Page 25 of Mountain Man's Muse
The silence of the house cut worse than sheet metal, deep yet slow to bleed.
Not complete silence, though. The phone in his hand was grumbling. He lifted it to his ear. “She’s gone.”
“I was afraid of that,” Vaile said. “Wolly is here, alone, and there’s a toadstool ring, recently withered.”
“Toadstools?” Josh yanked on his clothes awkwardly with one hand. “Why do you keep talking about mushrooms?”
“Every place, from desert to glacier, has some fungus, mold, lichen, or moss spore that will sprout into fae gateways. This circle led back to the faedrealii.”
“Why would she go back?” Josh scrabbled for a lost boot under the bed. She had lied about where he put the charms last night, so that he had inadvertently left a gap. That was the only way she could have sneaked out. “Why would she leave?” He hated the plaintive sound of his own voice.
Vaile said flatly, “Because, like the imp, she came to betray us.”
Grabbing his wayward boot, Josh rocked back on his heels. His gaze went to a strange lump next to the dresser. “So the mushroom ring is how you fae travel?”
“Yes. The one here looks a couple days old. She must have sown it before you found her.” Vaile’s voice was grim. “I think she meant to bring our enemies through.”
“But she didn’t.” Josh clung to that fact.
“Or hasn’t yet. Stay in your valley, Josh. Get the wards and bring them in close and then don’t come over the ridge until daybreak. Or maybe never would be wiser.”
Josh swallowed. He’d told himselfnever again; would he listen this time? “Will you and Odette be all right?”
“We can’t fight with iron, but we have other tricks.” Vaile’s voice softened. “I’m sorry the musetta played them on you.”
After they disconnected, Josh stomped into his boots and then went to the living room to collect his pistol and a spear. He thrust one of the iron-bladed knives he had assembled into his belt loop. The decorative curlicue from the log rack wasn’t exactly sharp but it was pure iron, and the black spiral looked wicked as hell.
Which was how he felt.
As he passed his work table on the way back to the bedroom, a rainbow shimmer caught his eye. He paused to touch the gemstones, each one more precious than the last. At the center was the emerald. She had left him a small fortune. He could feed the cows on caviar and Champagne with the jewels she’d left behind.
Adelyn had not betrayed them. The shining truth of her tears told him something she had never said aloud. He wanted to hear it from her.
And he had words he wanted to say to her. Maybe once he’d been the silent cowboy who’d let good things slip away because he hadn’t known to say how much he cared. He knew better now. Words had power, a power he could use.
He returned to the bedroom and shoved the dresser aside.
Next to the crumpled satchel that Adelyn had carried, the mushrooms were hardly larger than his pearl buttons, but they formed a perfect ring on the rough old wood.
Glad he’d never been good about dusting, he took a breath and stepped into the circle. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Adelyn.”
***
Adelyn had thought her first steps back into the faedrealii would be triumphant, on Raze’s arm. Or if not triumphant at least minus the queen’s death mark on her name. Instead, she was sneaking in through the same back corridor where she had been tossed out by EveStar.
Doubt slowed her steps. Was she right about the handmaid? Had those vague words meant what she’d thought?
EveStar had said other fae left, never to return. Adelyn had assumed that meant they died hunting the hunter. But no, they left because they wanted to. And they had never returned because they found something else. Something better.
Thanks to Josh, the veil had been lifted and she finally understood. In the faedrealii, she existed only to inspire others. In Josh’s world, she could make things with her own two hands. She could make cornbread and clean dishes. She could make something of herself.
She could make love.
She clenched her fists, trying to hold onto the memory of Josh’s callused palms across hers.
But now thanks toher, that valley sanctuary was threatened, and fae like herself who needed a place would find the way closed.
Maybe she should have stayed in the valley while the battle was fought around her, but she had stayed in the faedrealii, too afraid to leave. Too afraid to even inspire herself. This time, she wasn’t going to stop with an inspiration; she was going to make a path for others like her.
