Arne yelled his son’s name. Angry magic flared around Magnus. And Titania saw her opening.
She sidestepped and swung her arm in a wide circle. All the crystalline magic of her armor and antlered helmet, all the icy colors and the sharp facets, swung with her arm.
She opened a portal.
The first horse that jumped through ran straight at Bloodyhoof. The second ran at Arne. The third at Magnus. The fourth toward the Percherons. The fifth Titania mounted.
The sixth ran up the hill toward Ellie and me.
This stallion was a tall, willowy creature with a sleek greenish-champagne coat. A bridle of silver and gold gleamed around his muzzle. A shroud followed behind the beast like the gossamer sheets of a specter, and he was too thin, too skeletal, to be a true horse.
Titania had called up nightmares. Death horses.
Ellie looked at the barn, then back at the ghost horses circling Magnus’s three.
The horses snorted. They whinnied and reared and pawed at each other like fighting mustangs. The elves shot bolts at Titania, who sent them right back.
I twisted Ellie behind me and pulled us out of the way of the charging stallion. He slowed, but not fast enough, and jumped the fence to keep from running into it.
We couldn’t go to the barns. We couldn’t go toward the fight.
Ellie grabbed my hand and pulled me west along the fence, toward the other buildings. “This way,” she said.
Hrokr, all his self-disappointment dancing across his god-face, looked at us from Bloodyhoof’s back. Alfheim’s Loki elf had unleashed something he hadn’t meant to unleash. He’d tried to be better, to tame his chaos, but Loki is what Loki does.
And he might get his father killed.
How long could they fight like this? How long before the other elves noticed? Or Oberon? Ellie was right; we had to get out of here. I followed her along the fence.
“Our King will prevail.” Sal said it as if she carried no doubt about Arne’s fighting capability.
I wasn’t worried about Arne and Magnus, or Titania, either. I was worried about Hrokr. About his responses to all this. And about other fae showing up.
We had a twelve-mile trip back to the lake as the crow flies, and we needed to make it before the cottage closed up for the night. If we couldn’t find another horse enchanted enough to cross into the veil, we’d have to run it. I could, but I wasn’t sure about Ellie.
Hrokr leaned toward Bloodyhoof’s ear. A bit of magic moved from the elf to the horse. And Magnus’s prize stallion reared up one last time and broke east, away from us and the fight.
“Hrokr!” Arne’s magic flared up toward the sky as he watched his son ride away.
Magnus’s magic also flared.
“Enough!” Arne bellowed.
The flash that followed hit the ghost horses menacing the Percherons. It hit the one menacing us as it turned to jump back over the fence. It hit the two harassing Arne and Magnus.
All the ghost horses vanished. All except the one Titania rode.
The hit from Arne’s magic almost knocked her off the back of the horse. She righted herself quickly, rolling up into a squat as her ghost stallion circled.
She turned toward us. Her hand rose. She pointed.
Her ghost stallion charged up the hill.
“No no no!” Ellie sprinted along the fence. There had to be a place for her to hide. There had to be.
My mate magic was gone but the love was still there. So were the longing and the need and the deep, core-knotting terror that this might truly be the end.
All those edge things one would expect when one dances on the surface of a bubble.
I must have blinked. Or maybe the shifting between elven order and fae chaos hit me again. Because I didn’t remember stepping between Titania’s charging stallion and the woman I loved.
I lowered my shoulder and held Sal out in front of me like a bar. If I got under the stallion’s neck and low enough on his chest, I might be able to flip him. Sal pushed out a tilted shield spell very much like the one Arne had used earlier. She was not backing away from this fight. We had this.
The air directly above the fence line shimmered. Bloodyhoof manifested mid-jump, as if the fence was his own portal edge, Hrokr on his back and all his energy focused on the charging fae stallion.
Bloodyhoof rounded on his front legs, sidestepping and swinging around his hindquarters, and slammed side-to-side into Titania’s stallion hard enough that a concussive wave of magic so bright I cringed hit me full in the face.
