Shadows and Light

but—”
    “They’re more comfortable than you seem to think,” Padrick said sharply. “Mother’s tits, Ashk. The farm folk don’t leave trinkets or other little offerings in order to placate the Fae as they might do in other places. They do it in the hopes that whoever they’re leaving it for might show up while they’re still there, might talk with them a bit. Do you realize how many of them showed up at Neall and Ari’s door when they arrived here last summer, offering a bit of baking or a dish of food? How many of the men gave up a day of working their own land to help Neall? How many of the women came to clean the cottage because Ari was still too fragile to do the heavy work by herself? Those things weren’t done out of fear of the witch and the young Lord of the Woods. They were done because the people wanted to know Ari and Neall.”
    Ashk looked down at their joined hands. “I didn’t realize. Not completely. The truth is, I’m still not comfortable being around most humans. Many of their ways still seem strange to me.”
    Padrick put his other hand over hers. “It hasn’t been so many years that both sides have tried to know each other more openly. Before that, we were always aware of each other but, for the most part, always apart.”
    “I’ll stay at the manor house. It will be good practice for me to deal with the people when you’re not there to take care of things.”
    “No,” Padrick said firmly. He paused. “My people are servants or farmers. In the village, they’re merchants and tailors and seamstresses and bakers. They’re good people, but... they’re not the Fae.

    They don’t grow up with a bow in their hands. While I’m gone, it will ease my heart to know the children are safe here—with you.”
    “If I make that promise to ease your heart, what will you promise to ease mine?” Ashk asked. “Where you’re going, you’ll find no safety in the woods.”
    “I’ll take care, wife. That I promise. And I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
    When he leaned forward to kiss her, she turned her face away, then put one hand on his shoulder to let him know she wasn’t refusing his touch but there was something more to say.
    “My grandfather is in the woods.”
    “I thought that’s who you had sent the children to see before the feast,” Padrick said. “I’m sorry he didn’
    t choose to join us. Was he feeling poorly after the journey?”
    She felt herself stepping away from the light, going deeper into the shadows of the woods, could almost hear blood dripping from her knife onto the leaves beneath her feet. Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon. Soon.
    “The old Lord is in the woods,” she repeated, putting a sharper emphasis on the words. “He hasn’t come to the Clan house. He hasn’t changed to his human form at all since he arrived.”
    “I see.”
    But he didn’t see. Not really. His Fae heritage had lain dormant inside him—and might have remained dormant if they hadn’t become lovers, if it hadn’t been awakened by the continued presence of her strength and particular gift. He understood her Clan better than she understood his humans, but he didn’t understand this.
    Padrick took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’ll talk to Forrester when I stop at the manor house to pick up my saddlebags. He and his gamekeepers will keep an eye out for your grandfather.”
    “It’s not that—but I’m grateful to you for thinking of it.”
    Ashk closed her eyes. Pieces of the past few days were swirling around in her mind, trying to form a pattern. She just couldn’t see it yet. “First Morag arrives. Why here? Why now? Did she truly choose the road at random that led her to this Clan, or was her gift guiding her here, so subtly she still doesn’t realize she was summoned? Then my grandfather, the old Lord of the Woods, arrives. There’s something he knows, something he senses. But he keeps to his stag form, stays in the woods because it’s the clearest way he has to show me whatever it is that brought him here. And you’re approached by a sea merchant whose family has ties to the House of Gaian. They’re all connected. Somehow.” She shook her head.
    The pattern won’t come if you try to force it. Think of something else. Her eyes snapped open. “
    Curse the barons’ council twice over! You won’t be back home in time for the Summer Moon.”
    Padrick studied her carefully, as if trying to decipher her change in mood. “And will you go out