before my eyes had time to adjust to the bright sunlight.
I blinked. Normally my eyes liked Faerie, but I couldn’t step into bright sunlight and not expect some time for adjustment. I hoped Falin and Dugan were adjusting faster than my damaged vision because I felt rather vulnerable, promises of safe passage or not. Falin clearly agreed. His fingers tightened around mine and then jerked me lightly sideways. He released me and I felt more than saw him step in front of me. In the shuffle I lost contact with Dugan as well, so I was suddenly alone and blind. That was not cool.
The voice that had spoken hadn’t sounded particularly threatening, but it also hadn’t sounded very welcoming and it definitely hadn’t sounded like the Summer King. Not that I actually expected the Summer King to be hanging out at the door to his court waiting for us. There were surely guards on his door like winter had stationed at hers. Had the king informed his people we were coming? He hadn’t seemed particularly concerned with expediency. For all I knew he was still lounging in the clearing where we’d spoken to him through the mirror.
A few more blinks, and my vision finally cleared. I’d expected with the amount of sunlight that we were in a field or maybe on top of a hill of heather. Instead there were earthen walls around us, flowering vines growing down them in thick curtains of green with bright flashes of color. Above us, the ceiling—if there was one—was lost to the bright sunlight. The floor under us was all greenery, but we were definitely in some sort of hall, the structure not that dissimilar from the winter halls, if completely different in decorating choices.
A small cluster of what could only be guards stood in front of us. In the winter court, the queen’s guards were nearly indistinguishable from each other, their features hidden in magical cloaks and ice armor, but these summer guards could not be more different. A small pixie with armor stitched out of leaves and reinforced with acorns held a doll-sized blowgun in her small hands and hovered just out of reach at the height of Falin’s nose. A fae who appeared to be more boulder than flesh and stood no taller than my knees carried a stone club that he held in two thick hands. A pale, wispy fae with dried leaves in her hair and a paper-thin tunic that reminded me of birch bark brandished no weapons at all, but I had the distinct impression that she could kill with a single touch of her spindly fingers. A satyr with a bow and some form of draconic beast that I wasn’t certain if it was more pet or person rounded out the group of guards.
Yeah . . . I definitely wasn’t feeling particularly welcomed.
“We’ve been invited by the Summer King,” I said, since neither of my companions had said it.
“Have ye now, lass?” the boulder fae said, and his deep gravelly voice was the same as the one that’d spoken when we’d first stepped through the door. “You’d think we’d be informed of something like that.”
“I believe we are about to be,” the pale, wispy fae said. Her voice was thin and raspy and had the same quality of the wind-through-the-reeds sound very faded ghosts sometimes displayed. It was extra eerie coming from a living throat. She turned, lifting a hand, and a brilliantly colored bird landed on one of her long fingers. It chirped softly, and her head nodded, making the dried leaves in her hair rustle. “They are, in fact, invited guests.”
The tiny pixie chittered, diving toward the bird. It ruffled its feathers, hopping from one foot to another. It responded with a few short chirps, and the pixie chittered again, gesticulating toward us with her small hands.
The birch woman, who could clearly understand the language of both the bird and pixie, shook her head. “It is the word of the king.” She looked at us. “Come, I will escort you.”
She flicked her long fingers and the bird took flight. Then she turned and took a long but unhurried step forward. She made no sound aside from the rustling as she moved, but as I watched her sluggish progress, I realized that every time she put down a bare, slender foot, roots shot down into the ground and broke away when she lifted her foot again.
The progress we made was slow, and the halls of