He was a better fighter than I was, but he wasn’t faster than me. Nor was he as motivated, and I think he underestimated me. He thought he was fighting a girl with a stick when he was fighting Adam’s mate, Coyote’s daughter, armed with Lugh’s staff.

As I closed with him, I hit him hard in the abdomen with the end of the stick. I think he let me make the hit because he started to do . . . something. I expected the stick to bounce back off his armor, and was ready to roll to the side, but the walking stick stayed where it was—and so did the male. In my hands, the walking stick came to life. I felt its outrage that someone would have attacked us without provocation. It had never spoken so clearly to me before. I couldn’t tell if it was the blood or Underhill, though both sang through the old wood.

The male fae froze where he was, and the stick finally pulled free, the spearpoint black with blood. The point was longer and thinner than I’d ever seen it. The fae man fell to the ground and didn’t move. He was dead by the spear and by the magic in the walking stick, and his death greatly satisfied the old artifact.

Kevlar was no match for a spear made by Lugh.

But there was no time to wonder about the stick. Adam was fighting the Widow Queen. He’d bloodied her leg, but had taken a slice in return along his side that was bleeding badly. The female in silver was lying on the ground, her head and shoulder burned away. Aiden lay on the ground not far from her, unconscious or dead—I couldn’t tell which.

The final fae, the male in gold, struck at me with his sword. This one had some magic in it; I could feel its hunger. It was a short sword and more agile than the broadsword had been.

The walking stick had, once before, used me to fight. This time it was more of an inspiration, using things I already knew. I wasn’t the walking stick’s puppet this time; I was its dance partner. It was like the hunt song, like a dance in which my partner was the more skilled of us, and I followed his lead. Step and duck and thrust and parry blended together as called for by our dance, in a syncopated rhythm that followed a random beat to keep our opponent from catching our dance step. It would have been fun—I could feel the walking stick’s joy—but I remembered Aiden’s crumpled form.