Troubles. Loneliness. The weight of expectations and the found momentary freedom of tricking one’s way out of one’s bonds. Then the wave was gone.
I sucked in my breath. Was that Hrokr? Loki? Titania? I had no idea. I blinked away the flash.
The ghost stallion vanished.
Bloodyhoof stood over me. Hrokr leaned down, his hand extended to help me onto the stallion, but he spoke to Ellie. “Let’s go!”
I looked over my shoulder. She blinked, also stunned by the flare of magic. She wasn’t more than ten paces farther down the fence line. Maybe eight. But she was too far away for me to reach her quickly.
Hrokr hadn’t thought things through once again. He hadn’t taken into account that Titania had already proven her portal magic still operated here. That she could move around at will, and easier than the elves.
The Queen’s stallion manifested, once again, in mid-jump over the fence. His front legs hit the muddy ground directly behind Ellie and he stepped forward, his hindquarters coming down, and twisted ever so slightly so that his rider could reach down.
Titania grabbed the straps of Ellie’s backpack and hauled her onto the stallion’s back.
Chapter 17
The only way for me to vault onto Bloodyhoof was to hand Sal to a Loki elf.
Horkr hadn’t called up a saddle or armor. I needed to vault onto the back of a draft-horse-sized enchanted stallion while carrying an extremely sharp weapon whose magic kept everyone but the elves and me from touching her.
Titania threw her daughter over the front of her stallion’s newly-manifested saddle and bolted for the open field.
I looked up at Hrokr.
He didn’t have any more of a poker face than I did. He knew exactly why I paused. And any hope we had of him shrugging off his anger and reactivity vanished.
“I can’t touch the horse!” Sal said.
Arne, now on the fully-rigged white Percheron Comet, pointed at Titania as she rode by. “Go!” he yelled.
Magnus, on Lucky, galloped after the Queen.
I dropped Salvation onto the ground. “Sorry!” I said, and vaulted onto Bloodyhoof’s back behind Hrokr.
Anger burst off Salvation. How many times was I going to leave her behind? There was an elf right there on the horse.
“Go!” I slapped Hrokr’s shoulder. “I couldn’t chance your enchantments interacting with the magic on her handle,” I said.
It was an excuse. Hrokr knew it was an excuse, but he seemed to accept it, at least for the moment.
He slapped Bloodyhoof’s neck. “Catch the kelpie, boy!”
Behind us, Arne magicked Sal off the ground and stowed her in his scabbard. Ahead, Magnus chased Titania and Ellie.
And the kelpie. “She brought through kelpies?” We couldn’t let it through back into Alfheim. What if it took up residence in one of our lakes? Kelpies murdered mundanes every chance they got.
They murdered witches, too.
“I bet he’s a handsome young man when he’s in human form,” Hrokr said. “Quite handsome, actually. More handsome than you.”
Nothing about my reaction contained a thought-out response. Not for one splinter of a second did I think about the ramifications of my action, or the likely consequences, or the very real, bordering-on-visible reverberations it would cause into the future.
I planted my hand against Hrokr’s shoulder and pushed.
He squeaked, obviously surprised, and tumbled off
Bloodyhoof’s side. “Hey!” he yelled.
We rode away, Bloodyhoof the magnificent stallion, and me, the man who’d just left Hrokr muddy and vulnerable.
The kelpie outpaced Lucky, and Magnus was falling behind even with a magic power boost to the Percheron’s speed and stamina.
Horses as large and heavy as Bloodyhoof tire easily, but not Magnus’s elven breeds. Bloodyhoof was as fast as a racehorse. I slapped the horse’s neck. “Get the kelpie, boy,” I said. “Show the fae who’s best.”
We overtook Magnus. He tossed me a confused look as if to ask why I chased a clearly dangerous fae. “Titania has the seer,” I called.
The concealments had kicked in again, but Magnus understood seer. “She’s hit the boundary,” he said.
Magnus whipped a bright blue blot of magic at Titania—no, not at the Queen. He whipped it in front of her, at the fence line.
