At first I couldn't figure out the challenge.
The creature had changed into another fae, a large male with almost human features.
His skin was the color and texture of a silver birch, some places smooth and white and others rough and dark gray or black.
His hair looked like shredded bark and hung around his face.
He wasn't ugly or horrible--but then Ariana started to shake.
Beside me, Samuel stiffened, a low growl beginning in his throat.
"Hello, daughter mine," the fae-man with bark skin said.
After that, he switched to Welsh; the accent was so obscure I couldn't tell what he said.
He raised his right arm--and I saw that it had no hand on the end of it--and petted her hair with it.
Ariana's father had been a forest lord, but evidently not the same kind of forest lord as the one the fairy queen held, because he looked quite a bit different.
The fairy queen had been using her people to weaken Ariana for this moment, to remind her of what had been done to her by this man.
But she had underestimated Ariana if she thought Ariana was going to lose this easily.
Her arms tightened on the man and pulled him next to her.
Samuel's Welsh I could understand: he wasn't talking over the phone, he was speaking slowly, and what he said was pretty simple.
"He can't call his hounds, Ari, my love.
Don't worry.
They are dead and gone.
I made sure of it.
He's not real, not real.
She doesn't have that kind of power.
My da, he killed yours.
I killed the hounds, and they are not coming back." Patiently, he kept up the refrain, giving her something to listen to other than the fae, who evidently wore the face and form of her abusive father.
I was watching the face of the witch, and I wasn't as certain as Samuel that her father wasn't real.
Witches can do some very scary things.
The first three things the fae turned into--fire, ice, and smoke--those all smelled of fae magic to me.
This one--other than the scent he bore, which was his own--this one reeked of black magic, witch's magic--and witches could call back the dead.
For three minutes, Ariana held the man who had been willing to torture her until she was mindless.
At the end of the three minutes, she could have let go and walked out of the Elphame, leaving Samuel and me to stand prisoner.
She was tougher than that.
So when her father turned into a snarling werewolf that bore more than a passing resemblance to Samuel, she went to her knees so she could pull him close and stared--at Samuel.