“We will get this sorted,” I said. “And stabilized.”
“Hmmm…” She kissed me again. “Make me happy first.”
Yes, this was what I’d fought for. This was what I’d wanted even before I left my father on that ice floe. A partner who wanted me—all of me—no matter how I lumbered through this world.
Ellie giggled when I flipped her onto the cushion. “We’re going to need to go back to my place, you know.” I nibbled on her neck, which elicited a sigh. “My perfect, time-stealing fae princess.”
This was what Arne meant when he said you can’t fight that. One can’t fight the arms of a fae who freely gave her attentions. And no matter the rollercoasters, or waves, or whatever, I’d be a fool if I tried.
Chapter 6
The winter slapped us in the face the moment we stepped outside. Low flat gray clouds, the kind that don’t break up so much as stop being when they run out of snow, still drifted over Alfheim. Not a lot of new flakes fell. The wind, though, had picked up again and continued howling as if Fenrir himself had slipped his bonds.
Ellie swore as she pulled her hat lower over her ears. “How do you live here?”
Once Ellie and I stepped through the cottage’s gate, I knew exactly where her cottage was in relation to my cabin, the lake, and the road. All this time, Ellie had been nestled into a stand of birch and cedar less than a quarter mile from my home, on a small rise in the dead center of the peninsula that separated my place from most of the new lots.
I came this way almost every time I went out to look for Marcus Aurelius. I’d walked by her gate at least thirty times.
My hound bounded happily by, obviously more excited about the snow than Ellie. His favorite humans were heading back to his primary living space. What else could a dog want?
“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Marcus Aurelius likes it. Could be worse. Snow won’t stay anyway. It’ll melt by tomorrow afternoon.” Samhain was too early for sustained snow cover these days. When I first walked into Alfheim, it wasn’t. But now? Mundanes were destructive to the natural world.
Ellie stopped trudging through the wet, deep snow and shook her foot. “I need new boots.”
“We’ll go into town. Roads should be clear by now.” Nothing Bloodyhood’s new plow couldn’t scrape off the driveway anyway.
I needed to check in with the elves and figure out some way to let them know about Titania. Maybe. On one hand, they should know, but on the other, with the concealments, “knowing” might end up being more panic than contemplation.
Unless I figured out how to permanently break the enchantments.
Ellie asked a continuous stream of questions about how best to outfit her and the cottage for a Minnesota winter. “I wonder if the cottage would allow solar panels?” She looked over her shoulder. “I’d like a laptop.” She gripped my arm as we moved around snow-heaped bushes. “And a regular camera. A DSLR. And a warmer jacket.” She hitched the strap of her backpack up her shoulder.
Mostly, though, all the little domestic desires and all the small changes felt needed, but not needed in a way that was being forced on me as a time-consuming to do list. She trusted me to pick out a camera, and to figure out how to wire her cottage to take solar panels.
Before any shopping, we needed to make sure Arne had taken care of Dag. She’d been injured when I left and was probably getting yet another cast on her wrist at the clinic right now. Then there was the question of the other elf, the one who’d helped me find Ellie. I couldn’t remember how he looked, beyond a strong sense of different. I couldn’t remember his name, either, even though I was sure he’d told me.
He’d helped the kids, too. Protected them, somehow. If only my brain would bother to remember.
Perhaps Ellie’s concealments were still messing with my head. Either way, my gut said to tread lightly with the unknown elf.
She squeezed my hand through our gloves. “I follow this path every time I go to your place. Now that the cottage has accepted you, you’ll be able to find your way back with no problems.”
There’d be issues, of course. Would the cottage let me bring a ladder down the path? The roof near the chimney needed a looking-at before we started thinking about solar panels. Could I bring Sal? Ed? No elves, obviously. Where was the actual edge of what the concealment enchantments would allow? And was there a way to make sure the cottage truly anchored here? I didn’t want to accidently scare it and cause a move.
The storm remnant still fritzing at Alfheim suddenly coiled down the sides of my neck, under my jacket, and to my chest. I’d been so focused on the all-in nature of fae magic that I hadn’t thought about the possibility that it might get miffed and do something passive-aggressive the first time I wasn’t able to spend the night.
Or fold me into the enchantments so all of Alfheim forgot me, too.
What was I getting myself into? I’d find out soon enough.
Ellie ran her hand over the trunk of one of the two big oaks that acted as a semi-gate between my property and the wooded area of the peninsula. “The other girl, Akeyla’s friend, Sophia, right?”
My phone chimed. We were far enough away from the cottage’s orbit I could check my messages. “Ed’s daughter.” I pulled out my phone.
“She’s touched.”
Which was pretty obvious from what happened when the kids showed up with Sal. “She remembered you. Jax didn’t. Akeyla, neither.”
Six messages, two from Arne, one from Maura, one from Remy, and two from Bjorn.
Ellie nodded. “It’s not a clean touch,” she said. “Not a direct descent from a hero kind-of-thing with one specific god. I swear there’s more than one kind of magic mingling in her blood. Like she’s an actual, honest-to-all-the-pantheons melting pot.”