Titania, on the greenish kelpie, jumped the pasture’s far fence and directly into the bolt. The air wobbled and shimmered, and for a second I thought she’d taken Ellie through another portal, but they landed squarely on the service road on the other side.
All boundaries seemed to carry extra magic in the veil, which meant that at any time, any jump, any edge cut or ditch crossed, could be what Titania needed to vanish into her realm. Magnus’s bolt must have diminished that magic, the same way Hrokr’s had disrupted the routing magic in the first place.
We bolted for the fence.
“Frank! Don’t—”
We jumped and…
We were still in the veil. Still on the surface of the bubble. Still on the service road but Magnus’s farm and the pasture were farther away.
We were not in the same place.
I looked back. No Magnus. No Arne or Hrokr. No sheep or any living things other than Bloodyhoof, the kelpie, Titania, and Ellie.
The Dread Queen of the Fae reined the kelpie around. “Did you think an elf’s magic would stop me, son?” she called.
Bloodyhoof snorted and sidestepped as if he wanted to ram the kelpie. I almost let him. We were alone with Titania. Alone in a place where we’d been cut off from all support—Norse elf and Celtic fae.
Yet we weren’t. There were more pantheons out there. Gods of the mundanes who had heard Axlam’s calls. I’d felt them in St. Martin’s church.
“Why does this place look like Magnus’s field?” I asked.
Titania cocked her head and looked at me from under her helmet’s edge. “He’s smarter than he looks, isn’t he?” she asked.
“If you hurt him, I swear to you right now, Mother, you will pay,” Ellie shouted.
More likely Titania would make her daughter pay.
“The cottage…” Ellie said.
“Let her go.” Let the cottage do what it was meant to do. Let me find her once again.
Titania reined the kelpie around again. “This place looks like the handsome elf’s world because the Loki elf’s interference caused it to default to mimicking the exit point.” The kelpie tossed his head but she expertly controlled his tantrum. “Otherwise it would have looked like where we were going.”
What was more frightening here, the level of fae magic she’d just explained, or that she’d explained it to me? Now she could say I knew a secret.
I’m an idiot.
The cottage had wanted me to know that there was more magic under the heavens and on the earth than were dreamt of by fae. Magic Titania had harnessed to help build the cottage. The magic of the land. Of the stag and the eagle. Of cat and wolf and tree. World magic.
I slapped my hand over the Yggdrasil tattoo on the side of my face. “Please help,” I said.
What was I doing? What was I calling?
Part of me suspected I’d just signed a deal far worse than anything the fae could offer. Or maybe not. Maybe this was part of the deal I’d already made with the cottage.
Ellie pounded her fists into her mother’s armored leg. “Let me go, Mom! The—”
She stopped talking. She wrapped the fingers of one hand around the one thing every story said was the only means by which to make a kelpie pliable. The one magical item that kept them under control.
She wrapped her other arm up and around her back, and pressed down on her backpack as if making sure the bag was as much in contact with her body as possible.
Then she looked up at me. “I love you, Frank,” she said.
Ellie vanished.
The cottage took her and all she held, including the kelpie’s bridle.
Chapter 18
The cottage had taken Ellie. She was safe. I had to believe she was safe. I would believe she was safe. Not believing in her safety felt like a bullet hole from which I would bleed out in both body and mind.
If I still had my mate magic, I’d know. I’d feel if she was safe. I’d know.
But I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be sure until I reached the cottage.
Or I got my mojo back.
I stared down at Titania. “Give me back what you stole,” I growled.
She adjusted her antlered helmet and made a small motion toward the kelpie’s head as if to tell me to shut my damned mouth in front of the evil fae.
I knew some of the stories about kelpies. About how they embodied the malevolence of dangerous waters, both as untamable horses and as handsome strangers who dragged their victims to their deaths.
The question was just how angry the kelpie Titania had bridled was, and whether or not he feared his Queen more than he wanted to give himself over to his rage.
This place favored the rage.
The kelpie’s eyes turned bright, demonic red. He wail-whinnied a shriek so piercing and evil I cringed.
