The elf lord tipped his head to the side, as if preparing another verbal stab.
Wrexham spoke first, though, his voice so steady that anyone who didn’t know him well might have missed the thread of deadly fury running underneath his words. “She has another promise that needs keeping first. We’ve been sent out to search for a lost party of guests. Before any of us can begin another mission—”
“Oh, them?” The elf lord shook his head sadly. “Poor little lost lambs. You people are careless, aren’t you? Do you know they weren’t even carrying any iron with them on their journey?” His glance shifted and lingered for one, visibly amused moment on the frame of my broken lantern, lying uselessly on the ground nearby.
Sudden panic gripped me as I followed his gaze. Horror stories were still passed down, after all these centuries, about the vicious games that the elves had once loved to play with unprotected humans, before the last, most devastating war had finally bought us the hard-won treaty between our nations. The elves wouldn’t dare break that treaty now, after so long—would they?
But if Miss Fennell’s party had broken one of the treaty’s more obscure rules in some way, without realizing...
I didn’t need to understand the finer details of elven politics to know, without a fraction of a doubt, that the elf lord in front of me would leap at the opportunity for punishment.
“What have you done to them?” I breathed.
Every inch of my body ached to cast a spell that would banish the smugness from his face. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed that left me lying broken in the snow—and at his mercy—afterward.
“I?” The elf lord raised both eyebrows in haughty reproach. “Why, I couldn’t lay a finger on them, under the terms of our agreement. Our noble king would never hear of such a thing.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “Wasn’t it fortunate, then, that I found you, little meddler, as a reward for my good behavior?”
I sucked in a breath. Wrexham started forward.
The elf lord lifted one hand and clicked his fingers.
The spellcast bubble around me burst, and snow hurled itself against me, flinging wet, choking handfuls of flakes into my face until I had to bend over, gagging and coughing, covering my nose and my mouth with my hands. My ears were half-covered by my hood, but it wasn’t enough as the snow and wind buffeted me. It wasn’t nearly enough. And then...
I could just make out the muffled sound of Wrexham’s voice somewhere in the distance, loud and agitated. But in my head, a slithering, unwelcome invasion, I could suddenly hear the elf lord’s own piercing whisper:
“You have one se’ennight from the completion of your first mission to keep your promise to my pet, little meddler. But when you fail, I’ll be waiting here to exact your payment—and this time, no one from my nation or yours will be able to deny me. Oh, I’ve been waiting such a long time to play my favorite games again.”
The snow and wind abruptly fell away from me. In the sudden, deafening silence inside my own head, my breath came in heavy pants. Every bruise on my body ached. Slowly, painfully, I straightened, blinking the leftover wet, stinging snowflakes out of my eyes.
The elf lord was gone. My spellcast bubble was back. And Wrexham was staring at me from a few feet away, his dark eyes wide with what looked like surprise.
Or rather... Wait. His gaze was fixed beyond me. At...
I twisted, uncomfortably, to look over my own shoulder.
“Oh, I say!” The tallest of the four young women who stood clustered behind me in a rather damp-looking but festive group laughed with delight and pointed up at the troll, who stood massive and unmoving against the darkening sky. “He’s quite a big brute, isn’t he? I shouldn’t care to run afoul of him!”
I sighed, shoulders sagging, as I took in the elf lord’s parting gift. “Miss Fennell, I presume.”
Wrexham had, after all, told the elf lord that I couldn’t begin my next mission before my last one was complete...so the elf lord had completed it for me.
How terribly, terribly helpful of him.
Miss Fennell grinned as she took us in. “Come to rescue us, have you? Sent by my cousin, I assume? Very decent of you, really!”
“Indeed,” I said sourly, trying not to take in Wrexham’s expression. “Your cousin was worried about you.”
...And an hour earlier, I would have deeply relished the idea of being the one to find Lady Cosgrave’s missing cousin, without using any magic along the way.
Somehow, though, in the wake of the elf lord’s visit, it didn’t feel like quite the victory I’d hoped for after all.
There was no out-striding Miss Fennell and her friends. Young, rowdy, cheerful, slightly tipsy, and all of them apparently untouched by their experience, they surrounded us in a laughing, jostling group that—all too soon—resulted in the inevitable idea of a jolly sing-song to speed our way home.
I tried to speed my own footsteps, but it was no use. Miss Fennell looped one arm through mine and matched me step for step, heavy traveling skirts swishing about her boots, while she sang at the top of her impressively strong lungs. Wrexham had done her and her friends the basic courtesy of spelling them safety from the elements as well, so even my secret fantasy of snow falling into her open mouth was thwarted.
...Not that she could truly be considered to blame for all of this afternoon’s mishaps, I admitted sourly to myself as we marched across the snowy landscape, our party’s merry yodeling echoing loudly around the hills.
Still, so much youthful exuberance was difficult to bear with an aching body and an uncomfortable new set of regrets.
I wasn’t looking forward to admitting to Amy all that had occurred out here this afternoon. Worse yet, I could tell that Wrexham was only waiting to give me his own opinion on the matter.
That, at least, I could prevent. As he edged closer through the crowd of cheerful travelers, his dark brows bent forbiddingly, I jerked Miss Fennell forward and grasped the arm of her closest friend—one Miss Banks—with my free hand.
“There!” I said brightly. “Now we’re joined in a chain!”
“Ha! Delightful.” Miss Fennell beamed.
Her friend, a slighter girl with pale skin flushed pink with either excitement or alcohol, and what looked like fine blonde hair beneath her hood, smiled shyly at me from our newly intimate vantage point...and then her eyes widened in sudden recognition.
“Oh. Oh! Are you—? That is...”
Oh no. I felt Wrexham’s wry gaze on the back of my neck as he dropped back to wait just behind me.
There would be no escape if I released her arm now. But even my lack of answer had been too much of a hint, apparently.
“You are Cassandra Harwood, aren’t you?” she breathed. “Oh, I knew it! I’ve been so hoping to meet you. I have so many questions I’ve been dying to ask you, all about what happened to you this summer!”