Selena extended her left hand.
The woman took a step forward, but her companions held her back and whispered urgently. Regret shadowed the delight in the woman’s face, and she stayed with her companions instead of joining the dance.
So Selena danced alone, ignoring most of the Fae present, focused on keeping the raw power in the clearing benevolent. But she continued to notice the woman and her four companions—and she realized the other four had stopped the woman because they were afraid to disrupt the dance, afraid it would end if they stepped forward now.
So she danced alone, spiraling out until she reached the edge of that globe of power. When she finally stopped, she stood almost where she’d stood when she’d first walked toward that power. The whole center of the clearing was now streamers of moonlight in motion, following the spiral of the dance.
There was still too much power here. If the other women had joined her in the dance, they would have absorbed some of it, renewing their own strength in the process. They still needed to do that. There were enough of them that, once they’d taken in the power they could, the rest could be shaped into something harmless or gently grounded through the branches of the Great Mother. But how to tell them that?
She couldn’t. She doubted they would listen to her. So how to do what needed to be done?
She looked at the glowing ball of moonlight in her hand, then tossed it skyward as high as she could, sending a small breath of the branch of air with it. The ball burst over their heads, arcing in all directions, coming down on the women who made the circle.
She watched the glow of their power brighten. When their gift had been renewed, the power flowed harmlessly into the earth, filling the whole clearing with gentle light.
Tired now, she took a careful step back, breaking her connection to the spiral. Her limbs trembled with the need to ground the power she’d raised from the branches of the Great Mother, but she would need a few minutes of quiet and focus to do that safely, so it would have to wait a little longer. But not too much longer. Her emotions were raw. The joy she’d felt in the dance had constantly been pricked at the edges by the Fae’s resistance to what she had done here, forming little jagged slices of anger inside her that she needed to smooth out.
That, too, had to be done soon because as conflicting emotions washed through her, she saw the power in all of those women flicker. It didn’t matter how the Fae usually decided who ascended to control a gift. The power itself had issued the challenge—and she had met it. She controlled the gift now. Their lives were in her hands.
Mother’s mercy, if I lose control now…Please, Mother, please let me get out of this circle and find someplace quiet for a few minutes.
She looked at the woman on the edge of the circle, who was now smiling at her shyly, hesitantly, as if waiting for some signal. But she didn’t know the signal, didn’t know—
“Who are you?” a harsh voice, bordering on hysteria, demanded.
The woman who had been inside the circle with her strode forward a few steps.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded again.
“I am Selena. And now I am the Lady of the Moon.”
The woman stared at her, wide-eyed, as if she had just been slapped. Then her eyes narrowed, and an ugly anger filled her face. “What are you?”
The sneering anger in the woman’s voice made those jagged slices of anger inside her rip a little more.
“I am Fae,” Selena answered coldly. “But I am first, and always, a Daughter of the House of Gaian.”
“A witch?” The woman’s voice rose to a shriek. “A half-breed wiccanfae has dared intrude on one of our ceremonies, has dared try to pretend she could be one of us, has dared think she can control the power that belongs to us?”
“I pretend nothing. I do command the gift now.” Power was spiking inside her, painful little flashes of lightning along her nerves.
“You command nothing, you bitch!”
Her body reacted to the word before she realized what she was doing. One moment she was facing the former Lady of the Moon; the next, she was a shadow hound racing across the distance between them, a snarl of fury filling her throat. The woman didn’t have time to scream before she leaped, her forelegs hitting the woman in the chest hard enough to knock her rival to the ground. Then she pinned her enemy, her fangs a mere handspan away from the vulnerable throat as the woman screamed and flailed and screamed again.
She realized her enemy’s flailing had a purpose when she heard flesh slap boot leather, saw the flash of moonlight on metal. She whipped her head around, her fangs slashing the woman’s right forearm before the knife found its mark. Blood—and the taste of flesh, of prey—filled her mouth. She fought against the shadow hound instinct to rip and tear. This was prey. This was—
Blood sprayed over both of them as the woman flailed again—and the knife flashed again.
Her jaws closed unforgivingly over the torn forearm until teeth met bone. One fast, hard twist of her head—and bone snapped.
The knife fell to the ground. The woman screamed. Screamed and screamed.
She released the arm, turned her head so that she and the woman stared at each other. Blood dripped from her fangs onto the woman’s face. She snarled.
“I yield!” the woman screamed. “I yield I yield I yield!”
The throat. So vulnerable. So rich with hot blood. So…
Selena carefully backed away from the woman, her paws leaving bloody prints in the grass. With the scent of blood in the air and the taste of it in her mouth, it took fierce effort to change back to her human form.
She could still taste the blood.
The woman stared up at her, her face pale with shock. “W-what are you?”
Selena looked down at her rival. “What you should have been and never were. The Queen of the Witches.”
