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hadn’t stayed by her own choice. Then the anger and frustration he’d been feeling toward his own kind had turned on Dianna, who was the Lady of the Moon, the Huntress, the female leader of the Fae. She and Lyrra were the only Fae at Brightwood who had some aspect of power in them that made it possible for them to anchor the magic in the Old Place and, withenough other Fae present, keep the shining road to Tir Alainn open.
    Last summer, after part of the Clan had come down to the human world, Dianna had asked Lyrra to remain at Brightwood a few more days while she went to Tir Alainn and took care of a few things before coming back to live in the cottage that had belonged to Ari’s family. Dianna returned to Tir Alainn — and stayed there, leaving Lyrra with the choice of remaining to anchor the shining road or putting an entire Clan at risk if she left.
    It was only when he’d returned that Lyrra had sent a warning through another of the Fae that she was leaving. That brought Dianna back to Brightwood. Lyrra refused to tell him what had been said before she left, but he imagined it hadn’t been a pleasant leave-taking. And the cold courtesy with which they were greeted whenever they went up a shining road to a Clan house in Tir Alainn told him that Dianna had been spewing her bitterness over having to remain in the human world to anyone who would listen. He and Lyrra were being blamed for putting Dianna’s Clan at risk and leaving her “exiled” at Brightwood.
    The fact that no Lady of the Moon from another Clan had offered to come to Brightwood and try to be the anchor for the magic in the Old Place was telling. Perhaps that was just the selfinterest that came naturally to most of the Fae — or perhaps, despite being willing to condemn Lyrra for her decision, no one trusted Dianna enough to offer, not after she’d broken her promise to the Muse.
    He could fight the Clans’ cold courtesy with sharp words, but he couldn’t fight what was happening in Sylvalan. What he’d seen in some of the villages he’d passed through last summer and autumn had chilled him. Women wearing something called a scold’s bridle that deprived them of the ability to speak. A woman being strapped in the public square, while the men witnessing thepunishment hadn’t been able to tell him what she’d done to be treated so badly, only that it was necessary to teach a woman modesty and pleasing behavior.
    Those things had been bad enough. But something else had come across the river from Wolfram over the winter, something that made the men so uneasy they wouldn’t talk about it. Something that the eastern barons were ordering done to make sure women remained in what was now considered their proper place in society. A “procedure,” the men had muttered, to rid a woman of unhealthy feelings.
    Shivering, Aiden snuggled closer to Lyrra.
    He hadn’t been able to find out what this new danger was, but the fear of it was one of the things that had sent him galloping back to Brightwood.
    Whatever was wrong in the human villages in Sylvalan was spreading. Even a village like this one, where nothing seemed out of place, made him uneasy. More so now, when the desire to protect Lyrra was stronger than his desire to survive.
    Tomorrow they would head for villages closer to the Mother’s Hills, places farther away from the eastern border of Sylvalan. Maybe they would come to an Old Place and take the shining road back to Tir Alainn and rest for a few days. And try, once again, to convince the Fae that the human world was no longer a place where they could amuse themselves when they chose and ignore it the rest of the time.
    Because if the Fae didn’t act soon to protect the witches and help the humans protect themselves from what the Inquisitors were doing to the people of Sylvalan, none of them — the humans, the witches, the Small Folk who lived in the Old Places, or the Fae — would survive.

Chapter Two
    S tanding in front of the morning