Fae Touched

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  I’d told her I fall in love easily. I feel easily. My father gave me a hitching body, but my emotions? They flowed smoothly to the surface.

  “Do you remember when you helped me with the photo Chihiro took? The one of when the cottage moved here?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t see death.” I saw the World Tree.

  “I’m a witch, Frank.” She looked up at me. “My mother is fae. My father was a mundane man. A talented man who charmed my mother with his music and art, but a mundane nonetheless.” She waved her hand in front of herself. “I should be burning up with witch magic.”

  The mundane part of a witch resisted the magic, and like all resistors, that resistance causes problems—heat, disconnection, sometimes insanity. But not always. Some witches can channel the sparks. Most couldn’t. Rose burned up from her witch magic. It ate her body and soul and she ended her life in a fire so hot Alfheim’s magic couldn’t stop it.

  The spellwork of the cottage probably drained the magic away at night, when it closed up. It seemed the most likely—and the best way—to harness her power. It was also the likely reason neither Ellie nor the cottage brimmed with visible magic while it was open. All the work was done at night, while she fed the battery.

  She stared at the pallet and the big, fluffy cushion. “I fuel this place,” she said. “I fuel my seer stone. It all comes down to me.”

  “You’re the battery that drives the spells.” All the intricacy here, the level of harnessed magic—the entire system was in place to drain off Ellie’s natural witch overheating. The concealments, the ability to move to different locations, the reconfiguring all used up the substantial power she must produce.

  A warm breeze moved through the plants. Ellie inhaled again and blinked, as if steadying herself to walk off her own cliff. “That is my lack of poker face.” She pointed at the new addition.

  I frowned again. I wasn’t quite sure what—

  She looked up at me with the most open and trusting face that any woman ever had in my two hundred years. The most frightened, too. And the most vulnerable.

  And nothing else mattered. Not my fear concerning Benta. Not the cottage’s magic, or my lack of understanding. Only Ellie.

  She yanked at my t-shirt. I grabbed her hands but she splayed her fingers over my abdomen. I could only bring ice to this particular table. “I’m cold.”

  Warmth flowed from her palms to my flesh and I sighed.

  She touched me and my body melted under her hands and I didn’t think it was her magic. It was her. I warmed because of Ellie.

  It should be the other way. I was big and muscular and I should be the heat source on which she sunned, not the other way around.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “Does what hurt?” My entire body ached. Every major muscle group—my shoulders, lower back, hamstrings, biceps and triceps, even my ankles—always argued and complained when I was cold. I was tight but not consistently across my whole body, which caused yanking in some parts, and bunching in others. The clamminess caused the firing of nerves meant to draw attention to when a body was outside its normal homeostasis range, that “we’re edging toward danger” borderline flu-like dullness signaling a need to recuperate.

  Such were my mornings, every morning. Every day. All the time, if I wanted to admit it. The pain was a background reminder that I was reconstituted.

  Ellie pushed my t-shirt higher as she moved closer. “When you’re cold? It hurts, doesn’t it?” She placed her cheek over my heart and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “Yes.” I wouldn’t lie.

  She pressed against my front. “Let me help,” she whispered.

  I don’t quake. But I am human, and some anticipation, some excitement, found its way to my muscles. All the feral energy from the previous night roared back. All those desires and the wants that I long ago leashed because no woman wanted a corpse in her bed.

  Yet Ellie did. She did. That’s what she meant by her own lack of poker face. I could read her emotions from her magic as well as she could read mine on my face.

  She wanted me, and not just because she wanted protection inside my big, frightening bubble. Or because we hated ourselves in parallel. She wanted me because I’d put in the work and found my way to her through blizzards and concealments.

  I had to trust that she was going to put in the work, too.

  A part of me, a small annoying part, screamed like a terrified raccoon cornered against a shed. What if she got sick of the work? What if this tolerance of my corpse-like flesh had an expiration date? Then I would be all-in with disgusted fae magic.

