Page 30 of Mountain Man's Muse
She hesitated. “No. And her power holds fae here that should never be freed.”
“Something worse than snake-women who can turn men to stone?”
She lifted her chin. “The other side of inspiration has always been paralysis.”
“That’s not going to be me.” He pulled her toward him and kissed her, hard. “Which way do we run?”
Chapter 12
Through the chill of exposing her true nature, Adelyn felt the heat of Josh’s unfailing grip. It roused her where she thought nothing would again.
“This way.” She tugged him into a stream of fae fleeing toward the nearest corridor.
Behind them, the throne room was in an uproar. The will-o’-the-wisps, freed all at once from their marble prisoner, shot through the room like sparking bottle rockets. Tiny fires flamed in their wake.
Ankha screamed, a furious cry that cracked through the stone illusion more thoroughly even than Josh’s iron bullet.
The whole structure of the faedrealii trembled at the queen’s rage, and in the corridor, the fae cowered.
Josh hauled Adelyn around them—beings strange and stunning—as if they were nothing more than inconvenient boulders in his field. Her heart thumped with painful pride at his determination. She supposed a man who worked with unyielding metal and recalcitrant cows wouldn’t allow himself to be sidetracked by mere fae.
They sped through the corridors where the walls were terrifyingly blank. The queen’s power should have held her illusions in place, even against an intrusive iron bullet. She ruled for a reason.
Something had the court more rattled than a bullet overhead.
But it was no longer Adelyn’s concern. Whatever inspiration she had given the fae, it was no longer her place. She had shed that illusion with her glamour.
Her true place was here, beside Josh, for as long as they had.
Which wouldn’t be long.
She squeezed his fingers, interlaced with hers. “Josh, we don’t have a way out.”
“There’s always a way out.”
“Not from the faedrealii,” she said grimly. “Do you know what Vaile had to do to escape with Odette?”
“No, but whatever it was, we can do it too.”
From behind them, a hound bayed. In another heartbeat, a multiplicity of eerie howls echoed it. The sound carried up the corridor, lacing the stark walls with curls of crimson that dripped down like blood.
Josh slowed to point the tip of the spear at the warning. The bloody streak curled back, as if pushed by an invisible force but did not disappear.
“Ankha appears to have recovered from her shock.” Adelyn tugged him onward, anywhere farther from the throne room. “And she has set the hounds of the Wild Hunt on our trail.”
“I take it we’re not talking wannabe Wollys.”
“If Wolly had three heads, and all three wanted to unearth your bones from your flesh.”
“Ah.” He slanted a glance at her. “You seem every bit as dangerous.”
She blinked. Did she? She’d never thought of herself as dangerous. She touched her hair with her free hand, the one not linked to Josh, and the serpents twined around her fingers. Their tongues flicked her skin with a cool caress.
“Only some of them are venomous,” she said modestly.
“You’ll have to show me which ones. After you show me a way out.”
Her little burst of happiness that he still wanted to know her evaporated. “I told you, there is no way out, not without gate spores, and I gave mine away.”
