The King's Leash (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 7) by Katherine Sparrow Page B

return here.
    And because I believed in freedom more than keeping him from his own terrible choices, I brought him back to this land.
    He ran toward a circle of rotting stumps strewn with glitter, and sat down beside a hedgehog fae. The fae held out a pink bag to him, and a moment later the man inhaled a fistful of dust. I watched the look of ecstasy and wonder that came to him as he leaned forward and began mindlessly plucking mushrooms up from the ground. In some ways, I envied him.
    “Morgan le Fay,” a squeaky voice said, and I turned to see the mouse fae and wood nymph approaching me.
    “You look to be well along with your rebuilding,” I said.
    They nodded.
    The nymph jumped into the air and hovered before my face. “You will leave us to our domain, Morgan le Fay. You will not come here again.” For a creature all of five inches tall, she had a commanding voice.
    “I will leave you alone, as I can,” I said. “But there may be a war coming to Seattle. Between humans and unders. Between some humans who wish to control us and own us. They think they can use us for—” I didn’t know what for, not yet, not truly, “whatever they wish.”
    “We will hide,” the nymph said. “As we do.”
    I nodded. I had already asked a handful of my most trusted under friends to spread the word about this new threat across the city. But the faeries were cut off from the rest of the under community. “Hiding has always been the first defense. But it may fail. Everything may fail.”
    “Then they will find us armed to the teeth and ready for war,” Bombadrood said.
    “Excellent.” I turned and walked away from them, hoping to never return.
    Outside, Merlin stood in the rain, leaning against a metallic purple wall. “The man didn’t turn from the dust at the last minute?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Don't blame yourself, witch. That dust is a cruel mistress.”
    I sighed. I knew too well about cruel mistresses. The Grail. I mustn’t think of it but how could I not? I wanted it. I needed it.
    “And you warned the faeries?”
    I nodded.
    “We should speak about what happens when we find it,” Merlin said.
    I watched the raindrops fall steadily down. “We shouldn't.”
    “They can't have it,” Merlin said.
    “And they can't not have it. Else Arthur and Adam die, among others.”
    “And it can’t have you,” Merlin said. “I won’t let the Grail twist and ruin you again, Morgan.”
    I licked my lips and whispered, “Gods. Can we go back, wizard, to having the biggest problem between us be that you are the King of the Damned?”
    Merlin leaned toward me. “Let’s go back much further than that, to the days when you were a young and wild lass, and I was a young and wild lad, and we found each other and tamed each other,” he said. “Shall we?”
    I nodded, wishing with all my heart that his fanciful words were a true spell. Wishing there was some way out of all of this that, one way or the other, would not destroy us both.
    He kissed me and I kissed him. The world fell away and for a brief eternity, and nothing else mattered. It was all the sweeter because soon everything would come to an end.