All the kids were. The whole town was, even if no one here really thought about it, or cared. A lot of the mundanes would get mad, too, if you disparaged the purity of their Scandinavian heritage. Here, the elves were elves, the mundanes were good Norwegian Minnesotans, and kids these days were as confusing as the weather.
I held out my phone. “Looks like I should call in.”
Ellie nodded. “I need to take more photos,” she said.
My old backpack, the one with the stain on the pocket, had become Ellie’s favorite camera and portfolio carrying bag. I doubted she’d give it back. Not that I’d ask. Next she’d be stealing my t-shirts to wear as nightgowns. Which I wouldn’t mind. I’d never had a woman borrow my clothes before.
When I realized Ellie was watching me ponder losing my clothes, she smiled and squeezed my hand again.
A beam of sunlight pushed through the clouds and a snowflake caught the light. I instinctively turned toward the little glint, but it was gone before I could make sense of it. “Dancing snow,” I said and pointed.
A second glint burst on and off just off my cheek, more like a firefly than crystalline water, then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth in the shadows of the trees.
The lights popped on and off like fireflies, and so quickly I wasn’t getting a strong sense of magic around them. They had to be magical. The storm should have killed all the insects and sunlight could only catch so many flakes.
And the only thing I could think of capable of causing twinkling in Alfheim’s air was uncontained low-demons like the ones Dracula used. Low-demons the elves eradicated.
Ellie stopped walking. “Frank…” she said as she stepped in front of me.
I pulled her close to my side. “My cabin is on the other side of the trees.” The side of the house and the path’s access to the deck were no more than fifty feet ahead. But we had deep snow to deal with, and running wasn’t really possible.
“Marcus Aurelius! Go!” If Maura was home, he’d bring her down the path. “Bring Maura!”
My dog barked once and ran for the cabin.
“I don’t think we’re dealing with low-demons,” Ellie said.
What else could they be? Enchanted gnats?
One
of the flickering points of light manifested directly in front of my face, then flitted to the side to give me a clear view of the snow-covered brambles and low-hanging tree limbs between us and my home.
Two willowy figures stood on each side of a large red oak tree. They were fae, but not just any fae.
We had dryads in full armor between us and my cabin.
Chapter 7
Red oaks don’t shed their leaves in the fall, and this particular tree held onto its hand-sized leaves in abundance. Each one had curled and dried to a warm, leather-like bronze that rustled in the winter wind. Those leaves sheltered many a small critter.
The oak towered over the path as one of the brilliantly grand guardians surrounding my home and lake.
The two fae standing on either side of its trunk carried the same sturdy, tall strength. Their armor shimmered with the white of the snow and the gray-blue of the sky even as it carried the roughness of the tree’s bark. The rough surface coiled down the plating over their thighs, onto the worked leather of their boots, and into the snowpack as if the fae were as rooted to the ground as the oak.
Their helmets shadowed blue-rimmed eyes and carried magnificent racks of antlers textured more like the leather-ish winter oak leaves than anything produced by a stag. Their magic danced close to their bodies like snow blowing in the wind. It hid their true heights and gave me the sense that the two bodies in front of us might well have been optical illusions created to trick our senses.
The fae were objects at a distance reflected oddly in reality’s mirror.
These were not simple dryads. Nymphs were female but these two melded the duality of male and female into a steadfast singularity. They also carried the magic of an oak’s animals—the deer, the jay around their eyes, the squirrel in the softness of tunics under their armor—which regular dryads did not.
“Can they see us?” I asked. Ellie’s concealments hid her from magicals but I had no idea if they worked on other fae.
She backed toward me. “My concealments work on other fae. I think it’s to keep my stepfather or his minions from finding me.” She spoke in a way that made me think she wasn’t so sure of her answer.
The dryads’ armor radiated in service of the high-born but not which high-born King or Queen. Not that I had enough experience—any experience, honestly—with fae to be able to read anything beyond the presence of their magic. The only fae other than Ellie I’d ever been near was the one disturbed by the Civil War. He’d been a fae of the valley, probably a type of Green Man, and not in service of royalty.
Samhain chaos drew them to this land. They’d come to learn from the trees.
I blinked. How…
I knew they were here to question the forest in much the same way I knew what Sal wanted me to know, but this seemed more like a broadcast than a statement.
Ellie gripped my hand and looked up at my face. “Did you hear that? They’re here to speak to the trees?”
“Sal talks to me the same way.” I nodded toward the forest. Which made some sense, since I was pretty sure they were some type of warrior dryad. “They’re here for this place, not us.”
I hoped. Me breaking Ellie’s enchantments was very much a part of last night’s magical blizzard.
Ah, Ellie mouthed, and nodded twice. She twisted in such a way to keep her backpack next to my side and out of the possible line of fire.
I’d seen mentions of lieutenants who managed a royal’s mundane interactions, and of how one should never underestimate the mercurial nature of the fae. But never dryad warriors who came to speak to the trees.
The two fae held perfectly still like two statues built from winter itself.
And I knew more: Veils were pierced under the Samhain moon. Mingling occurred. The wind shrieked and lightning illuminated what hid in shadows. They’d come to gather acorns of truth.
