Summerkin Read Online Free Page B

himself stiffly away from them.
    Fer? Binding magic? Is that what it was—not friendship but magic?
    â€œCome on,” Asher said again gently, then whispered, “Brother.”
    Rook gave a shaky sigh. He was a puck, and they were his brother-pucks; they knew him better than anybody. And maybe they were right. He gave in, leaning his head against Tatter’s shoulder. He’d tell them everything, and it would be all right.

Four

    The bees that she couldn’t understand were a problem, and the oaths were a huge problem, and still another problem was the glamorie.
    Fer sat cross-legged on the bed in her room. During the summer, the Lady’s house, built on a platform high in the Lady Tree, was just a wood-shingled roof with walls made of billowing green silk curtains weighted at the bottom with river stones. On the floor was a green and gold rug with a pattern of leaves woven into it, and next to her bed was a wooden chest where she kept her clothes and the box her father had made out of pale wood, her leafy crown wrapped in blue silk cloth, and a broken black arrow fletched with crow feathers.
    On top of the chest was a smooth, shallow wooden bowl, and in the bowl was the glamorie.
    After the defeated Mór had turned into a giant crow and fled from the land, Fer had found the glamorie the Mór had stolen from Laurelin. The Mór had worn the stolen glamorie for two reasons, Fer figured. One, to hide what she truly was—a fierce crow-woman hunter and not a Lady at all—and two, to force her people to love and obey her. Even Fer had almost fallen under the glamorie’s spell, and she didn’t trust it one bit.
    The glamorie had looked like a tattered bit of cobweb in the grass after it had dropped off the Mór. Fer hadn’t even noticed it; one of the wolf-guards had picked it up and saved it for her. The first time she’d touched it, the glamorie had made her fingers tingle and turn cold. Fer had put it in the wooden bowl and had tried to forget about it.
    But she was going to the nathe to convince the High Ones that she was the true Lady of the Summerlands, like her mother before her. There would be a competition, one she absolutely had to win. To do that she would need all the power and magic at her command, and that meant using the glamorie.
    Fer climbed off the bed. In the bowl, the glamorie didn’t look like shredded cobweb anymore. Even in the greenish light of the room, it looked like a silver net, shimmering with pearl and ice and moonlight.
    Carefully Fer reached into the bowl. The glamorie felt cold under her fingers. With one quick motion, she grabbed it, flung it up in the air, and stepped under it as it fell. She shivered as the silver net settled over her. She blinked, and it had disappeared. But she still felt it, icy against her skin and a little prickly. Uncomfortable.
    What was the glamorie, exactly? If she looked in a mirror, what would she see? The ordinary Fer, tall and skinny, with her long, honey-colored braid coming unraveled and grass stains on her bare feet? Or would she see a tall, slender princess glowing with power and beauty?
    â€œIt looks stupid,” said a rough voice from behind her.
    She whirled, and there was Rook, crouched just beside the doorway. He was wearing a tattered green shirt now. She frowned at him. When he’d left, it had seemed clear that he wasn’t coming back. But here he was.
    â€œWhere—” she started. Where have you been? she was going to ask.
    But she already knew his answer. None of your business .
    Instead of asking, she held up her arms and turned around, showing him the glamorie. He’d said she looked stupid. “What do you see, Rook?”
    He got to his feet, scowling. “I always see the real you, Fer.”
    That’s right, he did. Pucks had clear vision. No magic or glamorie could enchant them; they always saw straight through to the truth. They spoke the truth too, but only