“I will wield you, Fae weapon,” she told it. “I will use you to find the Shifters and slay their enemy. And my enemy,” she added. “In this instance, they are one and the same.”
The symphonic roar softened a little, becoming gentler, but also a little bit smug, as though the sword approved. Odd, but Brigid was not going to argue with her good fortune. A weapon was a weapon.
Thinking over Ryan’s story of how the sword had behaved in the mists, Brigid walked back to her camp. Had the sword been seeking Kenzie? Or Brigid, sensing a Fae? Or something else in this world?
No matter the cause, the weapon could penetrate the mists. What had Kenzie called it? One big magical talisman.
What had she to lose? If it didn’t work, Brigid would simply find herself back at her camp.
She concentrated on the nearest patch of mist, shimmering white in the darkness. She held the sword in front of her, point forward, and walked.
Damp air closed around her, and the fog thickened. Brigid took another step, and another. She expected to bump against the large trees she’d seen on the other side of the mists when she started, but she did not.
The air grew colder. Bone-cold, making her regret the loss of her cloak. But the darkness receded, showing her light.
It was the crisp light of natural sunrise. Brigid looked up through tall trees to a patch of sky flushed with pink, gold, and darker red, beautiful blue beginning to ease past all other colors. The trees surrounding her were massive, the air smelling of pine, the floor of the woods covered with a carpet of long brown needles and fallen pinecones.
She was out. Brigid lifted the sword and gave a shout of triumph.
In the next instant, a pair of strong arms wrapped her from behind, an equally strong hand closing on her wrist below the sword’s hilt. Brigid was pulled against a very tall man, who smelled of pine, musk, and a hint of wolf.
She looked up into a pair of deep golden eyes in a tanned face as the man said in thickly accented English, “And what are you, Fae, doing with the Sword of the Guardian?”
* * *
Bowman decided he couldn’t be surprised anymore by anything Cristian did when the man walked out of the woods into the clearing at Turner’s house, not only holding the Sword of the Guardian but towing a Fae woman by her bound hands.
Pierce came running. “What the hell?”
“I found her,” Cristian said. “Carrying the sword, if you please.”
The woman gave Cristian a cold look, betraying no fear. “I told you what happened, Shifter. What you believe is up to you.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Cristian said. “I am simply angry at you for not saving my niece.”
“I tried.” The haughty light in her gray eyes faded a little. The woman had long, white blond braids that hung past her waist, clothes of tattered brocade and fur, and thick boots for a cold climate. “He took them away.”
Bowman brushed past Cristian to put himself in front of her. “You know where Kenzie is?”
The woman looked up at him fearlessly. “Your mate, as you call each other? And your wee one?”
Bowman’s chest felt as though someone crushed it. “My son? You saw him?”
“I did. I—”
“Where?” Bowman leaned to her. Dimly he realized Cristian was trying to hold him back from her, a fact that might surprise him at any other time. “Where are they?”
“The man called Turner has them.” The Fae woman sounded sad. “He took them, I know not where.”
“How did you get the sword?” Pierce asked. He reached for it, and Cristian relinquished it to him.
“I found it. Or it called to me. The runes—”
Bowman straightened, and Cristian stepped in front of the woman as though protecting her. “Her name is Brigid. She is of a Fae clan called the Hunting Warriors, translated from her language.”
“I don’t care if it’s called the Dancing Clowns,” Bowman growled. “Why were you able to find the sword, and why were you able to get here, when Kenzie couldn’t?”
“I don’t know,” Brigid said. “I started to explain that the runes called to me.” She gestured to the sword, her hands tied with a thin piece of clean leather—Bowman didn’t want to know why Cristian had been carrying tethers around with him.
The sword in Pierce’s hands was quiet now, simply the Sword of the Guardian as it always was.
“She might be telling the truth,” Pierce said, sheathing the sword and slinging it on his back. “I’ve carried this thing around for thirty years, and I still don’t understand all it can do.”
“She speaks the truth,” Cristian said. “I can scent lies, and she has not made any so far.”
“Then where is Kenzie?” Bowman demanded.
“I do not know,” Brigid answered, unhappy. “Why not use the sword and try to part the mists again to find her?”
“That might not work,” a new voice said.