“That is acceptable.” Selena walked over to the bed, tucked her comb and brush in the saddlebag, and secured the straps. She reached to lift the saddlebags, then let her hand drop. “Didn’t the Fae in the west disapprove of the Hunter taking a gentry baron for a mate, even if he is Fae?”

Gwynith gave her an odd look. “No, we didn’t disapprove. But then, we know Ashk.”

The bards, storytellers, the Ladies of the Moon, and their escorts stood between Selena and the stables where Mistrunner pawed the ground. Any moment now, he would charge through the people to reach her.

“Easy,” she said.

His only response was an angry snort, but he stopped pawing the ground.

The three bards took a step forward, more pale and frightened than when she’d summoned the storm.

“Huntress,” one bard said, raising his hand in a plea. “You’re leaving Tir Alainn?”

“I am,” Selena replied.

“But…how will we let you know that the Clans have obeyed your command? How will we send word? And…when the huntsmen come down to the human world, where are they supposed to go?”

“And where is the Bard supposed to meet you?” another bard asked. “We’ve already sent word that you want to see him, but we couldn’t tell him where.”

Wondering how coherent a message three frightened bards could shape, Selena said, “He can find me at the Old Place closest to Willowsbrook. As for the huntsmen…” She thought a moment. There would be losses when the Inquisitors’ army marched across Sylvalan. Villages would burn. People would die. She wasn’t going to be able to prevent all of it. She wasn’t going to be able to prevent the deaths of any witches in the path of that army. But if she could block the Black Coats enough, she could force them onto a battleground that could not only be defended but could defend itself. There were reasons why no one with intent to do harm dared enter the Mother’s Hills. “The Fae hunts-men should gather at the northern and southern ends of the Mother’s Hills, blocking the way into the midlands. Hold those roads and we can keep them out.”

“Block the roads and it’s easy enough to go cross-country,” one of Gwynith’s escorts said.

“Easy for the Fae,” Selena agreed. “But the Inquisitors and the eastern barons will have a human army. They’ll use the roads. It’s too easy to get lost in unfamiliar land. And angry land can be quite dangerous to travel through,” she added softly.

She felt the tension crackle in the air as the people in front of her realized once again that the earth magic they’d thought of as useful but harmless could be deadly.