Titania should have just held onto his back and let him shriek. Violent acting out took a lot of fast twitch energy and he would have calmed down enough for her get control pretty quickly. But she didn’t.
She slapped one of her gags onto the kelpie’s muzzle.
The kelpie bucked and kicked. Titania was now on the back of a wild raging Scottish bronco and for a second, I felt sorry for her.
Only for a second.
The kelpie bucked her off. She twisted in the air like a cat and landed in a crouch too close to his lashing hooves. One of the kelpie’s front legs hit one of the sharp, crystalline antlers.
Kelpie blood splattered across her front.
This time, the shriek moved toward the kelpie as if he pulled it back from the magic of the veil. It hit my back like a gale-force wind and grated against my ears like a sandstorm. The sound pushed on the kelpie, shrinking him down, and concentrating his magic into a smaller body.
A beautiful young man appeared, one strong and healthy with a head of large black curls. Blood dripped from under the edge of the black t-shirt covering his left bicep but he didn’t seem to notice. He also wore a black modern-looking tactical kilt and big heavy boots, all with a strong paramilitary feel.
He picked up a rock and whipped it at Titania’s head. Rapid, angry Gaelic followed. Then he turned toward me.
His eyes were the same green death color he’d been in horse form. “Oh, look. Another paladin,” he said. “How special for ye.”
I was no more a paladin than I was a jotunn. “I am not your enemy,” I said.
He grinned. “I smell a lake on ye.” He sniffed the air. “Smelled the same lake on th’ magic the Queen kidnapped.” He leaned forward. “No concealments can hide a healthy young thief from me.”
Ellie’s concealments worked on him, but not as well as they did other magicals. The cottage got her away, but she’d also taken his bridle.
I wanted Bloodyhoof to trample this miscreant into the magical soil of the veil, but I had a feeling that’s what he wanted.
He wanted my horse, and I think my stallion knew it, too.
Bloodyhoof reared and met the kelpie’s words with his own loud and strong neigh.
The kelpie laughed. “Aren’t ye gonnae make a dash for it?”
Titania righted h
er helmet. “Dash for what?”
Oh, she knew he meant a dash for the cottage and my lake. I could tell from the extra flair in how she dusted her knees and the exaggerated wiggle of her torso. She was being contrary while showing dominance. She’d gone into full trickster stance.
The kelpie touched the gash on his arm, then rubbed his cheek and his lips, smearing blood across his face. “I smell her, mah Queen.”
Titania stopped prancing. She looked up at me. “I don’t know how you convinced the cottage to pull her back after I told it to listen, Frank Victorsson.”
It had worked.
She held out her hands and her crystalline armor collapsed onto her body. “It’s tired.” The armor darkened into shimmering night-filled glass. “Which means it won’t do what it needs to do until it has enough power.”
It was still in Alfheim. It had called back its battery—but it needed to recharge. I had time. I could get to Ellie the way I had last night. I could find my way before the cottage closed up for the night, drained away Ellie’s power, and moved her somewhere else.
The kelpie might get to her, too.
Titania pointed at the kelpie. “Tell Odinsson what he’s dealing with now.”
She vanished just as a new blast of magic hit my back.
The kelpie’s eyes widened in terror and he turned to run into the corn field across the service road.
Arne jumped through first. Magnus appeared with Sal and her scabbard in his hand. They reined the horses around as they watched the kelpie run between the harvested corn stalks.
Arne’s All-Father surfaced, then sank back under his armor, then surfaced again in an oscillating brilliance I had no choice but to turn away from. Magnus’s beauty, though, showed up the kelpie’s handsomeness for what it really was: a mask.
Hrokr wasn’t with them.
“Where is my son, Frank.” Arne did not ask. He stated as if the loss of our Loki elf was my fault and that it was now my job to go find him.
“I have no idea where your boy is, Arne Odinsson.” Yes, I’d pushed him off Bloodyhoof, but I was not a magical. Finding him in the shifting world of the veil would not be up to me. Nor was I going to apologize.
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