Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(76)

“True love is such a beautiful thing!” said Nidawi the Everblooming. “It has made me decide to find that odd little quirk of yours charming. I can find anything charming if I love it enough. Even mortals!”

“Pardon,” Foxbrush gasped and pulled a fig leaf down to wipe his nose, simultaneously trying to sidle away from the tree and put it between himself and the fey woman. For she was overpoweringly beautiful with a natural, breezy, frolicking sort of beauty, like a flower or a young tree or a fawn on delicate, gamboling limbs. Her hair was loose and tangled, with thick braids of moss and flowers, and her leafy gown fluttered in the wind of an oncoming storm. One could far more easily believe she had sprung up from the ground than ever been born of a mother.

But she was too frightening for words. Trying to escape her, Foxbrush rounded the tree and started to back away when he felt a gust of warm breath on his neck. His mouth opened, his lips drew back from his teeth with the desire to scream, but his throat closed up. He turned his head ever so slightly and found himself gazing into Lioness’s black-rimmed eyes.

She started to purr. Foxbrush thought it a growl and nearly died on the spot.

“Lioness has decided she likes you too,” Nidawi said. Taking Foxbrush’s hand, she turned him to face the beast. “She wasn’t certain at first, but after we talked about it, she agreed you would be a fine husband.”

Lioness’s mouth was open, her pink tongue showing hugely between her teeth. If one strained the imagination, one could believe it was a smile. But one required no imagination whatsoever to think it was a hungry expression. Foxbrush felt his knees giving out.

Nidawi caught him before he collapsed, easing him gently to the ground. Twilight was deepening, bringing with it a heavy summer storm. The first few drops began to fall, and Nidawi, seated with her arms around Foxbrush’s rigid body, tilted back her head and caught rain in her mouth. “Delightful! We shall have a drink to toast our betrothal!”

“B-betrothal?” Foxbrush shook his head, trying to find strength to protest. Despite the warmth of the evening, he began to shiver.

“Why, of course! Now that you love me, I see no reason for us not to wed. Just as soon as you’ve killed my enemy.”

Foxbrush’s head continued shaking for some moments before he could find words, during which time Nidawi laughed and stuck out her tongue to catch more rain, then suddenly turned and planted a huge kiss on Foxbrush’s cheek. This worked like a lightning bolt, shooting him instantly to his feet and out of her arms.

“See here, my good woman, I . . . I . . . I thank you for your kindly, um, thoughts of me, but I—” His hair flattened down across his forehead, and he pushed it back nervously. “I haven’t changed my mind. I still can’t marry you. Or kill anyone,” he added quickly.

Nidawi blinked. Despite the darkness, everything around her shone brightly. Her lashes caught the rain into tiny diamonds rimming her violet eyes, glittering like prisms, casting and creating gleams of light. How magical and beautiful and thoroughly petulant she was in that moment.

She crossed her arms. “If you don’t want to marry me, why were you thinking of me?”

“I wasn’t thinking of you.”

“Yes, you were. I heard you. Ever since I sent you back, I’ve been listening for you very carefully. You thought of my laugh, and you remembered it as alluring.” She grinned slyly up at him. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the memory of me. Not once you got home to your own world.”

“H-Home? My own world?” All temptation to yield (which may or may not have been slowly building in Foxbrush’s heart) vanished as he gasped out those words. He opened his mouth and roared like a young lion himself, “You sent me back into the wrong time!”

She drew up her legs and sat more primly, her face an entire world of affront. “No, I didn’t. I don’t deal in Time.”

“You pushed me! You pushed me out of the Wood, and I landed here!”

“No, actually you landed There,” said Nidawi. “Here is . . . elsewhere. If you ended up anywhere, it’s because of the Path you’re on. Nothing to do with me.”

Foxbrush opened his mouth, but nothing happened, so he shook himself and managed a weak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

He felt the breath of Lioness again. The great animal pushed her massive head under his hand and rolled it around so that he now stood with his arm up and across her neck. She blinked sweetly at him, her mouth still open as she exhaled a puffing lion’s purr.

“Um,” said Foxbrush. Then he sneezed again.

Lioness nosed him affectionately in the chest.

“Really, Lioness,” said Nidawi crossly as she scrambled to her feet. “You are too forward sometimes.” And she hurried over to take Foxbrush’s other arm, clutching it tightly. She smiled at him again, and he was nearly blinded by the glitter both of her teeth and of the rain in her eyelashes and hair.

“Please,” said Foxbrush, stepping back and trying to free his arms. “Please, I think I’m allergic to your lion.”

“My what?”

“Your lion.”

“My . . . oh! You mean Lioness?” Nidawi laughed like chiming crystals and refused to release Foxbrush’s arm no matter how he tugged. “She’s not mine! I mean, I suppose she sort of is. Are you mine, Lioness?” she asked the white lion, who shook her head briskly and padded away to lie down in a dry patch under a tree. She continued blinking Foxbrush’s way, but the tip of her tail swished quietly through the grass and over the roots.