by Zoe Chant
It was a gripping, immersive experience, and Henrik found himself enjoying the challenge. Gwen was not impatient with his clumsiness, praising him sincerely as he figured out the basics of the system. He died with alarming frequency, but she didn’t ever complain about starting over. Her assistance was both subtle and useful as she pointed out tricks and techniques.
“You don’t need to lean into the controller or jerk the whole thing, even though that’s something a lot of people do at first. It doesn’t matter what your body is doing, just your fingers. Gaming is a finesse sport.”
Many zombies fell before his blade. Many more fell to hers. They competed good-naturedly for treasure, and while Gwen did tease him, it was kind ribbing and he found himself laughing at his own ineptness.
Henrik died spectacularly once more, in a comic-gory fashion, and he collapsed back with Gwen, who let her avatar walk off a cliff and plummet into a chasm as they fell together laughing.
And then her laughter died on her mouth and Henrik was unable to resist the hunger in her eyes.
She tasted like chocolate and promise, her arms slipping up around his neck in invitation and demand. She was everything against him that he’d imagined she would be, soft strength and supple limbs. When he pulled her into his lap, she fit there, like he’d been made for her.
He twined fingers up under her hair and one of the controllers fell off the couch with a clatter. He was leaning her back on the wide couch, on fire with need and desire...
“Hello?”
In a flash, they were back on opposite sides of the couch, hearts pounding and Gwen ran her fingers through her loose hair self-consciously.
Ansel appeared in the doorway. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “No one barked at me or tried to lick me, and I...uh...”
“You’re back early,” Gwen said too loudly.
Ansel eyed them suspiciously, noting the game end credits scrolling on the screen and their guilty demeanor. “There was an earlier flight available. I left a message on the house phone. I’m guessing everyone else is out?” He did not appear to have doubts about what had been happening. Almost happening.
Ansel swiftly went on, “Don’t worry about me, I’m just going to grab something from the fridge and head to bed. Sorry to interrupt.”
As he turned on his heels, Henrik heard him mutter, “Not like it’s my own house or anything…”
“Ansel is very generous to let us stay here,” Henrik said gruffly.
“Yeah,” Gwen agreed, licking her lips. She looked very lost, and Henrik wasn’t sure if he should gather her back into his arms. The moment seemed...gone, and Henrik was filled with regret. They put the controllers away, and Gwen turned off the machine.
They walked to the stairs and up together, their conversation trailing away as they reached Gwen’s door.
Would she invite him in? Henrik desperately wanted to finish what they’d started on the couch, but he was afraid of overstepping the bounds of propriety.
“Gwen,” he said softly, just as she said, “Henrik?”
He waited, patiently and politely.
“I like you, Henrik,” she admitted.
“I have grown very fond of you,” he confessed in return.
They were silent for a long moment and he chewed over the words. Like. Fond. It was a far cry from the things his shieldmates and their keys said of each other.
“We...don’t have to rush into things,” Gwen said quietly. “I mean, the others, they…”
“They have been decidedly unsubtle in their machinations,” Henrik said wryly. “It is a great deal to handle. On top of learning about your world.”
Gwen chuckled, and Henrik had to smile.
There was the easiness between them that he craved. Just the sound of her laugh made him feel like a tight band across his chest was being released. He was more than fond of her, more than simply attracted to her beauty and skill. He wanted her to be happy, to want him without the terrible pressure of destiny.
“I will retire,” he said warmly as he bowed. “May your night be restful and your dreams sweet.”
She looked relieved, and just a little bit disappointed, which Henrik decided was exactly what he felt. He stepped forward and laid a single swift kiss on her forehead.
“Sweet dreams,” she whispered, and she fell backwards into her room and closed the door behind her.
Henrik paused only briefly, then made his way to the bathroom to take a bracing cold shower before he attempted to sleep.
14
“I didn’t mean to be a killjoy last night,” Ansel said as he came into the kitchen and grabbed a cup from the cabinet behind Gwen.
Gwen had been thinking entirely too hard about exactly what Ansel had unwittingly interrupted, and she tried to take a drink from her uncomfortably hot coffee to cover her discomfort, nearly wearing it in the process. “It’s okay,” she said, once she’d recovered her balance and kept all but a few drops of coffee in her cup or mouth. “I mean, it’s not like it’s your home or anything.”
Ansel chuckled and poured himself a cup from the coffee pot. “Right?”
“Why are you so nice to us?” Gwen asked him as they settled across from each other at the kitchen bar. “You didn’t ask for a bunch of fae knights and clueless keys to come live in your house and bust up your shop.”
“You believe in fate?” Ansel countered.
“I didn’t think so before this,” Gwen confessed around a bite of her food. “Hard work, sure. Self-direction? But before all this, not fate.”
“Do you think you’re Henrik’s key now?”
Gwen thought hard about the way she craved Henrik when he wasn’t around...and when he was, for that matter. All the others certainly seemed convinced.
She felt like they sometimes clicked together like a unit, especially when they were playing video games, or fighting together. “I have to believe it,” she said reluctantly.
But Henrik said he couldn’t feel even a trace of magic from her, and wasn’t what that a key was supposed to do?
