“I am a guest at this court.” Cathy spoke for herself before Ferghal could make any reply. “Like you, I am recently arrived here, on business of my own.”
The knight looked her up and down, taking in her enchanted mount and the richness of her dress. “And what business would that be?”
“Matters that I do not reveal to strangers on the road,” Cathy replied. She lifted her chin a little. “And you have yet to reveal your purpose, sir knight.”
The Golden Knight’s griffin stirred, shoulders bunching. Like its master, it was watching Cathy with fixed attention, like a cat at a mousehole. Neither of them so much as glanced at Aodhan.
Good. The less attention the knight and his odd steed paid to him, the better. Aodhan drew his sleeves down to cover his hands. He crooked his fingers, ready to throw a shield over Cathy at the first sign of any threat. Just a servant. Nothing to see here.
The Golden Knight’s gaze lingered on Cathy. It was hard to read anything of the man’s body language through the armor, but the tufted tip of his steed’s tail twitched back and forth in the dust. Aodhan was certain that the pair were silently conferring with each other.
Perhaps the knight really was Betty’s mysterious seelie ally, and was now puzzling over Cathy’s changed aura and apparent status in Ferghal’s court. Then again, any high sidhe would be startled to encounter a changeling—especially one as powerful as Cathy.
“My quest is also not something to be spoken under the open sky, where anyone can hear,” the Golden Knight said at last. His attention turned back to Ferghal, though his steed’s did not. “I require passage through your wards. Once at your estate, I will reveal my purpose.”
“Of—” Ferghal started to say, then cut himself off. His gaze flickered down to his own steed. From the way Eislyn’s ears had flattened, Aodhan strongly suspected that she’d just yelled No, you idiot! down their mental bond, or at least a more polite equivalent.
Ferghal cleared his throat, a brief look of chagrin flashing across his face. “That is, I fear your reputation precedes you, sir knight. Until I am assured of your peaceful intent, I cannot allow you to pass.”
The Golden Knight’s posture didn’t change, yet the air around him chilled. “Surely you would never impede a brother knight on quest.”
“Indeed not!” Ferghal made an apologetic gesture—though not with his sword hand, Aodhan noticed. “But much as I might wish otherwise, I cannot set my own duties aside. As lord of these lands, I would be most remiss to lower the protections around my estate without proper assurances. I am sure you can appreciate my position.”
As the two high sidhe engaged in a more courtly form of “You first,” “No, you,” Aodhan found his attention drifting back to the griffin. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. It wasn’t instinctive fear of an apex predator—if it came down to a physical fight, his own horn and hooves would hold their own against the griffin’s beak and claws. His unease had more to do with a sense of discord; something out of place, like a misfiled book. The griffin felt wrong, somehow.
Maybe it was just that it was glamoured. To Aodhan’s trained eye, magic draped the beast like an invisible cloak, covering it from the tips of its claws to its feathered ears.
There was nothing particularly sinister about that, of course. All high sidhe walked around cloaked in a thin layer of illusion. Ferghal glamoured his own steed, after all—Aodhan knew for a fact that Eislyn’s hide wasn’t such a flawless white in reality. In all likelihood, the Golden Knight was simply enhancing his mount’s appearance to be more fearsome.
And yet…
Peering through a high sidhe’s glamour was about as insulting as walking up to one and yanking down their pants. No one in their right mind would even dream of doing such a thing, at least not if they weren’t looking for an excuse to start a duel to the death.
Aodhan considered himself the sanest person in any crowd, and he had no desire to have yet another close encounter with a high sidhe blade… but that sense of unease nagged at him. Taking care to keep his hands hidden, he touched his thumbs and forefingers together, starting to shape the gestures of a spell.
To his relief, Ferghal and the Golden Knight carried on their polite bickering, not paying him the slightest bit of notice. The griffin continued to watch Cathy with that unblinking, predatory stare, which she returned without any sign of discomfort.
Finishing his spell, Aodhan narrowed his eyes. The griffin seemed to blur, then sprang back into focus as the magic took hold…
And it was exactly the same. Not so much as a single pinfeather had changed. As far as he could tell, the Golden Knight glamour was doing absolutely nothing.
Or… not precisely nothing.
Even with his spell stripping away all illusion, magic still clung to the beast. Not mere glamour, but something deeper and stronger, hidden under that layer of misdirection. The spell wrapped around the griffin like a second skin.
He knew that magic. Knew it at a bone-deep level. It was written into his blood and muscle, every cell of his body.
Transformation.
Aodhan stayed perfectly still, not letting a flicker of emotion show in his face as Ferghal and his opposite number continued their verbal sparring. He didn’t dare reach for his wand or try to attract Cathy’s attention.
Keeping his head respectfully lowered, he pulled his perception upward, examining the griffin’s aura in his mind’s eye. The griffin showed no awareness of his scrutiny, still fixed on Cathy.
Transformation could alter the body, but not the soul, as he knew all too well. That was why the beast jarred his senses like a discordant note in a symphony. It was transformed, so its physical form didn’t match its aura.
Except… it nearly matched.
In growing bewilderment, Aodhan compared the creature’s aura to its spell-wrapped form. It was a griffin. There could be no doubt about that. He recognized the fundamental pattern of its nature from his own crow-cat. Its aura was too similar for the creature to be a distant cousin, like a hippogriff or a sphinx; too far apart for it to actually be a transformed crow-cat or any of the other lesser griffonic breeds.