Plus she still had the tension coiled in her back and legs.
One of Robin’s eyebrows pulled up so high his forehead wrinkled all the way up to his little horn nub. A wry smile followed. “We need arms.” He pointed back along the branch, toward the wide arch that led back into the castle and ultimately the stores of the Armory.
He wanted weapons. While inside the castle. “Robin…”
The air popped. A gust followed.
A greenish death-stallion manifested in the center of the henge. Demon red eyes blazed. He reared up and pawed the air with his massive hooves.
The stallion brayed out a sonic shriek so loud Wrenn covered her ears.
Someone had released a kelpie in horse form into Oberon’s home.
Robin pulled Wrenn to the side. “What has she done now?”
“Who?” Wrenn asked, though she’d already guessed. Only a royal fae had enough power to cause some type of breach, and only one queen had her own private herd of kelpie stallions.
Titania was up to something.
The kelpie whipped his head around as if he had no idea where he was, or why, or how to get his bearings—until he looked directly at Robin.
The kelpie recognized Oberon’s Second in Command. He looked up again at the sanctum and his horse body language changed to that of a fae who recognized his surroundings.
“I don’t think he was expecting to end up here,” Wrenn said.
“Doesn’t matter. No kelpies in the castle.” Robin pointed at the stallion. “The order came down last night.”
So the King had locked down Oberon’s Castle to both vampires and kelpies.
Which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t care about the blood syndicate. Or the vampires. Or the dark fae involved.
A ghost of a sigil formed in front of the kelpie.
Robin gripped Wrenn’s arm as he pointed. “The henge,” he said. “It’s part of the reporting spells. It…” He inhaled as if he’d just realized he was about to tell her a secret.
Available information about the powers of royal fae was slim to none, as was information about their intelligence-gathering spellwork. Wrenn had no idea how the dryads did their slight-of-hand, or how they communicated with the land, or about their armor, or the henge.
They were spies in the service of King Oberon and she would never be in a position to understand the details of their lives.
But she knew enough to know the ghost sigil between her and the kelpie stallion was not fae magic.
“Elves,” she breathed.
Elves had engaged the Queen and caused her to let loose kelpies. Elves who likely originated in the territory into which the dryads had been sent to spy and probably had something to do with the root of their vampire blood syndicate issue.
And who were likely harboring Victor’s other mistake.
Even if they were not the North American elves, any elven magic manifesting inside his castle was enough to infuriate the King.
Robin grabbed her hand. “We need to leave,” he said.
Wrenn yanked away. “You need to send me into there.” She pointed at the sigil. “Now.” She couldn’t open a portal into the elves’ territory without entering the Heartway. Robin could. “Tell the King you felt the situation called for a paladin.”
He pouted just enough to make her worry about his feelings. Not about his health, or hers, but about a slight on his precious satyr honor. “I can’t, Wrenn. You know that.”
Yes, he could. “Yet you gave me information on the closest gate.”
His pout flickered into anger, but that quickly ran and hid under the cover of his returning pout. “So you could make an official case.” He yanked on her hand.
The kelpie shrieked. He reared up on his death horse hind legs and slammed his front hooves into the elven sigil.
Power burst off the hit, power so strong, so bright and blue, it felt like Victor’s lightning rod.
“This is an official case!” She pointed at the kelpie.
The sigil vanished, but the kelpie did not. He tossed his head and looked over his shoulder as if peering at someplace other than the henge.
“Damn it, Robin! Send me now!”
Robin yanked her toward the archway into the castle.
The kelpie looked over his shoulder and brayed out a call. Then he jumped between the standing stones of the henge. A rumbling thump filled the entire space when his hooves hit the wood of the branch.
The sound did not match what her mind expected. It echoed correctly inside the cavernous space holding the henge, but the reverberations felt off—and the timing of the echoes—as if it were coming from a significantly farther distance.
The Queen had opened a portal and Wrenn did the dumbest thing she could do while in the presence of a kelpie in stallion form—she ran toward the henge.
“Wrenn!” Robin yelled. “Don’t—”
A second kelpie jumped through the rip. Then another. They looked around in much the same way as the first had when he manifested. Unlike him, they didn’t immediately get their bearings.
The first kelpie pawed the floor and snorted at the other two. Then he swung his head toward the arch between the sanctum and the rest of the castle.
They were talking to each other, and the first one through—and the biggest of the three—was giving the other two instructions.
“Robin…” Wrenn pointed. “They’re up to something.”
Walls of golden power manifested on either side of Wrenn. She looked over her shoulder. Robin waved his hand again and the two walls merged into point about ten feet from where she stood.
He’d spun a magical wedge between her and the stallions. It wouldn’t stop them from stampeding, but it should divert them around her body. She wouldn’t get trampled.
“Run!” Robin took off toward the archway.
Wrenn looked back at the wedge and the kelpies streaming by. They growled and wailed, and split around the magic moving walls.
The wedge followed Robin like a puppy, forcing her away from the kelpies’ portal.
“Damn it.” Wrenn ran after Robin.
The two smaller pale green bodies pressed against the wedge on either side as she ran,