“It’s confusing,” she said wryly. “What about you? Do you believe in destiny?”
Ansel gave a dry laugh. “I kind of have to. I happened to inherit a giant house full of junk and a second hand shop from a solitary great-uncle I didn’t even know I had, along with an empty warehouse that just happens to be some kind of crazy pivot point between two worlds. The house just happens to be big enough to house a whole bunch of fae knights and their keys and their pets. The house just happens to have enough crap in it to keep my second-hand store stocked after it got wrecked up by a dragon and an evil smoke ghost having a battle for the future of the world.”
“That’s a lot of...coincidence,” Gwen agreed.
“Right?”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Robin disagreed, appearing at the door to the open kitchen space, hovering in the air. “I suspect it was part of a spell cast from my own world.”
“It was a few years before you and the ornaments even showed up in my shop,” Ansel pointed out. “I don’t know how it could have been a part of that.”
Robin, their dark hair floating around them, settled on the counter and paced solemnly to the edge to gaze at them with their arms folded. “I do not think it was from that spell,” they clarified. “I think it was earlier, from a spell that...I cast at another time.”
Sometimes, Robin got unexpectedly cagey, and Gwen immediately recognized this as one of those times. “What kind of spell?” she asked, but she didn’t think that Robin would answer.
They didn’t have a chance to, as there was a sudden clatter at the door and two wound-up dogs came barreling into the house announcing their return with barks and conversational howls.
In the space of a few moments, the kitchen went from a cozy conversation to a chaos of knights, exclaiming over the wonders they’d witnessed while their keys laughingly swore that they couldn’t take the knights anywhere.
“I’m not sure we’ll be allowed
back into any of Marriot’s chain of hotels,” Heather said. “And for once it’s not for smuggling in a dog.”
“Not that the dogs exactly helped matters,” Daniella said with a chuckle.
Henrik appeared in the middle of the explanation, which involved a mistake with a microwave, a fire alarm, and also strippers that had apparently been on their way to a room down the hall.
“They were very lovely ladies,” Trey protested. “But we did not desire their services.”
Their story, hilarious as it was, wasn’t as important as the way Henrik looked, his eyes finding Gwen before he even acknowledged his shieldmates’ return.
Gwen had experienced crushes before: silly, emotional waves of desire and excitement.
But when she first saw Henrik after any absence, it was like a jolt of rightness. She yearned for him, wanted to fling herself into his arms with the exuberance of Fabio greeting Daniella after a day apart. Her whole body, her whole being, seemed to hum a little at the simple sight of him. The coffee in her hand was completely unnecessary.
Henrik gave her a slow smile, and Gwen was dimly aware of the others giving them suspicious and knowing looks, trying to confirm without explicitly asking what had happened—or not—the night before.
The story wound up with the keys preventing battle between the knights and hotel security, but deciding to return early anyway.
“I hope we did not interrupt anything,” Rez said earnestly.
“I made you tea,” Gwen said to Henrik, ignoring Daniella’s wiggling eyebrows and Heather’s sidelong look. “I thought you might like it better than coffee.”
Henrik graciously accepted the cup with a murmur of gratitude.
The others, realizing that they weren’t going to get any satisfaction, dispersed to unpack their luggage and shower.
Trey elbowed Henrik in the side as he left and Henrik looked abashed.
“I thought that I would attempt to shift this morning,” he said, when even Ansel had gone.
Robin, shaking their head in tolerant amusement, agreed to Henrik’s plan. “I think that’s wise,” they said. “If nothing else, you should be used to what you are like here.”
“I’d understand if you wanted to do it alone,” Gwen said, suspecting the reason behind his reluctance. The other knights had been discouraged by the way their mythical animal shapes had been diminished in this world before they had fully bonded with their keys. “In the garage, in case it goes better than you think it will?”
“I would like it if you were there,” Henrik said.
“Of course,” Gwen said swiftly. “No problem.”
“I liked the tea,” Henrik said, and his grateful smile buoyed her steps out of the kitchen.
She expected Robin to follow them out to the garage so she left the door cracked open behind them for Robin to get through more easily.
She flicked on the light switch, and the garage seemed very big and empty with just the two of them, despite the covered car at the far end. They went automatically to the edge of the sparring mats, and stood staring at each other for a long moment.
Just as Gwen was trying to find something to say to assure Henrik that he couldn’t possibly disappoint her, he gave a little shrug in space and shifted.
Gwen blinked, and looked down. Far down.
And Henrik the gryphon was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen in her life.
He was smaller than Vesta or Socks, but not by much. Gwen could have just held him in her both her cupped hands, and he was an impossible amber-colored floof, with downy-soft fur over his tiny lion-like body and sleek golden feathers over his head and outstretched wings. He had an eagle’s face, with a wickedly sharp-looking beak. Gwen had just enough experience with birds to suspect he could take a finger off with it.
A lion’s tufted tail lashed behind him, and he stalked towards her with claws clacking on the floor before him, silent cat’s paws behind. He folded his wings as he approached, his head trailing lower as he went, and Gwen could not resist reaching for him in this form, as she’d been unable to do when he was a huge and handsome human.
