Give Me (Wyrd and Fae #1)(46)
Turn the page for an excerpt of the second book in the TETHERS series, Bride of Fae
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Bride of Fae
Book 2 of the TETHERS series
Mischief Night
1876
Donall James Utros Cade Bausiney, Lord Tintagos, sat bolt upright, awakened by prankish laughter. What was that sod Sarumen up to now? In the dying fire an ember crackled and fell. Donall recognized the fireplace. The mantle clock read a quarter hour before midnight. He’d been asleep less than two hours. He let out a relieved breath. He wasn’t at Shrewsbury. He was in his room at Faeview, home from his final term at school. He never had to see his dorm’s obnoxious head boy again.
Faint noises sounded somewhere outside, and Donall held his breath to listen—for what? A rustling of wings. An echo of fairy song. Tonight was Mischief Night when the Dumnos fae, according to legend, left their woodland home and trooped en masse to play in the human world. Not that he believed the superstitions of country villagers.
In these times everything could be explained by science and mechanics, not wyrding spells and fairy curses. Magic had no place in this age of progress and invention, of telegraphs and telephones and trains that crossed continents in fewer than four days. Donall wasn’t a mystic, and he was certainly no ghost romancer like his father, the earl. Donall read Trollope, not Coleridge.
And yet…he would always prefer the mists of Dumnos to the Shrewsbury sun.
The floor was cold on his feet as he crossed the room to open the curtains. Moonlight streamed in through the window, and for a moment he really thought he might see one of the wyrders or ghosts or fae of his childhood imagination. The moon was bright enough to go abroad without a lantern, but the locals would be safely indoors, not wanting to meet a fairy on the road.
No surprise there. In Tintagos Village, the vicar’s Sunday sermons were well-attended, but on every other day the people still talked to Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Everyone knew somebody who had heard of someone who’d once seen a fairy or had been touched by the Dumnos ghosts, or whose grandfather or great great aunt had received a service from a wyrding woman. Tonight those stories were told in every Dumnos household.
Donall, you choker. Nanny’s got you boggled.
The stories were told at Faeview as well. Earlier he’d visited the nursery to eat holy cakes with his little sisters and to hear Nanny’s Mischief Night story. Now that he was eighteen, he ought to beg off the ritual. Perhaps next year, or perhaps not until he married. It was Bausiney tradition, after all. Someday he’d be the earl, and his children’s hearts would delight to the annual recital of the tale of the Dumnos war between the wyrders and the fae.
Modernity found purchase everywhere but in Dumnos, where mind had no power over heart.
There it was again. Coarse laughter, faint, but definitely not imaginary. And pipes and drums. His pulse quickened. He was positive he’d heard music, but still nothing moved outside his window. His feet were freezing, and he returned for his slippers under his bed.
“Admit it, Aubrey.” A man’s disembodied voice sounded in the fire, over the embers. “I’ve won.”
“Not so fast,” said another. “You didn’t drink the full measure.”
Donall half leapt and half stumbled backwards, his heart pounding. It couldn’t be the Dumnos ghosts. These voices were both male.
“And you haven’t danced three circles,” said a third voice, a woman.
Donall slapped his forehead and laughed at himself. The voices were not emanating from mystical creatures. They were being funneled down the chimney and amplified in the fireplace. The servants were on the roof.
“And you haven’t said the words!” the female said.
Recklessly loud. And drinking. On clear nights this time of year, the Faeview servants liked to go up on the roof. They believed a glimpse of the northern lights would bring them good luck through the winter. Donall had once asked why this was tolerated. “Let them be, so long as they’re quiet,” the earl had said. “It does no harm and feeds their souls.”
Donall had never thought of the spiritual life as requiring attention and nurture—submission to the vicar’s weekly sermons generally left him more depleted than enriched—but the romance of servants creeping up the back stairs for a glimpse of the heavens’ mystical show had instantly secured a fond corner in his heart. He sighed and put on his robe. He had better warn them to take care. If the earl and countess were disturbed, this would not end well.
In the robe pocket his hand brushed against Nanny’s last holy cake, a dry lump of flour and water with salt crossed over the top—guaranteed to thwart the very devil and his disciples on this most dangerous of nights. So armed, he made way up the back stairs.
In the stairwell, the music was loud. They must be drunk. Donall opened the rooftop door to the clear night, the moon a bright disk and the stars blazing. His lungs filled with cold air, and he jammed his hands into his pockets for warmth. The revelers at the north corner didn’t notice him, but he saw them clearly.
His heart leapt into his throat, and he dove behind a half wall that jutted from the parapet, clenching his fists and crushing the poor little holy cake.
Fairies!
At least a dozen of them, cross-legged in a circle playing flutes and pennywhistles and drums. In the air above them, two spun around each other. Their gossamer wings glittered in the moonlight, and their bodies shimmered under skin-tight gauzy material that made no mystery of their female features.