A Court of Moss and Moonlight

Chapter 2

The heat was the first thing Brynn couldn't reconcile.

It wasn't just the temperature; it was the density of the air. In Oregon, the winter air was thin and sharp, rattling in the lungs like glass. Here, the air felt thick, heavy with pollen and the drone of lazy insects. It hummed against her skin, a sensation that felt less like weather and more like a vibration, as if the entire world was resonating at a slightly higher frequency than the one she had just left.

"Come now, Beetle-Queen," Maeve whispered, tugging on Brynn’s hand. "If we stand here staring at the horizon, the groundskeeper will spot us, and Old Thomas has eyes like a hawk and the gossiping tongue of a fishwife."

Brynn stumbled after her, her heavy hiking boots thudding awkwardly on the manicured turf. Her body felt heavy, too. The transition between worlds had done something to her equilibrium. She felt a phantom pull behind her, a magnetic drag toward the portal, as if her atoms were arguing about which reality they belonged to.

"My name is Brynn," she corrected, breathless, as they ducked under the low-hanging branches of a weeping willow.

"So you said." Maeve didn't look back. She moved with a deceptive speed, her bare feet finding silent purchase on the grass. "But you are dressed in a hard shell, and you fell from the sky. In the ancient texts, beetles are the carriers of the sun. It seems fitting."

They emerged from the tree line and the full scope of the estate hit Brynn like a physical blow.

Up close, the mansion was a monolith of grey stone and intent. It was built in a U-shape, embracing a central courtyard filled with fountains that sprayed water in impossible, geometric arcs. The architecture was a confusing mix of periods—gothic arches that soared toward the heavens, meeting the rigid, mathematical symmetry of what looked like Georgian windows. It was beautiful, but it was imposing. It shouted power. It shouted hierarchy.

"Keep low," Maeve hissed.

She pulled Brynn behind a hedge of meticulously trimmed boxwoods. About fifty yards away, a man in roughspun brown clothes was pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with clippings. He stopped, wiping his brow with a rag, and looked directly toward their hiding spot.

Brynn’s muscles coiled. The wolf inside her snapped to attention, assessing the threat. Fight or flight. The adrenaline spiked, hot and familiar.

"He sees us," Brynn whispered, preparing to run back to the trees.

"He sees what he expects to see," Maeve murmured. She didn't crouch or hide. Instead, she closed her eyes and raised her right hand, her fingers twitching in a complex, rhythmic pattern.

Brynn watched, mesmerized. The air around them didn't sparkle or glow. Instead, it rippled. It was like looking at a mirage on a hot highway. The space around them bent, refracting the light.

" Maya," Maeve breathed, the word vibrating with a strange power. "The veil of illusion. We are just a shadow on the grass. We are just the wind in the leaves."

The gardener stared right at them for a long, terrifying second. Then, he blinked, shook his head as if swatting away a fly, and picked up the handles of his wheelbarrow, turning away.

Brynn let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "How did you do that?"

"I merely adjusted the light to match the frequency of his boredom," Maeve said, opening her eyes. The green glow in her irises was fading, returning to a more natural, though still vivid, emerald. "Most people are asleep, Brynn. They walk through the world seeing only their own thoughts projected outward. It is very easy to hide from someone who isn't truly looking."

She grabbed Brynn’s hand again. "Now, run. The kitchen entrance is unguarded during the mid-day meal prep."

They sprinted across the open lawn. Brynn’s heavy parka flapped around her, sweat now streaming down her back. The sensory overload was intense—the smell of crushed grass, the dazzling sunlight, the sheer impossibility of the solid stone wall they were approaching.

Maeve led her to a small, arched wooden door half-hidden by climbing ivy. She pushed it open, and the smell of summer vanished, replaced by the cool, damp scent of stone, onions, and beeswax.

They were in a narrow stone corridor. It was dim, lit only by high, narrow windows. The temperature dropped, offering Brynn a small mercy.

"Up the servants' stairs," Maeve directed, gathering her muslin skirts. "Quietly. If my mother catches me bringing a stranger in—especially one wearing trousers—she will have an apoplexy, and then she will have the priest exorcise the house. Again."

"Again?" Brynn asked, climbing the steep, spiraling stone steps.

"I am... difficult," Maeve admitted over her shoulder. "My mother, Lady Orla, believes a woman’s role is to be decorative and silent. I have never been good at silence. My grandmother says it is because my Mercury is in a fire sign, making my mind burn too hot for polite society."

Brynn almost laughed. The blend of astrological fatalism and teenage rebellion was startlingly familiar. "My dad just says I'm stubborn."

"A polite word for strong," Maeve said.

They reached the top of the stairs and slipped into a wide, carpeted hallway. The walls were lined with portraits of stern-looking men in armor and women in stiff collars. They all seemed to be glaring at Brynn’s muddy boots.

Maeve hurried to a heavy oak door at the end of the hall, checked left and right, and shoved it open. "Sanctuary."

Brynn stepped inside and stopped.

If the rest of the house was a museum of austerity, this room was an explosion of life. It was massive, dominated by a four-poster bed draped in sheer, violet silks. But every available surface was covered in clutter that defied the elegance of the furniture.

There were stacks of leather-bound books teetering on the vanity. Dried bundles of sage, lavender, and mugwort hung from the canopy of the bed, filling the room with an earthy, spicy scent. On a large table near the window, there were charts—star charts, Brynn realized, but far more complex than anything she’d seen in astronomy class. They were circular, divided into diamond shapes, filled with symbols she vaguely recognized as Sanskrit.