I understood under language, in memory-thoughts, as if the two dryads were giving the world information and not me.
“What does that mean?” Ellie asked.
The two fae spread their arms and… the world flowed toward them as if reality itself was whispering secrets to its closest confidants.
Secrets about the slime left by St. Martin’s footsteps through these woods. Tales of magicals as they traveled between the winds of the blizzard. Recountings of magicks worked. Of the determination and anger of elves and the bright, quick wolfness of Axlam and the Pack.
Of the steadfast one who had found his way to this land.
Me, I thought.
“The land is telling them about last night.” The memory-thoughts were clearly linked to the web of magic set up by the elves, and followed a stream flowing from the past into the present.
The two fae abruptly pulled in their hands. Power shifted, or more precisely, sifted.
“They’re looking for something,” I said. Or someone.
Ellie curled her arm around my waist.
I instinctively pulled her close even though I hadn’t gotten a sense that the two armored-up dryads were looking for her.
But that undercurrent had returned. The fae river of below-language knowledge. And deep inside, I knew all non-fae information they gathered was just that—information.
Except… There should not be fae magic here. Not where it could be subsumed by elves, or wolves, or the thin vampire residue remaining around Alfheim.
This knowledge caused surprise and wrath combined.
Ellie inhaled as if she swallowed a gasp. “They shouldn’t sense the concealments.”
We had fae bloodhounds sniffing around—bloodhounds who came here specifically because the land rang out with fae magic. Bloodhounds who could very well be from Oberon’s Court.
“It might not be you.” How could it not be Ellie?
It could be me.
I broke through the concealments. I caused Ellie’s cottage to reconfigure—profoundly, too, and in a way it never had before. I was at the center of last night’s magical St. Martin-generated whirlwinds and I interacted with that strange, black-eyed elf who I barely remembered, as if my brain couldn’t be bothered to see him as worth recognizing.
“I’m going to step away from you,” I said.
“Oh no you are not, Frank Victorsson.” Ellie pointed at the two dryads as if she’d read my mind as easily as she understood the intent of the dryads. “I’m not losing you to two Cernunnos wannabes.”
I’d spent one night in her cottage. One. And here we were with karmic fae coming to make me pay for the bliss of the morning.
“Frank.”
I looked down at Ellie. She hitched up the strap of her backpack. Her lips wiggled and bunched and I swear she sniffed because she had tears for the same reason I had cosmic-level doubts: No matter how we fight, or live, or work at building something worthwhile, we were two people who the war dogs always find.
Trials and tests. Clashes and concealments. She and I would always have a fight on our hands.
I twisted my head, listening to the background hum of the two dryads. “I’m going to ask questions.” I needed to know why they were surprised and wrathful.
She frowned. “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m not losing you to two Cernunnos wannabees.” Not after what we went through to find each other. Not after her touching my cold body and asking me if I hurt. Not after a full morning of the most intimate and perfect lovemaking of my two hundred years. I’d throw punches at the King of the Fae himself if I needed to.
Her lips rounded and she blinked. “Okay.” She inhaled. “Okay.” She shook her arms like she was warming up for a fight. “Be careful.”
I squeezed her hand, then took two big steps away toward the dryads.
The closer I got, the taller they grew—and the more androgynous. They cocked their heads in mirror image to one another and a memory-thought of me manifesting filled the small clearing—and the knowledge that I was not a creature that should be able to manifest.
“My name is Frank Victorsson,�
� I said. Maybe if I ignored me appearing out of thin air, Ellie’s concealments would force the strangeness of it to pass. “This is my lake.” I pointed toward my cabin.
Yes. They read me from the land. I was not a creature who manifested.
So much for using Ellie’s concealments to my advantage.
Behind me, Ellie removed her pack and unzipped the main pocket.
The air around the fae swirled with ice and took on the clarity of Arctic cold. Neither moved but the balance of friend and foe shifted into threatening.
They sensed seer magic.
Ellie lifted her hand off the pack.
I raised my hands. “Sorry!” I said. “I see magic and sometimes magicals sense it as seer magic!” I lied. Anything to keep them off Ellie’s scent. Maybe the misdirection would stop the questions about manifesting.
“Do they believe you?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know,” I paused, then continued for the two fae, “who you are.” Other than the sense of threat receding, I picked up no other information.
Ellie zipped the bag and shouldered it again.
I slowly pointed to the elven tattoos around my ear. “This is elf territory. The elves here would not allow calamity to befall the land.” Annoyance, yes. But harm? No. “Do you wish to speak to our King and Queen?”
A new wave of knowledge rolled from the dryads: Salt was poured and the truth dusted. There was fae magic here. I was to tell them all I knew.
I rubbed at the top of my head. “We had a wolf problem, but the elves dealt with it last night,” I said.
A wave of seeking rolled from them. The elves have offended.
This wasn’t about my interactions with Ellie’s concealments. “How?” I asked. “Why are you here?” I asked.
Reality flickered around the two fae. They were there, then not, then back again but different. They’d flipped how they were presented—not just exchanging positions, but flipping what had been on their left to their right as if we were no longer looking at the two fae, but a mirror image.
Fae Touched Page 4