyn could ask that plaintive question, the corridor ended in an empty chamber.
The end of the road. And the beginning of one.
While wisps drifted in dreamy helixes, EveStar eased the satchel from Adelyn’s tight clutch. The handmaid sprinkled a pinch of spores in a circle. “May you find what you’re looking for, child, what you truly seek.”
Adelyn saw nothing past the rapidly sprouting spores. Tears blurred everything else. When the mushrooms were knee high, a gust of otherworldly air whirled through. Her breath hitched on the overwhelming fusion of wet dirt, hot metal and air chilled to a biting edge. Would she ever again feel the sanctuary of the court’s magic around her? Her thighs twitched with the desire to run. But there was no place to hide in the faedrealii. Which left her no choice.
Clamping one hand over her nose and mouth, she stepped into the circle, into the sunlit world.
Chapter 2