"You're a witch," Brynn said, the realization settling over her.

"Shh," Maeve hissed, closing the door and throwing the heavy iron bolt. "We use the term 'sensitive' in polite company. Or 'eccentric.' But yes. I study the Vedas and the old ways. The movement of the stars, the breath of the universe."

She turned to Brynn, her eyes raking over the parka again. "Now. You are melting. Please, take off that shell before you faint."

Brynn nodded, her fingers fumbling with the zipper. Her hands were shaking slightly, the adrenaline crash setting in. She unzipped the parka with a loud zzzzzip.

Maeve gasped, jumping back. "What was that sound?"

"The zipper?" Brynn peeled the coat off, dropping it onto a velvet chaise lounge. "It's... it's a fastener. Interlocking teeth."

Maeve approached the coat cautiously, poking the metal zipper pull. "Metal teeth that bite the fabric together. Ingenious. And terrifying." She looked up at Brynn, who was now standing in her gilded green sweater and jeans.

Maeve let out a low, appreciative whistle. "By the Goddess. You have legs."

Brynn looked down at her jeans. "Don't you?"

"Not in public," Maeve laughed, moving to her closet and throwing it open. "And certainly not wrapped in blue canvas that fits like a second skin. If you walked into the village like that, the men would crash their carriages and the women would faint from the scandal."

She began rifling through the racks of silks and muslins. "We need to get you out of those. If we are to be friends—and the stars suggest we are, given that you literally fell into my life during a planetary conjunction—I cannot have you arrested for indecency."

Brynn sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress was soft, sinking under her weight. "Planetary conjunction?"

Maeve pulled out a dress of soft, sage-green linen. "The Great Conjunction. Saturn and Jupiter are dancing close today. It is a time of structure meeting expansion. Boundaries breaking. Portals opening." She tossed the dress at Brynn. "Put this on. It will be big in the chest, but we can pin it."

Brynn held up the dress. It was beautiful, simple but elegant. "Maeve, I can't stay. I have to go back. My... my pack. My father."

Maeve stopped. She turned slowly, her expression softening. "You said you came through the trees. The archway?"

"Yes."

"That archway has been dormant for three hundred years," Maeve said quietly. "My Grandmother Oona says it is a wound in the world that never quite healed. If it opened for you, Brynn, it is because your Samskaras—the deep grooves of your soul's karma—aligned with it. The universe does not make mistakes. It does not open doors for people who are not meant to walk through them."

Brynn felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. "So I'm stuck?"

"No," Maeve said. "The energy is fluid. If you came through, you can go back. But..." She bit her lip, looking at Brynn with a sudden, fierce intensity. "The Ball is in three days. The High King is hosting the Solstice Masquerade."

Brynn blinked. "Okay?"

"You don't understand," Maeve said, flopping down next to her on the bed. "My life is a cage, Brynn. A very pretty, silk-lined cage. I am to be paraded in front of minor lords and expected to marry some man who thinks the earth is flat and magic is a parlor trick. I have never... I have never met anyone who didn't belong here."

She reached out, touching the gold thread in Brynn's sweater. "You smell like pine and ozone and something wild. You smell like freedom." Maeve looked up, her green eyes pleading. "Stay. Just for a few days. Until the Ball. Show me what you know. Tell me about your world where women wear trousers and metal teeth."

Brynn looked at the girl. She saw the loneliness there, mirroring her own. She thought of the empty house in Oregon, the cold cocoa, the silence. She thought of her father in Europe, too busy to call.

Here, the sun was shining. Here, there was magic.

"I can't stay forever," Brynn said.

"Three days," Maeve bargained. "We will say you are a distant cousin from the Northern Isles. Your accent is strange enough to pass. We will hide your clothes. And in exchange..." She grinned, a mischievous, wicked expression. "I will teach you how to bend light."

Brynn looked at the sage-green dress in her hands. She looked at the strange star charts on the table. For the first time in years, the crushing weight of being the Alpha's daughter, the symbol, the figurehead, felt light.

"Three days," Brynn agreed. "But you have to explain to me why there's no electricity."

"I don't know what electricity is," Maeve beamed, standing up and clapping her hands. "But it sounds dreadful. Now, stand up. We must do something about your hair. It looks like you wrestled a badger and lost."

Brynn stood, unbuttoning her jeans. As she stepped out of the heavy denim, she felt the shift again—that strange vibration in the air.

"Wait," Brynn said, freezing. "My boots. They're covered in mud. If I track it everywhere..."

Maeve waved a hand dismissively. She pointed a finger at the heavy hiking boots sitting on the pristine Persian rug. " Shudhi."

She didn't shout it. She simply spoke the word, which Brynn somehow knew meant purify.

Maeve flicked her wrist. A low hum filled the room, like the sound of a tuning fork. The dried mud on the boots didn't vanish; it simply crumbled into dust, separated from the leather, and then floated up into a small, tight ball of dirt in the air. Maeve opened the window with a wave of her other hand and flicked the dirt ball outside into the garden.

The boots were spotless.

"Matter is just energy held together by habit," Maeve said with a shrug, closing the window. "You just have to convince it to let go."

Brynn stared at the boots. Then she looked at Maeve. A slow smile spread across her face.

"Okay," Brynn said. "Teach me that."