He did not protest when she lifted him up into her hands and cuddled him close against her neck, sighing and rubbing up against her chin.
15
Gwen gave a sigh of contentment when Henrik curled himself against her collarbone, and he caught himself purring against her.
He’d been worried about facing his gryphon form’s diminished size in this world, afraid that he would feel un-whole, that the lack of magic might make it uncomfortable. He could not help but think that Gwen would be disappointed in his small size.
But Gwen seemed delighted by his tiny form, and Henrik could feel her embrace relax as he rubbed his head against her jaw.
Henrik thought that his purr had changed in pitch, then realized that there was a new sound in the garage with them: a rumbling growl.
He cracked an eye open as Gwen swiveled her head. “What’s gotten into you, Socks? Do we have mice?”
At first, Henrik assumed that the cat had taken offense at his semi-feline shape, and he stirred against Gwen’s shoulder in case he needed to leap away and shift; he didn’t want to accidentally hurt either of them.
But Socks had no interest in the tiny gryphon; she was staring into the far corner of the garage, past the car, growling in warning.
Before Henrik could respond, she was springing into the darkness with a predatory yowl and Gwen was climbing to her feet. Henrik clambered carefully up to her shoulder. “What are you after, now?”
There was a shrill yelp of pain, and a crash, then Socks wailed. It sounded very far away.
The furthest covered car was parked very close to the crowded corner; there was no room for a human investigation, but as a ridiculously small gryphon…
Henrik leaped from Gwen’s shoulder and spread his wings, aiming for a place where he could fit between the car and the boxes beside it.
He had to fold his wings to squeeze into the space, and was instantly plunged in darkness.
At first, he thought it was normal darkness, and he blinked and paused on the hard concrete floor to let his eyes adjust.
But they didn’t, and he gradually became aware of the cold that was biting into his paws. He opened his beak and gave a cry of challenge. Once, his gryphon’s cry would stop armies in their tracks, but this time, it was a comparative squeak, barely a chirp. Both cold and darkness shivered back for just a heartbeat, then pressed forward again.
“Henrik!” Gwen called, and it sounded far away and muffled.
Giving up on vision, Henrik closed his eyes and stepped forward carefully, expecting at any moment to run full on into one of the boxes surrounding the covered car. He stretched out his wings, carefully, and found nothing. Behind him, the normal sounds of the garage seemed to fade away. Was it a portal? He desperately wished he could sense magic, and strained at the insides of his eyelids futilely.
A forward claw touched something soft and yielding, and there was a whimper of misery.
Socks!
Henrik opened his eyes, to no avail, and used his claws to carefully define where Socks was lying.
In his current form, Socks was larger than he was, but even if Henrik could have left Socks to suffer, he would never face Gwen again without her, so he took a grip on the back of her unresisting neck and began to drag her back in the direction that they’d come.
It was like moving through tar, or syrup; the darkness seemed to grab at them and protest their retreat, twining around his paws and tugging at his lashing tail. Socks, limp in his beak, made a low noise of agony, but didn’t struggle against the indignity of being pulled along the cold ground.
Slowly, reluctantly, the darkness seemed to press less, and the cold changed from an unnatural bite to the normal chill of the concrete floor. When Henrik dared to open his eyes, they were under the car, and he could make out mysterious parts of the vehicle undercarriage, and the swirling curtain of the cover as Gwen
lifted it to peer beneath.
“Socks!” she cried. “Henrik! What happened? Oh, Socks!”
Henrik scrambled with all four feet and wearily pulled Socks in her direction until his key could reach them both and tug them the last distance.
She cradled Henrik into the crook of her elbow and lifted Socks carefully into her arms. In the light, he could see that the cat was streaked in blackness; her paws and the side she’d been lying on looked like they’d been dipped in ink.
Henrik scrambled up Gwen’s arm and leaped from her shoulder to shift before he landed.
“Is she badly hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“I don’t know,” Gwen said in a sob. “I don’t see any blood…”
But there was clearly something amiss, because the feline was limp and unresponsive in Gwen’s arms.
“I’ll get Rez,” Henrik said. “This is an ailment of dark witchcraft.”
But Robin found him even before he could get to the kitchen.
“I found them!” the fable crowed in triumph. They had enough power again that flight was not a hardship, and they hovered at eye level, rubbing their hands together in glee.
For a confused moment, Henrik could not understand how Robin had found Socks.
They went on, “Tadra’s key! I found them!”
The good news collided with Henrik’s bad news in a strange mental dissonance. That would wait, right now: “Socks is hurt. Something evil has damaged her. There was a...pool of darkness in the corner of the garage. Please, we have to help her! Rez, where is Rez?”
“A pool of darkness? Here?!” Robin fluttered instantly ahead and Henrik had to almost run to keep up, hollering up the stairs for Rez as he passed them.
Robin landed next to Gwen and put a hand to Sock’s head as Henrik skidded back and dropped to his knees on the sparring mat behind them. He thought that the stain marring the cat’s feet had crept further up her legs while he was gone.
“Is she going to be okay?” Gwen asked helplessly, and Henrik, without a moment of hesitation, wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
