“I’m not a child, Breanna,” Jean snapped. “You can’t—”

Breanna let power follow the path of temper. A wind suddenly whipped around Jean, turning the girl’s hair into a tangled mess and blowing her skirt up. Shrieking in dismay, Jean grabbed the front of the skirt, holding her arms down to prevent the men from seeing everything she wore—or didn’t wear—beneath her skirt.

Breanna drew the power back into herself. The wind died as quickly as it had appeared. “Get back to the house, Jean. Now.”

“You’ll pay for that, Breanna,” Jean said before running to the house.

Breanna’s arms were getting tired from keeping the bowstring drawn back for so long. But she didn’t dare ease back, didn’t dare give a moment’s appearance of yielding in any way. Not when Lucian was watching Jean run back to the house.

If the girl had stopped and talked with him in the woods, it would have taken so little effort on his part to convince Jean to go with him. A promised visit to Tir Alainn? Oh, Jean would have loved that. And then what? If he got her to Brightwood and then abandoned her, what would happen to her? What would happen to anyone living near that Old Place who had to deal with her? No matter how you turned that stone, there was a sharp edge that would cut someone. So she had to get him to leave and not come back.

But how?

“Listen to me, Fae Lord, and listen well,” Breanna said. “You aren’t welcome here. If you ever come back and try to persuade any of my kin to go with you—”

“What will you do?” Lucian snapped. “Shoot me?”

She heard a horse galloping toward her. A muffled sound. There was only one horse she knew that sounded like his hooves barely touched the ground, and that was Oakdancer. Which meant Liam was riding toward her. Fast.

“You won’t shoot me,” Lucian said sneeringly. “Do no harm. Isn’t that your creed?”

“That is our creed,” Breanna agreed. “But we make exceptions.”

That startled him. Unnerved him. He regained control quickly when he saw Liam rein in and dismount.

“This is no business of yours, human,” Lucian said.

Liam strode toward Breanna, stopping beside her. “I may be gentry, and I may be a baron, but”—as he yanked one of the arrows out of the ground and held it up, the top half of it burst into flames—“I’m also a Son of the House of Gaian, so any intruder on my sister’s land is my business.”

“You threaten me, the Lord of Fire, with fire?” Lucian laughed nastily.