About three hundred feet up a small slope, behind the dryad, loomed the massive horse barn of Magnus’s compound.
The fae had moved us from the woods between my cabin and the cottage to a field twelve miles outside of town.
“Arne Odinsson!” the dryad bellowed. “Explain this!” She pushed Hrokr away.
She’d brought us to Hrokr’s father, or at least close. Me, Hrokr, and… “Ellie?” I yelled. The fae had grabbed someone I couldn’t see. Ellie was here. I felt her in the mate dust dancing on my skin.
“Frank!”
I turned around just as Ellie ran up the slope toward us.
She dove into my arms. “I felt other concealments then you disappeared!” She quickly hugged my chest. “Where are we?” She looked around my bicep. “Who are y—oh, no.”
The way she said oh, no made me want to pick her up and run toward the buildings. She said it as if we’d just stumbled into the David and Goliath situation I dreaded.
Ellie stepped protectively between me and the fae.
The dryad winked and held her finger to her lips.
Ellie inhaled deeply to yell but the dryad whipped a spell that slapped onto Ellie’s mouth like a gag. Ellie pawed at the magic, yelling muffled words under the aurora lights dancing on her lips, but nothing coherent came out.
St. Martin had done the same to me under the Samhain blizzard. He’d slapped a shell of magic onto my face and I’d almost suffocated. “Remove the—”
The fae hit me with one, too.
I swiped at my face, growling and yelling under the gag made of shimmering blue and green light. I shouted under the magic.
Ellie stopped pawing at her own gag and grabbed my face. She signaled for me to breathe.
Cold air rushed in through my nostrils but the gag was just a fraction of an inch under my nose. I pawed at it again. Ellie tried to dig her fingers under its edges but the magic was too slippery.
She scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the fae.
The dryad squinted at me from under her antlered helmet. “Are you panicking, young man?” Her expression shifted into a narrow-eyed, concerned annoyance. “I am not impressed by your lack of fortitude.”
She waved her hand and my gag vanished.
I sucked in my breath. I couldn’t panic. I wouldn’t. What if Ellie couldn’t breathe? “Remove Ellie’s gag!” I bellowed. “Now!”
The fae shrugged.
She wasn’t fuzzing in and out the way the other two dryads had. Her armor didn’t carry the same oaken strength as theirs did. It glimmered in the sun as if it carried more air and water than earth and fire.
This fae was pretending to be a dryad.
Confronting any magical with the power to move not only herself but also three other people to a new location would likely get me maimed. Maybe even killed. But this fae smirked, and my breathing was too shallow for me to keep my wits about me. She had gagged my mate.
I lowered my shoulder for a good tackle.
Ellie stopped me. She shook her head and stepped in front of me again.
I looked down at the white pompom on her yellow hat, the set of her cheeks, the fear in her eyes.
Losing me was not going to happen. Not to a blizzard or a gag or a magical with antlers. And certainly not to me allowing the worst of myself to surface.
I pulled her next to me. “Leave us alone,” I said to the fae. “Leave Alfheim alone. Hrokr, too. None of this is his fault.” I had no idea if that was true, but it certainly felt true.
The fae frowned. “This is what got through your concealments, daughter?” She rolled her eyes. “I am not impressed.”
Daughter? The fae pretending to be an armored-up dryad was an unimpressed Titania?
One thought manifested. One thought that had only a marginal impact on the gravity of the current situation, but if I was honest with myself, would probably have a massive impact on my life—and the lives of everyone around me—on many levels and for a long time to come: My mother-in-law doesn’t like me.
I locked up. Not for long, but long enough for Titania to catch on to my shock and to manifest a very Loki-like smirk.
“Mom!” Ellie shoved her mother.
Titania danced back from us, laughing as she moved, until she almost tripped over Hrokr.
He blinked and stumbled as if confused and disoriented. He hadn’t responded to my yelling, or the gags, though he seemed well aware of the Queen of the Fae.
The concealments must have flipped. I was in Ellie’s now and he couldn’t see us, though Titania’s presence must have manipulated the concealment spells. Thinned them, somehow, since I now could see both Hrokr and Ellie.
