Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

“Where did the crossover lead to?”

“My home, Lyonesse.” Turning away, he looked over the shadowed land. “It was the longest, bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. Our armies covered the whole valley, and we fought for days. We were holding our own, and we even had some hope of winning, as we waited for Oberon to bring reinforcements through the passageway. Then Morgan broke the passageway. He stood on that rise, over there, looking down at the battle. It sounded like the earth had cracked in half.”

“How did he do it?” she whispered. “Was it a spell or some kind of magic item?”

“I’m not sure. After that, the battle became a rout, and half our troops were killed.” With an effort, Nikolas dragged himself out of the past and looked at the woman standing beside him. “It took Morgan centuries to either break or obscure all the passageways that led to Lyonesse. Now our land is completely cut off from Earth, and we can’t get home.”

“And they can’t get to you,” she murmured. “How horrible.”

“Now maybe you begin to understand the danger and the stakes involved in what plays out here.” On impulse, he hooked his fingers under her chin and turned her face toward him. He could feel her start as he touched her, but she didn’t flinch away, not even after what had occurred between them earlier at the pub. Her skin looked like marble in the moonlight, but it was soft and warm. “Give Robin over to us. It is the safest thing for you to do. You can enjoy your vacation and then go safely home again.”

“I don’t own Robin,” she said. “As you were very quick to point out, he’s not a dog, and he’s not mine to keep or give away. I made him a promise, and promises matter to me. If he wants to stay with me, he can.” Only then did she ease her chin away from his fingers as she nodded to the dark, silent hulk of a building nearby. “And if I have anything to say about it—and I think I do—I’m going to get inside that house and claim this property for my own. This isn’t just a vacation for me. I’m planning to stay.”

She was incomprehensible. He growled. “Why would you want to claim such a cursed place?”

Giving him a wry look, she lifted a shoulder. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I need a place to call my own, and maybe I feel an affinity for broken things. I’m sorry your people struggled so terribly here, but maybe this place is actually more beautiful than your memories allow you to see.”

“How do you think you’re going to defend yourself—with these?” He reached out to touch one of the runes on her forearm.

This time she jerked away from his fingers. “You don’t want to touch that one.”

“Why not?” He gave her a narrow look.

“Because that one will burn you to the bone, and it will keep burning until eventually it consumes your entire body.” She tilted her own forearm to look down at it. “It’s kind of a magic napalm, I guess. Trust me, it’s a nasty way to die.”

“How does it not burn you or anything else it touches?”

“You mean, like my purse?” She tapped her purse to the silver rune on her skin. “It’s a defensive spell, so it lies inert when something neutral touches it. You’re not neutral. After our confrontation earlier in the pub, I’m not exactly sure what the spell would do if you came in contact with it. It’s best we don’t find out.”

He cocked his head, growing more fascinated as she talked. “A defensive spell… You aren’t worried about it melting off if you sweat or get wet?”

“These runes are stronger and a bit more permanent than the one I painted on Gawain.” She gave him a crooked grin. “I used tiny magic-sensitive silver shavings in clear nail polish for these. They won’t come off for a couple of days, unless I scratch or peel them off or take them off with nail polish remover.”

Nail polish. Polish remover. He let the foreign, feminine words wash over him as he watched the hint of mischief that played across her expression while she spoke.

“What do the other runes do?”

“Some are defensive, and others are offensive.” She held up one palm. “This one is telekinetic. It’s strong enough to knock a troll on its ass.” She held up her other palm. “This other one creates confusion. If I slapped your face with this one, you wouldn’t be able to find your car keys for hours even if they were in your pocket. I used it once on a drunk guy who tried to grope me. By the time the spell wore off, he was sober enough to drive home. They’re all one-use-only spells, and they all require contact. I don’t have much in the way of long-range weapons, which is why I miss my gun so much.”

He knew how to cast webs of confusion so that the unwary might wander for hours lost in the spell. He also knew how to cast a glamour that could snare one into believing every word he said, and how to make ancient sleeping roads speak, but he was surprised that she had learned such proficiency so young.

He said slowly, “You created all these, yourself?”

“No, not really.” She let her hands fall to her side. “My teacher taught me the basics and how to make the colloidal silver, and I have an affinity for runes, so I put the one thing together with the other and got creative. I think there might be some interesting applications with permanent tattooing, if you could stand to have the silver tattooed into your skin and knew how to renew the spells when they had been used, but I’m too human, and that much silver would be toxic for my system, so I haven’t pursued it.”

She was clever and inventive. He liked that too. He liked her, which was the biggest surprise to come out of the whole evening.

He felt the impulse to reach out and trace one of the runes and had to restrain himself. “Teach me how to cast the null spell the way you do,” he said. “And sell me a vial of your colloidal silver.”

“Why?” Now it was her turn to give him a narrow look.

“Because with your technique, I can call the eight men who remain to spend the evening together, or even a night or two. We could set one of us apart to stand as guard and even set up shifts, while the rest can talk and rest.” He paused. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do that.”

She looked shaken, as she had when he had talked of Morgan breaking the crossover passageway. “That’s all you have left, eight people?”

He felt his expression turn stony, as it always did when he focused on bearing the unbearable. “Of the Dark Court warriors on this side of the passageways, yes, just eight men—nine, including myself. Others of the Dark Court who are not warriors and have been barred from returning home are either spending their lives in hiding, or they have emigrated to other countries.”