Robin stirred. “You are not allowed—”
The big one rammed his head into the wall.
“Stop!” Wrenn yelled. They might actually hurt Robin with all the slamming.
The one called Ranger ignored her pleas and ran his hand over the wall.
The concealment spell hiding the Gallery of Artifacts cracked like glass. A splinter fell off and clinked to the floor as if it had been made from the finest leaded crystal like the doors to the practice room.
A ball of magic formed around Ranger’s fist and he, too, hit the wall.
The entire spell shattered.
Wrenn cringed. A claxon alarm bonged.
Ranger dashed through the opening. The big kelpie dropped Robin and followed. The other one looked at Wrenn, then at Robin.
“What are you idiots trying to steal?” Had that vamped kelpie said anything about kelpie artifacts? She couldn’t remember. “Who are you working for?”
The remaining one made a rude gesture, then also sprinted into the Gallery of Artifacts.
Wrenn ran to Robin. “You okay?” She untied his hands as she watched the kelpie disappear around a stand of staves.
She looked around. “Where’s the Royal Guard?” Someone with authority to enter a walled-off pocket of terrible weapons should have shown up by now.
Robin pulled himself to his hooves. He slapped a hand against her forehead then pushed her toward the hole in the wall and the new entrance in the Gallery. “I’ll tell the King the situation required a paladin.”
Without a fae guide, she could get stuck in there. “But…”
A ball of magic formed around his hand and he tossed her through.
Chapter 9
The fae were particularly good at spellwork that warped space and time. It was pretty much all they did—or at least all they pretended to do. Casting an illusion of doing the warping and bending was usually as good as actually doing the work.
Illusions saved magical energy. Saved energy provided a strong tactical advantage—an advantage often nullified by her ability to see magic.
Nine times out of ten, Wrenn Goodfellow could tell illusion from structural spellwork. Inside the Gallery of Artifacts, the illusions were the structure.
The inside of the Gallery was at least ten times bigger than the room’s possible space, and extended so far from the entrance that the back wall was not visible. It wasn’t, though. Wrenn knew it wasn’t, yet it was.
The only explanation that made any sense was that the Gallery was a small pocket realm anchored to the castle. As a realm, its internal space didn’t fit into the room where it “lived.” And just to make things more fun, the realm itself was full of illusions making it look and feel significantly bigger than it actually was.
And all the illusions served as alarms, tricks, and traps.
She looked over her shoulder at Robin on the other side of the hole. He must have done something to hide her from the guard spells inside the Gallery. She looked back at the three kelpies disappearing between the display cases.
They, too, hadn’t set off the alarms.
To her left, a row of modern-looking display cases formed a line into the endless shadows at the far end of the Gallery. Behind the cases was a wall full of mostly bows and arrows, with a gun or two thrown in.
These were not the displays around the entrance. When Robin had brought her in before, the antechamber had a wide arch over an open display floor. Everything there had been fae in origin, and of the exquisite work Oberon liked to show off.
Every single object in this area glowed with magical light, some so brightly she had a difficult time telling if the object was a blade, or an arrow, or even a whip. Most of the objects carried multiple layers of magic beyond their inherent enchantments.
More of the alarms and traps. Some were glowing so brightly because they were purposefully hidden under an illusion, like the mask in the display case just inside the door. It looked kami, but she could tell immediately that it wasn’t—someone had tooled leather to look like a blue demonic oni, but it wasn’t a real oni, nor was it even a good fake. And the magic around it was one hundred percent fae.
But it grabbed her attention. She tried to look around, to perhaps spot the real kami artifact it was meant to help conceal, but the bright blue color and the flat-out gall of such fakery made her want to punch the display case.
Which was probably the point.
She turned her back to the mask.
And there, directly across from the overtly melodramatic display of a fake kami artifact, was another display case, this one holding an obviously fake dolphin-headed Viking arm ring. It, too, made her want to hit the case.
So in this part of the Gallery, guard spells went full-in on the contempt of all the other magicals. Every single display case here was full of distractingly audacious bits of illusion meant to piss off pretty much anyone who got this far inside.
The kelpies had run right by.
In the shadows at the far end of the Gallery, a kelpie kicked another case.
“Hey!” she yelled as she shaded her eyes from the magical glare permeating the Gallery. How much power would this merry band of morons gather to themselves if they stole heavily enchanted weapons? She looked over her shoulder again. When would the castle Royal Guard—
She turned her head back to look into the Gallery and the big kelpie hit her with a straight-on jab to her nose.
Something cracked and pain blossomed from the bridge of her nose, but she didn’t falter. She slid her foot back and held her ground.
Wrenn wiped away a drip of blood and sneered at the kelpie over the back of her hand.
He blinked, and for a second he looked frightened.
Her nose had already begun to reset itself. “We’re not near your loch, you dumbass,” she said. “So what little enthralling ability you might have had