She walked away, striding toward the center of the clearing. Too much power churned inside her. Too much. She couldn’t ground it, not until she’d dealt with these Fae, but if she didn’t release some of it and it got away from her…
When she reached the center of the clearing, she raised her voice. “To make sure you understand who you now must deal with…”
She gave her anger to fire, forming it into a circle behind the circle of women. She held on to it long enough so that flames a finger-length high shot up from the ground, giving the women enough warning to step forward before the fire roared straight up as high as a man, forming a burning wall.
She formed another circle an arm’s length from the fire and summoned air and water. Wind whipped around that circle with enough force to knock several women off their feet. It rose into the sky, twisting through the clouds overhead, gathering them until they turned dark and heavy with rain.
Thunder rumbled, loud enough to make the ground shake. Lightning flashed.
She gave her power to the storm, letting her temper and raw feelings be its channel.
The clouds released their burden, and torrents of rain pounded the clearing and the women inside the circle. In the pauses between thunderclaps, she heard horses neighing in fear, she heard the Fae men shouting, she heard women wailing—and she heard the angry, distressed bugling of one other horse.
Then she heard nothing. She fed the storm. The storm fed her. The Fae didn’t want to accept her because she wasn’t exactly what they were? So be it. Let them see exactly what she could be. Let them—
She saw the woman and her four companions. The woman, whose face had been filled with joy and delight while watching the dance, now looked at her with terror-filled eyes.
Do no harm.
For a moment, her mind went blank, her feelings went numb. In that moment, she felt something flowing from the land, something that had been striving to reach her through the fury of the storm.
Joy. Celebration. Love.
Rhyann.
Do no harm.
She heard the horse’s angry bugling and turned to see Mistrunner rearing on the other
side of the wall of fire. He wheeled, galloped away from the fire, wheeled again, and charged toward the flames. He stopped short of the flames, then wheeled again to make another charge.
“No,” she whispered. The breeding or training that instilled in him a need to protect his rider would soon override his instinctive fear of fire. He would try to leap that wall of flames in order to reach her and—
Fire burns.
Do no harm.
Moonlight swirled with the rain and wind. She whipped her hand in a circle, drawing that moonlight to her until it formed a large ball around her hand. She flung it toward the fire. It hit the ground a man’s-length from the flames, burst upward, and arched over the fire, forming a glittering bridge. She summoned the strength of earth to anchor it. She channeled some of the power from all four branches of the Great Mother to give the bridge strength. It still looked as insubstantial as moonlight, but it was as solid as the land.
She barely had time to make it strong enough to hold him before Mistrunner charged over the bridge and into the storm, trotting toward her.
Tears stung her eyes as he came up to her, whickering softly, snuffling her chest for the reassurance of her scent.
“Silly boy,” she said as she rested a hand against his cheek. “Silly, silly boy. You know better than to try to leap over a wall of fire.”
His presence helped her regain emotional control. Her anger at the Fae turned to ash. They would never be her people, but she wasn’t planning to stay among them forever. Just long enough to drive the Inquisitors out of Sylvalan once and for all. Then she could go home.
Men rushed over the bridge she’d created. They hesitated when they realized she was watching, but when she did nothing to stop them, they hurried toward the Ladies they had escorted to this place—the five women who were somehow different from the others.
Her legs trembled with fatigue. It felt good to lean against Mistrunner. But she had to deal with the storm. Wind still whipped the rain with blinding fury. Since she had contained the storm’s release to the circle within the clearing, she suddenly realized she was standing in ankle-deep water that was swiftly rising.
She tried to get a sense of the size of the storm…and almost whimpered.
If she released it, it would devastate this Old Place, drown the crops for miles around, flood the creeks and cause even more damage.
Start with the simplest thing first.
Stepping away from Mistrunner, she banked the wall of fire until it was nothing more than a smoldering circle. Then she pushed the circle holding the storm outward just beyond the fire circle. The ground sizzled and steam rose as the rain and standing water rushed to fill the larger space.
As soon as the fire was out, other Fae men rushed into the storm to reach the Ladies of the Moon.
She ignored them as she gathered the wind in the clearing, shaped it into a wide wedge, and sent it flying toward the farthest edge of the storm. It sheared the cloud bank, driving the clouds before it, heading east.
Broken off from the rest of the storm—and the magic that had prevented it from releasing anywhere but in the clearing—the rain poured down.
Selena flinched when she saw the flash of lightning, but she shaped another wedge of wind and used it to slice off another piece of the storm and send it eastward.
The third time she sliced off a piece of the storm, she felt another power brush against hers, another wind grab the storm, pulling it further apart, draining some of its energy and sending it back in a way that would keep some of the storm restrained as it was sent on so that not all of it would fall here.
Rhyann, playing with air and water in a way that would spread the storm farther and farther, diluting it in the process.
Selena’s heart lifted. She worked to slice the storm into pieces, trusting that Rhyann would catch those pieces and send them on, driven by fast winds.
The storm would keep spreading out, driven east by the winds. Other witches who could command the branches of air or water would catch the storm when it came to them and continue to send it on. It would fly over the Mother’s Hills, softened by the many witches who commanded those branches of the Great Mother. Perhaps it would go even further east, but it would diminish to a soft rain, a farmer’s rain that would nourish the crops instead of destroying them.
