Chapter 2
Cuan spun, kicking out with his hind legs. He caught one green-furred fae hound a solid blow, sending it yelping through the air.
But others darted in, snapping and snarling. Sharp teeth tore at his flank, seeking to snatch his burden from his back.
Cuan reared high to keep his precious cargo out of reach of the fae hounds’ jaws. He lashed out with his front hooves, driving the giant dogs back.
A flash of white made him shy—but it was only Motley. The lesser fae swooped around his head, cawing wildly. One of the fae hounds leaped to snap at him. Cuan only just managed to knock the dog aside so it only got a mouthful of feathers rather than raven.
“I told you to get to safety, Motley!” Cuan’s magic allowed him to talk as easily in horse form as he could as a man. “Flee, and carry word to Lady Maeve!”
Motley fluttered higher, out of danger. His own voice was a raven’s harsh caw, his beak limiting his ability to form words. “Beware! Beware! War, war, war band!”
Cuan cocked an ear. Faintly, under the growls of the pack, he could hear the distant horns of the seelie hunters. The elven knights were hot on the trail of their hounds, seeking to reclaim their stolen prize.
Two or three, Cuan could have handled. But not an entire war band, baying for his blood. They would show no mercy to an unseelie like himself. The divide between the two fae factions, seelie and unseelie, was too wide and deep to allow even the possibility of negotiation.
He swore under his breath, and kicked another fae hound. This would be risky, but he had no choice.
“Hold fast!” he called out to the young boy clinging to his back. “On your life, hold fast to me!”
Cuan gathered himself and leaped clear over the fae hounds’ heads. He stretched himself into a gallop, unleashing his full speed—the speed of the phouka, who could race from sea to sea before the moon could cross the sky. It was the only legacy of his father that was a blessing rather than a curse.
Cuan’s heart was in his mouth, because if the boy started to slip there would be nothing he could do to catch him—but the child clung to his mane like a burr. A brave one, this changeling child. Cuan could understand why the seelie had gone to such lengths to steal him away.
All human children were precious, but one with a true heart was the greatest of prizes. Had Cuan not recovered the boy, no doubt in ten years’ time the changeling would have been wearing the golden armor of a Summer Knight, his lance bedecked with trophies made from unseelie hides and horns.
Cuan’s breath came a little easier as they passed under the shadow of the mighty oak that marked the start of the Wildwood. Seelie knights trespassed across the boundary all the time, but to ride in broad moonlight into unseelie lands risked provoking the Winter King’s wrath. There was a difference between the time-honored custom of raiding and a declaration of open war.
Nonetheless, Cuan didn’t slow to a trot until they were well into unseelie-held territory again. Motley, of course, had been left far behind, but Cuan trusted that the raven shifter would find them in due course, by his own strange means. He cast around, getting his bearings.
“Lady Maeve’s territory lies close by,” he told the changeling child. “I will soon have you back where you belong.”
The boy sat up on his back. His face was streaked with tears, though whether from distress or the windswept wild ride, Cuan couldn’t tell. “But you said you would take me home.”
“I am.” Cuan kept trotting onward, following the winding path through the forest. “To the court of Lady Maeve.”
The boy scrubbed a hand across his face, dashing away the tears. His head dropped, hiding his expression.
“I thought you meant home home.” The boy’s voice was very quiet. “My real home.”
A pang of guilt made Cuan’s skin twitch. But that was ludicrous. The human world was a filthy place, poisoned and rotten.
Cuan had even heard dark whispers that there were places where human children went hungry while their lords feasted. Though Cuan suspected that had to be a mere bogie-tale, something to frighten lesser fae into staying within their own realm rather than venturing into the humans’ world. Surely not even mankind could be so cruel and callous.
No, if there was guilt to be felt, it was over the fact that not every human child could be rescued from that wretched realm and raised in light and love. The boy was one of the fortunate few. He had even been relieved of the burden of remembering his previous life, so that he might know nothing but joy with his new family.
But if the boy was recalling his old human home, it could only mean that the glamours placed on him were wearing off. The seelie fae must have been tampering with them, trying to remove Lady Maeve’s magics so they could bind him to their own court instead.
Cuan’s own talents at magic were laughable compared to the power of a pure-blood high sidhe. He quickened his pace, hoping that the fraying glamours would last long enough for him to get the child back to the sidhean.
“The Lady Maeve would be dismayed that you do not consider her court to be your home,” he said, attempting to soothe the boy with words since he couldn’t do so with magic. “If there is any comfort there that you lack, you have but to ask her, and she will provide. She is very fond of you, you know. She was most distressed by your abduction.”
Distressedwas putting it mildly. There were four lesser fae bodyguards who would bear the scars of Maeve’s displeasure for the rest of their long lives. Even so, they had all been lucky Maeve had been in such a good mood when she found out about her changeling’s disappearance.
The boy sniffed, wiping his wrist across his nose. “But she kidnapped me first.”
“She recognized how special you are, and brought you to a place where your talents could grow and thrive,” Cuan corrected. “You do like it here in the fae realm, do you not? Has the Lady Maeve not been kind to you?”