  That raccoon wanted to return to being lost in the woods so it didn’t have to deal with the inevitable, and it would bite any hand that offered food, or comfort, or understanding.

  I pressed my lips against the top of her head anyway.

  Ellie stepped back. She pulled her nightgown up and over her head.

  My girlfriend stood in front of me naked, except for her over-the-knee hand-knitted socks and her over-the-elbow hand-knitted arm warmers.

  Every bit of my overthinking shut down. That raccoon suddenly decided that some things are worth sticking around for. I decided—my body decided—that this once, I should shut up and allow Ellie to define the moment.

  It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe it was.

  She grasped the warmer on her left arm to pull it off.

  “Leave it on.” The words rumbled out of my chest.

  The most beautiful, happy, wonderful smile she’d yet given me shone as bright on her face as the golden glow shimmered on the plants behind us. I scooped her up. The magic and its manipulations be damned. My cold flesh, too.

  Time for me to dive over that cliff, that damned raccoon headlocked under my arm, into the most terrifying waves of my two hundred years.

  Hopefully, none of us would drown.

  Chapter 5

  The sky outside had brightened—we had to be past noon—and the clouds had moved beyond their blizzard roiling and into smooth and steady. Light snow drifted down toward the skylight directly over my sunning cushion but somehow didn’t accumulate. The skylight also filtered the light, warming it more than it should under an overcast, winter sky, which benefited not only me, but also my hound, the plants, and I assumed the fish in the pond.

  The magic of Ellie’s space had been thorough when building the sunroom. It wrapped us in a cocoon of feminine comfort of soft round pillows and gentle embraces. It melted my body’s stress. It gave us a nest.

  I dozed in the warmth, sprawled on the bed-sized cushion under a sweet-scented, ultra-soft blanket, with Ellie sprawled on top of me—fully on top of me, with her arms around my chest and legs curled around mine. She breathed against my shoulder. Her auburn hair tickled my neck. For the first time in my life, a woman chose not to break contact after intimacy.

  I could stay like this forever, warm and with her. Calmed by her weight and the rhythms of her body. My beautiful, perfect Ellie.

  She snoozed and part of me was sure I was going to end up paying for this bliss.

  Marcus Aurelius slept on an equally cushy doggy bed between a seven-foot Schefflera tree and a table brimming with edible greens. The snow was letting up. Ellie shimmered in the golden sunshine. The world righted against the attacks on Alfheim. Yet I couldn’t get past the thought that on the scales of the universe the totality of my life didn’t balance with this moment.

  No one, no matter how good or brilliant or strong, was worthy of the love of a woman like Ellie.

  Her breath tickled the crook of my neck. “Hmm…” She slid her hand over my hip. “You’re warm now.”

  I chuckled.

  She kissed my neck and ran her hand up my side to my chest. “I’m going to take more photos of you,” she said in a husky hungry voice.

  The look in her eyes said she was serious.

  This is new, I thought, though it wasn’t surprising. We had no problem fitting toge
ther physically, which had made her as happy as it made me. Gleeful, honestly, and enthusiastic.

  The part where a woman wanted photos of me was new. Since the eighties, the novelty of my height and build had made me as attractive as it had terrifying. It was nice, I supposed, to be the human equivalent of a roller coaster—scary yet too entertaining to pass up.

  Ellie traced her finger along the scar across my right pec. “I’m going to find every tight muscle and every tissue pull and I’m going to fix them for you.”

  Did I want to be a project? “That’s a lot of work,” I said.

  She blinked. Her mouth rounded. “I’m half fae, Frank.” She said it as if her meaning was as clear as the sweet, bell-like tinkling from the plants around us.

  And there it was, the all-in nature of the fae.

  Ellie frowned.

  What had Arne said about his fae princess? The woman he knew long ago before he came to the New World? The one who, even though elves did not speak of the past, had made enough of an impact on his life that he was willing to speak of her now?

  She was all things feminine, son. You can’t fight that.