He stared at her with a mixture of stone-cold defiance and utter shock.
Then something snapped in that Loki head of his. His lip quivered. He dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around the neck of a particularly lovely, fluffy white ewe that stood in a small group with two other ewes and a large male lamb.
The four sheep carried ocean-like spirit magic that looked like a spell to keep these domesticated animals away from New Zealand’s native wildlife. There was another layer of land magic that wavered in dust and heat, and bubbled as if played on a didgeridoo. Then another layer of elven magic, and a layer of that reminded me of the magic carried by Chip and Lollipop, the two kitsune I’d met in Las Vegas.
This was a breed blessed by the fae, probably long ago, before those of Celtic descent sailed halfway around the world—first to Australia, then on to New Zealand, where the first sheep of the line had been touched by both the kami and the native spirits.
“Save me, Snowdrop, you’re my only hope,” Hrokr muttered, as if the magic-touched livestock was the only thing standing between him and his vengeful fae family.
The lamb with Snowdrop baaed and bounded around Hrokr as if to say, “I’ll protect you, Mom!” which just made the scene even more pathetic.
He was messing with Titania. He had to be. No way an elf—any elf, Loki or otherwise—would cower the way he was unless it was part of a distraction plan.
Titania’s frown deepened. She, too, didn’t seem to believe what she saw. “You shame your mother’s memory,” she spat.
Hrokr flipped from contrition to attack mode so fast I barely registered his hands forming his spell.
The sigil hit Titania full in the face. She squeaked and jerked, and pawed at it in much the same way I’d pawed at the gag spell.
The antlered helmet tilted. A flare of magic surged upward toward the clouds above and she whipped the spell back at him.
Hrokr spread his arms and took the flashed-back magic full in the chest.
He coughed and buckled over, and for a split second, I swear I saw all the chaos of Loki under his glamour. All the slipperiness and the wanton disregard for everything but his own consuming fire.
Yet he did what he claimed was his true version of his aspect: He’d protected the vulnerable. He’s stepped between the sheep and fae-thrown harm.
Titania turned in a circle and raised her arms. “O-dins-soooonnnnn!” she yelled.
Up by the barn, a bubble of magic formed around an opening in the fence as two men walked through side by side, each with their outside hands up as if mirroring each other.
Arne and Magnus pooled their magic in much the same way as the two real dryads had in the woods near my home.
With each step closer, they dropped more of their glamours, and by the time they were halfway to us, their ears stood tall and their ponytails waved behind their heads. They weren’t armoring-up, though, and instead manifested finely-woven and intricately-embroidered elven tunics over leather pants and tall, substantial boots.
Arne carried Sal in a scabbard on his back. She touched my mind, but otherwise stayed silent.
Titania threw me a look. Her nose twitched, then she returned her attention to Arne and Magnus.
“Well now, aren’t you two superior specimens of elven masculinity,” Titania drawled.
> “Mom!” Ellie snapped. “What are you doing?”
Titania nodded toward me. The antlers wobbled slightly as if they hadn’t quite settled again after Hrokr’s magical slap. She grabbed the helmet and a soft, sweet twing rang out when her gloves hit the metal. “I came because he got through, which is not supposed to happen, daughter.” She sniffed. “He’s a nice size, though.” She winked again. “Lovely in that big-biceped way.” She waved dismissively at me. “The tattoos are a bit much.”
Hrokr groaned.
She whipped her head and the antlers around again. “And what do I find when I come for a visit? Is this how you make your mother proud, little Loki boy?”
“Leave him alone, Titania,” Arne said as he walked up.
The magic around Arne and Magnus glowed with such brilliance I had to squint. They might be wearing their finest elven fabrics, but they were both on the verge of calling up their armor—and fully dropping their glamours.
That moment at the barn, the moment when Arne went All-Father, it shimmered just out of sight in much the same way as Ellie had when I was inside Hrokr’s concealments. Magnus, too. Freyr walked among us in all his terrifying beauty, sexuality, and strength-giving.