She worked the storm. She didn’t know how long it took. It might have been hours. If felt like days before she sent the last clouds toward Rhyann and the rain in the clearing finally stopped. Overhead, the clear night sky was filled with stars.
Shivering from exhaustion as much as the chill in the air, Selena slowly grounded the power that held the circle in the clearing. The standing water poured out, spreading itself through the woods.
She walked back to Mistrunner, wondering if she had the strength left to mount—and wondering if he would be able to find his way back to Ella’s house.
As she rested her forehead against his neck, someone said hesitantly, “Huntress?”
She looked up and saw the woman standing nearby, watching her anxiously. She said nothing. She simply waited.
The woman came forward slowly, then went down on one knee. “I, Gwynith, here and now pledge my loyalty and service to you, Selena, the Lady of the Moon…and the Huntress.”
Since she didn’t know the correct response to this part of the ritual, Selena said nothing.
Gwynith looked at her. “Do you accept?”
“I accept.”
A look of relief that was almost brutal to see filled Gwynith’s face. She rose and stepped aside.
Her four companions immediately stepped forward and made the same pledge of loyalty and service. The rest of the women came forward more slowly, more warily, but they made the same pledge. While they did, Selena noticed the intense, whispered conversation between Gwynith, her companions, and some of the men who were with them.
When the last woman stepped aside, one man came forward. “Huntress…Lady Dianna is badly hurt and needs a healer to look at that arm as soon as it can be done.”
Dianna. So that was the name of the woman who had denied her right to be the Lady of the Moon after the power had already accepted her as such.
“It is your right to deny her access to any Clan territory where you are present, especially after…after she shamed her Clan by acting as she did.”
“Is there a healer in the Clan who is connected to this Old Place?” Selena asked.
“There is, Huntress.”
“Then take her there to get the care she needs.”
He bowed. “Thank you. She will not disturb you while she is there.” He hesitated, looking uncomfortable. “It is within your right to strip her of her gift. But, Lady, there is no witch in the Old Place that anchors our Clan’s piece of Tir Alainn. There hasn’t been since the Black Coats came and she was…lost. We don’t know why it is so, but Dianna’s gift can anchor the Old Place’s magic and hold our piece of Tir Alainn. Without her gift…”
They don’t know why it is so. Mother’s mercy. “I have no wish to harm your Clan. I will not take what your people need.”
“We are grateful for your mercy, Huntress.” He started to turn away, then turned back. “Tonight was the first time Dianna acknowledged that witches were the House of Gaian. Up until tonight, she has denied there was any connection.”
Selena stared at him, puzzled. “We have always been the House of Gaian. Why would she deny it?”
He gave her an odd look, started to say something, then changed his mind and hurried back to the other men kneeling beside Dianna, who was still on the ground.
She saw Gwynith approach her at the same time three men stepped up.
“We”—one of the men gestured to the other two—“are bards from different Clans. We are here as witnesses…and to send the news out to the rest of the Clans. May we ask, Lady Selena, what Clan you are from?”
“That can wait,” Gwynith said firmly. “The Lady is wet and tired and needs dry clothes and warm food. Yo
ur questions can wait until we’re back in Tir Alainn and she has been looked after properly.”
Gwynith sounded so much like Rhyann, Selena had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “I think I have the strength to answer one question.” Before Gwynith could protest, Selena turned back to the bards. “I don’t come from a Clan.”
The bards’ spokesman looked puzzled. “Then…where do you come from?”
“I come from the Mother’s Hills.”
Instant silence as even Gwynith stared at her. She could hear the raindrops dripping from the leaves of the nearby trees.
“Mother’s mercy,” the bard whispered.
She didn’t want to terrify these people any more than she’d already done, but they needed to understand how much her presence among them, and her power over them, was going to change their lives. She said gently, “I think you will find, good bard, that if the wrath of the House of Gaian looks in your direction, the Mother will have no mercy.”
All three men glanced up at the clear night sky and turned deathly pale.
“Enough,” Gwynith said.
“In a moment,” Selena said. “Now I have a question. Do you know the Bard?”
The bards’ spokesman nodded warily.
“Do you know where to find him?”
The man looked even more wary. “Not at present, Lady. He is…traveling. But we could send a message through the Clans,” he added hurriedly.
“Then tell the Bard that the new Lady of the Moon would like to speak with him, if he would so oblige me.”
“We’ll send the message, Lady.” They moved away, hurrying toward their horses.
Selena looked at Gwynith. “It is not that I don’t appreciate your assistance, but I’m wondering why you’re offering it so freely.”
“Two reasons,” Gwynith replied after a long pause. “First, I have pledged my loyalty and service to you, and I think you are not familiar with Tir Alainn or riding the shining roads.”
“I have no experience with either.”
“You have no reason to trust any of us, but I swear to you I will do nothing that would harm you in any way. I—I can’t say with any certainty that will be true of the others here tonight…or other Fae who weren’t here tonight.”