Page 40 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

She took her salt and her iron and also the fireplace poker with the silver handle like owl wings because she was not an idiot. She might not know much about fighting with daggers or swords, but she could swing a big, sturdy metal stick. She imagined most things did not like to be bashed on the skull.

The door creaked open on its hinges and she winced. So much for the element of surprise.

But there was no one waiting in the hallway, no hound of the Wild Hunt, not even a single mouse searching for crumbs. Just the creep of ice high up near the ceiling and the glowing will-o’-the-wisps.

And a fiddle playing? It was so faint she could have imagined it.

A snippet of song.

Go back to bed, Pippa told herself, even as she headed toward the strange music.

It did not have the same tempting pull of fairy fruit (although were those grapes suddenly climbing up the wall, vines trying to snag her hair?), but it still called to her. She followed the hazy threads of music, and they led her to the abandoned feasting hall.

Everything looked as it had before, only there was music and the candlelight flickered. Shadows moved over the platters of roasted goose and fiddlehead ferns, as if hands were passing morsels back and forth.

Someone laughed.

Pippa spun around, but she was still alone. Her heart hammered loudly, as the music grew louder, the swell of whispering voices. A peach rolled across the floor and bumped into her foot, making her jump. The air shifted as if people danced past her. A laugh, another whisper. The clink of goblets and cutlery on plates. The curtains moved lazily. The candles continued to flicker. There were grapes in her hand. Round and dusky purple and so ripe her mouth watered.

“Pippa.” Lachlan was suddenly there, his voice like another velvet ribbon around her throat.

She blinked. Her legs cramped as though she had been standing there for a very long time. There was faint light at the window. “Lachlan?”

He took the grapes from her, gently. “Take some salt, wisp.”

Her hands shook when she reached for the miniature silver box. The salt puckered her tongue, cleared her head. The music was gone. The peach by her foot had a bite taken from it, but at least it was not hers.

“Are you finally going to tell me what is really going on here?” she asked quietly. Lachlan’s gaze found her, steady, sharp. “Why did you claim my wish? Is that common? Where is everyone?”

He did not answer.

He did not have the chance.

She was already disappearing.