They were their gods, Arne and Magnus, not just elves.
Titania didn’t seem to care. Or, more precisely, she seemed to expect that they would show her their true faces. She was the Queen of the Fae, after all, and they owed her that respect.
Magnus smoothed the gold and silver stitching on his tunic. “Nice to see you again, Oh Great and Terrible Fae Queen,” he said in his best Hey, beautiful voice. He grinned and did one of his flirtatious half-winks.
Magnus Freyrsson had just turned a simple, diplomatic greeting into a god-worthy pick-up line.
Titania laughed. “We all cried the day you two left the enclaves of Europe.” She nodded her antlers in their direction. “So sorry about your little Christian Ragnarok.” She tapped her chin. “Both of them, really. That second one wasn’t much fun for us fae, either.”
“You know we didn’t leave because of the Ragnarok, Titania,” Arne said.
“Yes, yes.” She shrugged and pointed at Hrokr. “Guess he’s not a rumor anymore, is he?”
“I’m sorry, Dad!” Hrokr hugged the poor ewe tighter. “It’s not my fault!”
Then he did something I would have kicked him for, if I’d been close enough.
He squared his shoulders and held his head high. “It’s Victorsson’s fault!” He waved his hand in the general direction of Alfheim. “He invited the fae-born seer into town and now she’s here.” He pointed at Titania.
Ellie gasped but she didn’t shrink away. She spread her hand in front of me as if to take the brunt of whatever the elves would have tossed our way if they could see us.
Arne sighed. “Frank had nothing to do with our hidden seer arriving here, Hrokr.”
“Well, he broke her concealment enchantments and now grandpa’s goons showed up and the seer’s mom and—”
“The hidden seer who makes all those extraordinarily useful photographic plates is your daughter, Titania?” Arne interrupted.
Titania put her hands on her hips in mock offense. “Would you expect such exquisite work from a mere sprite, Odinsson?”
Magnus grinned. “We only ask because she could have been another sister.”
Titania grinned right back at him. “Such a flirtatious elf.” The grin turned into a smug smile.
Ellie curled her arms around my waist. “They’re going to scare the cottage,” she whispered.
If the cottage got too frightened, it would move. Ellie would vanish. I’d lose her. “Will your mother’s presence override its need to move?”
She shook her head. “Only if she interferes.” She looked up at me. “Mom set the cottage’s enchantments. She set the concealments. That’s why I can’t stop it from moving on my own. I may be the battery but I don’t have access to the programming, so to speak. Mom can give it commands. I can’t.”
The cottage would do what it was meant to do—protect Ellie by moving—unless Titania commanded it not to. “Do you feel its pull?” I asked.
Her brow furrowed. “Only the normal early pulls as evening sets in. We should have a couple of hours.” She blinked a few times as if she couldn’t quite read the signals from the cottage. “But it’s tired from last night’s work.”
“Okay,” I said. The mate magic tightened into a swirling veil of sparks around us, making it hard to see Titania and the elves. “What if we run? If we get back to the cottage before sunset?”
She pressed against my front. “It didn’t move Chihiro.”
Which meant it probably wouldn’t move me.
Arne opened his arms wide. “I hereby welcome our seer to Alfheim.” He stared directly at the queen. “As King of this enclave, I officially extend the protections of Alfheim to the fae-born witch daughter of Queen Titania.” He continued to stare at her. “We will not interfere with her concealment enchantments and trust Frank Victorsson to continue interfacing for us.”
Ellie squeezed my hand.
Arne nodded toward Titania. “Satisfied?”
All sound stopped. No wind. No rustling or murmurs from the barns. No chittering or chirping, either.
Titania sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Odinsson. You have been hiding my stepdaughter’s son from his grandfather. You and I both know this cannot stand.”
Stepdaughter’s son… Arne’s fae princess… Gotland… She was all things feminine…
None of Arne and Magnus’s animosity had been about Ellie. It had all been about Hrokr.
