insisted on it, my dear.”
“Well, I want them back now.” Jessica’s determination against the silvery queen was impressive. Most mortals would be trembling in their impractical shoes in the face of such power.
Cullen felt a wary pride.
“Well, good news for you, sweet one,” the queen said. “They’ll come back to you in time, once you leave this place. But a warning, woman to woman - you may not be so eager to have them back.”
“Thank you,” Jessica said wisely.
“Take it,” the queen spat, throwing the hourglass to Cullen.
He snatched it out of the air before it could be dashed to pieces on the stone floor of the cottage. As soon as he touched it, the sand began to flow, slowly, but inevitably toward the end of this ill-made bargain.
“Good luck,” the Queen of Silence whispered.
Suddenly, they were standing in a plain meadow.
There was no cottage, no flower garden, no willow with a table set for one.
And it was full dark, all around. The moon shone brightly on a sea of grass between them and the distant hills.
“What happened?” Jessica asked. “Where are we?”
“None of it was real,” Cullen told her. “It was all an enchantment.”
He whistled for Nyx, who came galloping toward them.
“It was a prison,” Jessica whispered, as if she were only now realizing it.
He swung them both onto Nyx’s back and urged the stallion forward, wrapping his arms around his queen to warm her, and to comfort them both.
Her body was racked with sobs, and he was ashamed of the way his blood sang at each and every one.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair over and over. “I’ve got you now.”
7
Jessica
Jessica awoke as the big horse slowed to a trot.
She must have fallen asleep in Cullen’s arms.
It was still dark, but the fiery pink of the coming dawn silhouetted a huge castle on the ridge just ahead.
The entire structure looked to be made from boulders of darkest granite. The massive edifice loomed over them as if it were about to eat them alive.
“Where are we?” she whispered.
“This is Ravenstone, where my brothers and I grew up,” he told her. “We need to stop here to pick up a few things before we go back to your realm.”
“What things?” she asked.
“Personal effects that belong to my brothers,” he told her cryptically. “It will make it easier for me to… convince them to return.”
That sounded a little sinister.
But he had explained that his brothers where the ones who had ganged up on him and sent him back to be trapped. That explained what he was doing in this realm, and how he’d found her.
But how did I get here?
She still had no answer to that question.
Cullen dismounted and offered her his hands.
Something about the castle was deeply foreboding, but it wasn’t like she had someplace else to be.
She put her hands in his and allowed herself to be helped down.
Nyx whickered and nudged her hip with his velvet nose.
“Hi, big guy,” she murmured to him, patting his warm cheek. “You must be hungry.”
“Wow,” Cullen said. “He’s not super friendly to people.”
“Of course he is,” Jessica scolded. “Don’t listen to him,” she told Nyx. “You’re very charismatic.”
The horse nudged her chest and she scratched behind his ears.
“Your majesty?” a refined male voice floated their way from the doors of the castle.
“Fuddleman,” Cullen called back. “Excellent timing. Nyx needs attention.”
The little man hurried their way, lit by the first rays of daylight as the sun crested the ridge.
Jessica could see that he was human shaped, but barely half her height, with enormous ears and bushy eyebrows. He wore a crisp suit of livery, tailor-made for his small stature.
“Right away, sire,” Fuddleman said. “And may I ask who the lady is?”
Jessica smiled as Fuddleman gave a deep bow that put him at about shin-height.
“You may not,” Cullen replied coldly. “You may attend to the horse. We’ll need him back again shortly.”
Jessica held in a gasp at his unnecessary rudeness.
But Fuddleman only smiled.
“Come along, Master Nyx,” he said to the horse.
Nyx snorted and half reared in complaint.
But the tiny butler merely placed a comforting hand on his foreleg and then headed toward the low stone building beside the castle. “Come along, princeling,” he told the horse in a good-natured way. “I’ve got oats waiting for you, and the grooms are going to spoil you with apples when they think I’m not looking. Just you wait and see.”
For all his bluster, Nyx trotted along, ears pricked forward so that Jessica almost believed he