Page 6 of The Filigree Key

“Do you need to vomit?” Sawyer leapt out of the foraging bag the moment the bedroom door locked behind us. “Because I will totally watch your back if you need to puke your guts out right now. I’ve got spells. And claws. He doesn’t stand a chance if he comes in here.”

“Shh!” I whipped around, placed my palms against the wood of the door, and said in a voice much calmer than I felt,

“Form a hedge so full and thick, a wall of stone and stalwart brick,

to turn away eye and ear and make observation disappear.”

The Befuddlement Spell obscured anything heard or observed by prying eyes, as if the snooper were looking through fogged-over glass. The clever individual might suspect magic hinkery was afoot, but with these old stone walls and thick wooden doors, muffled noises were more believable.

Better late than never, I supposed, and I thanked the Green Mother I’d remembered the spell after Ossian had tampered with my memory. I turned back to the cat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to freak out for a minute.”

I stalked over to the bed, snatched up the closest pillow, smothered it against my face, and screamed my heart out. All that constricting anxiety, all that overwhelming anger, all that paralyzing despair, all my control—I emptied it all out into that pillow until the damask was damp from my screams and frustrated tears.

Then, a cold calm settled over me, and I removed the pillow from my face. I’d had my meltdown, and now it was time to act.

Sawyer, who had been keeping vigil during my emotional purge, hunched into a compact ball and tucked his tail in tight. His amber eyes were as round and bright as pennies. “Meadow . . . look what you did.”

A carpet of flowering vines radiated out from a circle around my feet, crawling over the floor and rug, up the four-poster bed and wardrobe and even the walls. Hundreds of small black-eyed Susan flowers, bicolored in orange and yellow, filled the drab bedroom like a sunrise.

I glanced down at my fingertips, still glowing green, and rubbed them wondrously with my thumbs. Gold sparks snapped and fizzled at the friction. “Whoa.”

The last time I’d lost control of my emotions and magic, I’d punched a dormant—possibly dead—elm tree in the middle of the Cedar Haven Forest. Its brittle bark and dusty heartwood had seized the invigorating boost, and to my knowledge, it was still rustling in the wintertime breeze with summer-green leaves.

“So, um, this goes without saying,” Sawyer ventured, batting at a bloom that just bounced back upright on its supple stem, “but you can’t do that again.”

I swept my hand through the air, the flowering vines vanishing a heartbeat later. Not a trace of compost or ash was left behind, as if they had never been. The absorption of green life essence required less effort than it took to blink, even faster than that day on the bridge when I’d sucked all those potted plants dry to defend Flora. “Whoa,” I said again.

“Or that,” the tabby cat chastised. “Yeesh, you have me sounding like Ame now.” He shook out his fur. “Pardon the insult, but you need to be the besotted bimbo you were before your memories returned so Ossian—”

“Ossian.” Thorns threatened to erupt from my very skin at the mere mention of his name. Guess I wasn’t as calm as I thought. “He’s killed dozens of women, Sawyer. Maybe even hundreds. The portal showed me when it returned my memories—their magic and the vestiges of their lives permeate it like blood. He took it all. All for the sake of going home and taking his revenge on his brother, if that story is even real and not laced with more of his lies.”

Suddenly overwhelmed with the need to get clean, I shucked my foraging bag, then that wretched white fox-fur coat he’d given me. This very coat had been given to every witch before me—a repurposed gesture of seduction. After hurling it into the farthest bedroom corner, my hands seized the choker of rubies around my throat—this collar—as their next victim.

“Stop!” Sawyer swiped the air between us with his claws. “If he sees you without those rubies, he’ll know something’s up!”

“But I can feel them, Sawyer.”

My shaking fingers skittered over the rubies on my ears, at my throat, that big quail-egg-sized one on my ring finger. They didn’t have any effect on me like they had before I had fully joined with my magic, except psychologically. I knew they were there and what they were trying to do. I felt naked, the Stag Man’s lips kissing my neck and shoulder, his unwanted hands roaming over my exposed skin in tantalizing caresses.

“They’re like wasp stingers, pumping his lust into me—”

My knees bruised as I dropped to the stone floor and upended my foraging bag. I shook out every witchy bit and bob, frantic to find that gleam of silver.

There.

I snatched up the Celtic shield and slipped its chain over my neck. It could’ve just been my imagination, or my desperation, but I felt the metal warm. The sensation of a phantom hand trailing the backs of its knuckles against my cheek filled my heart with peace.

‘It’s a protection amulet, coded to me. If you’re willing, I’d like you to wear it. To have a piece of me with you?’ I heard that deep and steady voice as clearly now as when he’d spoken those words in my bedroom.

The influence of Ossian’s rubies lessened to a mild annoyance as the bear shifter’s amulet erected a barrier around my heart.

“Oh, Arthur,” I moaned and pressed my lips against the shield. He’d told me he could feel my emotions through this little talisman, and I poured every ounce of love I possessed into that kiss. He had to know, even as a bear, that I would never stop fighting for him.

Calmer, I rocked back on my heels and began carefully replacing all my possessions into the foraging bag. The amazonite pendant went around my neck, my magic immediately tasked to recharge it.

There was a gentle rustle as Sawyer padded across the rug. His head butted into my thigh, rubbed, then lifted so he could rest his chin against me as I worked. “You’re strong enough for this, Meadow. You have to be. There’s no one else.” He swallowed nervously. “What are we going to do?”

My answer was immediate, for I’d already made up my mind. “I made a bargain to open that portal—”