Magnus twitched. He flicked his hands and a sigil appeared between Hrokr and Titania. Another appeared in front of Arne and Magnus.
“It would be best if you left now, Titania,” Magnus said. “No harm. No foul. We will handle Oberon’s sentinels on our own.”
Her laughter filled the pasture and the four sheep baaed in response. “Oh, you sweet, sweet, handsome elf man.” She threw wide her arms. “The moment he figures out you’ve been hiding his grandson from him, he’s going to hex your crops, steal your daughters, and buy up your little town so he can mow it under. You know that.”
Neither Arne nor Magnus moved, nor did the sigils.
“Why do you think I’m here, Titania?” Magnus asked.
He could have taken half of Alfheim’s elves and started a second North American enclave long ago. He could have moved down to The Cities and become the founder of several great Minnesota industries.
Magnus Freyrsson stayed in Alfheim because the best protection for the entire Upper Midwest against an angry, hex-throwing Fae King was an equally terrifying Freyr aspect elf.
Arne and Magnus had just shown Titania that they had a tool the fae did not—they worked together. The enclaves had their politics, but the world’s elves would come if Arne called.
They would come for their Odin elves. So would the werewolves. As would I. And now Ellie, too. So who was the true King here?
Arne grinned. “Your daughter lives with us now,” he said. “This is your fight, too.”
He’d back her, if she asked. If he could trust her. If she, too, would come when he called.
Her posture shifted. She was thinking about what a fae war would mean, and what it might cost her to become the Fae Empress.
Her shoulders dropped ever so slightly as if the weight of the unspoken words between these moments had fully landed on her person.
She might act a trickster, and bully Hrokr and her own daughter, but she was Queen, and as such, such grand schemes must be fully considered. Rashness is what got you dethroned.
The defiant anger returned.
There was no way we’d get to the cottage in time if she forced a move. None at all. I coiled my hands under Ellie’s backpack to hold her as closely as I could.
“No, she doesn’t, Odinsson,” Titania said. “The boy, neither. He’s fae. He comes with me.”
“Leave me alone!” H
rokr yelled.
Arne blinked. The Loki man-child whose power rippled around him with almost as much strength as his father’s, the problem child Arne had hidden all these years, was about to be ripped away from his father in much the same way as Ellie was about to be ripped from me.
Taken. Kidnapped. And most likely lost forever to the fog of fae-generated concealment enchantments.
I picked up Ellie and set her behind me. She squeaked, but didn’t argue, and pressed herself against my back.
Titania laughed. “Aren’t you gallant.” She nodded to Arne. “The big semi-dead ones make good paladins, do they not?”
His eyes rounded. He’d just realized I must be here along with Titania’s daughter. But the concealments made the realization vanish as quickly as it appeared.
Titania chuckled. “I built your concealments to last, Ellie my girl.” She pointed at Arne as if he was the root of all the troubles that caused her to set the spells. “They’ve kept you safe all these years.”
“I’m safe here, mother!” Ellie gripped my arm. “With Frank. With these elves. There’s a pack here, too. A large, strong pack with three Alphas. I want to stay.”
Titania shook her head and her antlers tilted again. “I will take you home. The cottage will do as I tell it and follow. From there, it can take you someplace safe from elves.”
“It likes Frank. It wants to stay here, too!” Ellie said.
In the shadow of her helmet, Titania’s eyes physically brightened as if her magic had burned through her skull into the mundane world. “We’ll see about that.”
Arne’s magic pulsed. “Let us talk this through.” He tightened his sigils. Salvation, from his back, threw out her own wall of magic to supplement his, and he took a step toward Titania.
“Tell that blade to be quiet,” Titania snapped. “Do not bring more ills into this moment! It’s bad enough you brought it to this meeting.”
Sal again receded into the background.
“Come up to the barn,” Magnus said seductively. “Visit the horses. We can ride together through the snow.”
Titania balled her hands into fists. “Your stallions are not a fair trade, Magnus Freyrsson. Not for my daughter’s life.” She hit him with a bolt of searing magic so bright we all cringed.
Fae Touched Page 9