Spellbinder (Moonshadow #2)

Morgan looked up just as the king rode by, laughing at something one of his men had said. Just like his smile, his laughter lit everything around him. Morgan smiled as he always did when he heard it.

He had not yet mounted his gelding and stood casually with the reins looped through his fingers. There was still time. The guests were assembling, and the hunt had not yet started.

“Good morning.” The woman’s voice came from behind him, and he turned to face a beautiful Light Fae noblewoman who smiled at him. Leading her own palfrey by the reins, she was dressed to ride in warm wool and furs. Jewels sparked at her wrists and graceful throat. “You must be Morgan. The king’s merlin, they call you. The famous falcon at his wrist.”

“Good morning, my lady.” Morgan bowed. “You are correct. I am Morgan. Are you ready for the king’s wild hunt?”

“Only Death may lead the true Wild Hunt,” she replied as she arched one perfect brow. “And when Lord Azrael rides, no one is ready.”

He inclined his head. “True. But in this human court, the king’s wild hunt is in honor of Azrael and part of his Yuletide celebration. As such, it should be much more pleasurable for most people than Lord Death’s Wild Hunt.”

“I love to hunt. I am Isabeau.” She extended one slender hand, and when he took it, he scanned her Power. She was a strong sorceress, but Morgan had a rare, fierce talent for magic, and she was no match for him.

If she had been wearing Azrael’s Athame, its presence would have burned in his mind’s eye, and he would never have dismissed her so casually. But she had been all too aware of that, and she had hidden the knife in anticipation of meeting him. Even then she had plotted her course with meticulous care.

Courteously, he bent to brush the air over her hand with his lips.

“Your majesty,” Morgan murmured. He had taken the Queen of the Light Court for one of her handmaidens.

As he straightened, a handsome Light Fae male strolled over. As he joined them, Isabeau gestured toward him. “This is Modred, my escort for this morn. We are much taken with your human court.”

“His majesty will be glad to hear it,” Morgan told her, his voice easy and untroubled. He had been so comfortable then, back when he first gazed upon their doom. “He was pleased when he heard that representatives of the Light Court would be visiting, and extremely honored when you chose to grace us with your own presence.”

Both Modred and Isabeau turned to regard the king. Something moved in Modred’s gaze, assessment perhaps, or calculation. Modred remarked, “He’s very young to be king, isn’t he? He must be grateful to have you by his side.”

Morgan did not reply. His gaze remained on Isabeau as she turned her attention back to him. She gave him a pretty, charming smile. “What I wouldn’t give to have a merlin like you on my own wrist.”

On the bed in the quiet London flat, Morgan stirred restlessly.

Kill them, he tried to say to the much younger man he had once been, a young man who had come to the height of his own Power just as his young king had come to the height of his. They are predators looking at the king’s courtiers like so many sheep. Kill them before they grow too strong. Kill them while you can.

But as much as he had tried to find a way over the centuries, he had never discovered how to conquer time so that his younger self could hear when he called out.

And Modred had become the Light Fae ambassador to the king’s court while Isabeau laid her plans for Morgan like a spider patiently spinning its web.

He woke in a sweat and lay looking at the shadowed ceiling until he could feel the early morning light grow outside, and the unquiet memories settled into the ancient past where they belonged.

Only then did he stir. To his own sensitive nose, he stank, smelling of chemicals and blood, so he eased himself carefully off the bed and took the metal stand with the IV into the bathroom, where he washed up.

Something, some small noise, made him turn off the faucets abruptly. Holding his breath, he tilted his head to one side and listened intently, but whatever he had heard was gone.

Still, he pulled out the IV needle from his wrist and moved to the bedside table where he had set his Beretta. Then he prowled through the empty flat, checking out windows and opening the front door to look down the length of the mews.

A newspaper lay on the front doorstep. Everything looked quiet and peaceful, just as an early morning should, but when he drew a breath, he recognized a familiar scent—the scent of a creature that had disappeared from Isabeau’s court weeks ago.

Someone she had wanted back badly enough that she had sent Morgan to hunt him down and bring back to her. That task had led Morgan to the confrontation with the knights from Oberon’s Dark Court, and it had resulted in the injuries that had ultimately set him free.

He had not been as successful as he had thought in hiding his trail. The puck Robin had found him.

The geas shifted uneasily, like the coils of a python sliding around a man’s body. Tensing, he waited to see what would happen. Would it force him to obey Isabeau’s earlier order to hunt Robin down and bring him back to her? Or would her latest words bear the greater weight?

When the geas subsided, he knew. Her last words to him were the ones that carried the most weight. He was still free, for now.

With a sharp gaze, he studied every detail of the scene—along the rooftop, the shadowed doorway of the shop across the street at the end of the mews—but there was no sign of the puck and no sign or scent of anyone else.

Then he noticed another thing. None of the other flats in the mews had received a folded newspaper. Bending with care, his gun held at the ready, he knocked the paper open. Despite what he had expected, there was nothing tucked inside.

Instead, a black-and-white photo of Sidonie Martel leaped out at him from the front page. Underneath her photo, the headline said FAMOUS MUSICIAN MISSING AFTER CAR CRASH.

A sprawling message had been written in black ink across the paper.

The Queen has her.

The words kicked him in the teeth. Morgan’s breathing stopped, then fury roared up in response.

The puck had not just found him. Robin had studied him carefully and struck a calculated blow.

Gathering up the newspaper, he carried it inside and flung it across the sitting room with such force it hit the opposite wall with a crack like a whip. He stalked through the small flat then back again.

No, he thought. By gods, no. I WILL NOT BE MANIPULATED LIKE THIS!

After centuries—centuries—he had just won a tenuous measure of freedom for himself, and he had no idea how long he might keep it. If he was going to have any hope of striking a blow against Isabeau and Modred, it was vitally important he continue to follow every avenue of research on the Athame’s geas that he could. He could not risk throwing all that away for a stranger.

Unbidden, an image of Sidonie Martel came to mind, along with her joyous, passionate music. She was so beautiful, so toweringly talented.