The Nightshade Guild: Mage You Look by Abigail Kade (if you liked this book TXT) 📗

cutest little white canvas sneakers. I’d never seen her in shoes before.

“Look, you have on shoes!”

I picked up her feet and showed her the shoes. She squealed and kicked in my hands.

“They’re so cute, princess. Maybe you can walk in the forest too.”

Finn harumphed, turned, and walked to the door, pulling the baby away from me.

“We’ll see about that. We’ll never get to the forest if we don’t go ahead and go.”

“Okay, Mr. Grump, let’s go.”

Finn didn’t know that the main reason I wanted to go out was to survey the land and find out if we were safe here or not. He didn’t seem to be worried about how sick he’d been last night at all. I had seen him glance down at his leg once or twice like he was wondering what could have happened, but he didn’t question me about what had happened last night.

After thinking about it while getting dressed, I figured it must be because of my tears. The tears of my people had the ability to affect memory in paranormals. Sometimes it would be mild, and other times, it could be catastrophic. With humans, one tear could wipe their entire lifetime of memories away forever.

There was no way to recover them if that happened.

Finn didn’t ingest my tears, but a few might have fallen when I was healing him with my blood. If that happened, it might not have affected his memory exactly, but maybe he didn’t remember enough to be concerned about the situation. In this case, it wasn’t a great thing overall. If he had all the facts under normal circumstances, then there was no way he would have been leading us all into the woods without a care.

Good thing I was more than up to the job. I just needed to know what all I was dealing with.

“So, let’s walk where you went yesterday. Okay?”

Finn looked concerned a moment, then shook his head like he was dislodging a thought and nodded. “Sure. I’ll take you to the old-growth forest. Some of the trees there are over four hundred years old.”

“That’s cool! I’ve never really paid attention to trees before. What kinds grow up here in the mountains?”

And for the next hour, Finn was in his element, literally, as he pointed out all the tree species that we passed on the hiking trail down the mountain. Along the way, we saw wild turkeys picking their way through the underbrush, flying away when we startled them. There were also deer and more birds than I could count. As we hiked down the trail, I noticed the tree branches, shrubs, and even the wildflowers and weeds would reach out in Finn’s direction as he passed. I knew that was a result of the baby he carried, and I almost laughed at the panicked expression Finn had when he tried to mask the phenomenon before I could notice. As much as it happened, I knew it was a drain on his strength. When we eventually made it down to the valley, Finn pointed ahead with one hand while keeping a hand gently on the baby’s head as she slept against his chest.

“This is my favorite tree up ahead,” he whispered.

It truly was a magnificent tree and the largest oak I’d ever seen.  The trunk so big around, Finn and I wouldn’t have been able to touch hands if we tried to reach around it.

I walked up and ran a hand along its bark, feeling the life and energy pulsing from its ancient trunk.

“It’s magnificent, Finn. I see why it’s your favorite. You do love all things in nature. I love that about you.”

Finn walked up next to me and put his hand over mine, where it was still resting on the bark of the stately tree. His eyes softened as he asked, “You love that about me?”

I turned my hand and grasped his hand in mine. “I do. I’ve known you for over a year now, Finn. There’s a lot I love about you.”

Finn was about to speak, but a loud snap of a limb behind us made us both drop our hands and spin simultaneously.

“Well, well, isn’t that a touching moment. I didn’t know any of the Mages of the Nightshade Guild were queer, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, huh, Maud?”

“Yeah, unnatural assholes, the lot of ‘em. They’re not fit to take care of a baby, let alone the princess, don’t you think, Claude?”

Our uninvited guests were a haggard old man and woman, presumably named Maud and Claude. Their auras gave off waves of hate, black and vile. I knew they were Dark Fae and probably the ones that hurt Finn yesterday. Dressed in dusty black clothes that looked like they were stolen from the witches from a local production of Macbeth, they were laughable to look at, but the power radiating off them was nothing to find amusing.

“I told you we should have finished him off yesterday, Maud. Now, look, he’s all healed. We’ll never get the baby doing a half-assed job of it.”

Finn had been silent up until now, but hearing they were after the baby, he put both arms around her and finally spoke in a deep growl that would have scared me if I didn’t already know him.

“You’re not coming anywhere near this baby. I don’t know what a Mage is, but I own all this land, and you’re trespassing. You need to leave.”

The cackling laughter from the pair was not what I’d expected.

“We’ll leave, Mage, as soon as we get the babe. We’re being paid a pretty sum to bring her back with us, and we need that coin. Now we’ve been told you won’t be able to defeat us, so let’s just do this the easy way. Hand her over.”

Maud began coming toward us, and