  I was in love with a fae-born seer. We were on this rollercoaster together. I might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

  “What happened to your father?”

  She returned her head to my shoulder. “He’s dead. A mundane disease took him.” She sniffed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My mother won’t hurt you,” she said.

  New, screamed through the back of my brain. But what the hell was I expecting? I should probably throw my hands in the air and hoot as we rolled through this particular corkscrew.

  Ellie grinned. “Frank, you’ve figured out who my mom is, right?” She waved her hand at the plants. “This isn’t some nymph’s work.” She kissed my shoulder. “The cottage and the concealments are a lot of effort for a random witch.”

  Yes, they were.

  “My mom’s never been all that open as to why the cottage moves, or why I have to deal with the concealments.” She snuggled in again. “She’s hiding me, obviously.” She shrugged. “Though I honestly think she wanted to make sure that anyone who got close to me was worthy.”

  Worthy. I reflexively hugged her.

  She tapped my chest. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  I chuckled even though I needed to get a handle on what was happening here, magic-wise.

  “I’ve long suspected she’s hiding me from her husband. I’ve never met him. He’s an ass.”

  There were a lot of high-born fae. They varied in how they interacted with mundanes and with other magicals. The most powerful had their own realms, pockets like the elven space around The Great Hall, but with the fae, those realms were kingdoms.

  The magical tooled-leather exterior of the portfolio Ellie used to carry her photographs represented one such realm. Her camera came from one, as well. So I’d always known she was high-born.

  I shouldn’t tense. I shouldn’t let real fear creep in, either. The fae were just another group of magicals. I could handle magicals.

  But I needed to know, just in case. “Who’s your stepfather?”

  Ellie sniffed. “He’s not part of my life.”

  If he knew about her, he was part of her life. “Okay,” I said.

  She sat up. “He won’t bother you. Or the elves. He’s not stupid.”

  The evasion of the question wasn’t helping my anxiety.

  Ellie sighed and looked up at the skylight. “I’m a princess,” she said. “Like a daughter-of-royalty type princess.”

  I stroked her thigh. “I figured as much.” My girlfriend was a stunningly beautiful fae princess with a terrifying family. You can’t fight that, Arne had said.

  She watched me intently for a moment as if trying to figure out what all-in meant from the fae side of the magicks. Then she sighed again.

  “My mother is the Queen of the Fae,” she said.

  “Which one?” There were several Fae Queens in the same way there were several Elven Queens. We had Dag. The other enclaves had their own.

  “Frank.” She leaned closer. “My mom is the Queen of the Fae.”

  “Like Dag’s father is the Elven Emperor?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It’s not quite the same.” Her eyebrows crunched together. “It is, though. The same. Everyone’s autonomous unless they do something that might put all the fae at risk. Then Mom steps in. I mean, would you like to spend your days micromanaging goblins and brownies? Mom and her husband don’t even interfere with each other.”

  “Who are they?” I asked softly. She clearly wanted to tell me.

  She looked toward my—our—hound. “Emperors are a pain in the ass. Except the puppy kind.”

  Marcus Aurelius responded with his own soft, sleepy woof.

  I continued to stroke her thigh. Should I start guessing? Her mother was the Queen, and she hedged. I had a few guesses, and none of them were simple, “Hello, dear fae friend! Welcome to Alfheim!” kind of situations.

  Ellie looked up at the clearing sky on the other side of the skylight. “My stepfather is Oberon.”

  I sat up. “Oberon?” It’d take more than one Elven Court to protect Alfheim from Oberon, if he decided to come looking for his wife’s wayward child.

  Which meant Ellie Jones was the witch-daughter of the most problematic fae on Earth. “Your mother is Titania,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Her mother wasn’t problematic because of her magical power level, though it was substantial. She was problematic because of all the fae, Titania—and Oberon—were the best-known and most beloved by mundanes. And if I’d learned anything from Arne and Dag, it was that magicals with mundane buy-in were forces to be reckoned with.

  “We need to tell the elves,” I said.

  Ellie placed both her hands on my chest. “This is why I didn’t say anything right away.”

  I wasn’t blaming her for not telling me the moment we met. “I don’t talk about my father unless I’m asked,” I said.

  She looked away again. “Yes, you do. You told me about him, and your past, when we had our one date. You make sure there’s no secrets. You’re a good man.”

  The night I made her dinner. “You told me about where your cottage has been.” And that she was fae-born. She’d given me the information she felt comfortable giving. No harm in that.

  “I’m sorry.” She wiped at her eye. “It’s just that…” She sniffed. “I landed in elf territory. What if they’d figured out they had Titania’s daughter in their midst? Even with the concealments, their magic is strong. If you knew, you wouldn’t have done what you’re doing now. Being good. My mother’s presence eclipses everything. And if there’s a threat…”

  A threat would have spurred the cottage to move again. “We’ll be careful,” I said. “I’ll mediate if I have to. Arne and Dag won’t hurt you once they know. They’re good with outsiders.”

  “I think they know.” Ellie chuckled. “At first, I thought your Queen was a Heimdall aspect and that she somehow heard me chewing my toast or humming in the yard through the concealments. Then I realized what was happening.”

  Arne and Dag knew about Ellie? “Dag hasn’t taken an aspect name.” Most elves with her power level owned up to their god aspect. Most of the ones who didn’t were women, though.

  Ellie leaned closer. “That’s because there’s not supposed to be more than one All-Parent per enclave. Such concentrations of power tend to lead to a disruption in elven hierarchies. Sort of like when that playwright decided to openly name a character after my mother.” She flared her fingers. “Boom! A cataclysmic shift in power.”

  Dagrun Tyrsdottir was an All-Parent? “Dag’s another aspect of Odin?”

  Ellie nodded. “She wields more power than the King.”

  “We have two Odin aspects in Alfheim?” We have two Thor elves. Magnus wasn’t our only Freyr elf, either, though the other Freyrsson was less powerful and
thus able to control his effects on mundanes. We also had our own Bragi, and a Saga, both of whom taught at the high school. And I’d long wondered if Sif the Golden was in fact an aspect of Sif, and if Benta was an aspect of Freya.

  But two Odins? “And here I thought Dag was probably a Friggsdottir.”

  Ellie reached for her socks. “That’s Sif the Golden.”

  “You know all this?” She knew more about the elves than I did, and I’d lived with them for two centuries. I reached for my own clothes.

  “I know the god aspects of all the elves I’ve photographed.” She grinned and kissed my cheek. “I know yours, too.”

  I stopped half bent over the edge of the cushion as I reached for my pants. “What?” I was mundane. I didn’t have an aspect. The jotunn thing was a joke.

  The next kiss landed on my hip, since I’d leaned away. “You’re my own personal Baldur,” she purred.

  I blinked.

  She pouted. “You cannot take a compliment, can you, Mister Serious?”

  Ellie, still naked except for one thigh-high sock, batted her eyelashes like she didn’t want us to get dressed.

  Had she just sprung a trap? Because I was caught. I’d been caught down at the lakeside, that first day. I followed my dear dog and we both crawled right into that box because we knew a damned good thing when we saw it. How many fires had Ellie jumped into for us? How much damage had she taken? I’d found a good person. A good soul.

  Ellie tangled her arms around my head. Her soft breasts pressed against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her bare back and stroked her shoulders with my sun-warmed palms.

  She kissed me deeply. “I love your lack of poker face.”

  I hadn’t told her how I felt. I had, but not since I passed through the concealment enchantments. Not since I acknowledged that I was all-in.

  Why did I keep waffling like I didn’t know what all-in meant? Like my lungs suddenly thought I was drowning on dry land? Because I’d fought for this. I followed Chihiro’s directions and I took notes and I did everything I could to remember Ellie. I trudged through a blizzard on the off chance an odd elf had actually given me good advice. All because I was in love.