“I’m hurting you,” Ellie said.
Buzz. Jolt. Blinding nothingness. Pain.
Breathe, said the tree, and…
The world was struggling with its own doubts and flashbacks, frustration and anger, death and destruction, but the World Tree did what it always did—it stood. It breathed. It grew and it became a forest. It took the worst, and if it burned up, it sprouted anew from its roots.
It did it for itself. It did it for its sun. It lived because living was its purpose.
The cottage pushed away Ellie’s power instead of siphoning it into its enchantment engines. Sal called that power to her, and drew it up from my connection to Ellie.
Salvation released it into the tree.
Every branch shook. All remaining leaves fell to the muddy ground. The tree took every ounce of living, burning energy.
Behind us, the cottage implemented the commanded spell to move, but with empty batteries. The spell wove itself weakly around the building and the yard, dancing along the boundary of the fence, and in the whiteness overlaying my vision, I swore that for just a second I saw the too-blue sky of Titania’s realm.
Then it was gone, vanished into the ghostly brilliance.
The cottage was the first to fall into unconsciousness. Salvation followed as the vast amount of power she channeled overwhelmed her mind. Between my chest and the tree, Ellie sucked in her breath as her connection to her cottage reset to its default siphoning.
All the remaining free power flowed from Ellie, to me, through Sal, and into the ash tree. The blinding whiteness diminished, and the golden early-evening light returned. The electrical agony vanished into a post-fire buzz. My muscles loosened.
The trees beyond the gate stayed the same. Jays called. My lake lapped against its shores and my cabin stayed just down the path.
Ellie dropped her legs to the ground but held tight to my waist. She was okay. I was okay. Sal and the cottage were okay, if drained.
The ground under my feet moved.
I tipped away from the tree, releasing my grip on Sal and carrying Ellie with me, and fell onto my backside.
Every branch and twig of the tree shimmered with real and magical light as if millions of fireflies had come to paint its branches with the evening’s light.
“Oh, wow…” Ellie said.
I ran my hands up and down her back. “Are you okay? I felt the cottage start its siphoning again.”
“Everything reset.” She pointed at the tree. “Look.”
The shimmer evaporated from the outer branches, then the next in, as the tree pulled Ellie’s magic downward.
It was healing itself.
I scrambled to my feet and yanked Salvation from the bark just as the tree’s shimmer increased to a real glow. The slice blazed for a moment, then closed as if Sal’s blade had only nicked the bark.
The ground jerked. I stumbled and tripped, landing on the ground next to Ellie once more.
The remaining magic drained downward from the trunk and into the ground.
Ellie dropped her ear to the leaf litter. “I think the tree is rooting.” My beautiful girlfriend smiled as she reached for me. “We’re rooted to Alfheim.”
I hugged her to my chest. Could it be true? Had the tree overwritten part of Titania’s complicated concealments?
Ellie yawned. I yawned. My mind wanted to mull and plan, but my brain would have none of it. Breathe filtered up. Breathe and rest.
But snow and mud did not make for a bed.
“We should go—” Yet I was asleep with my head on a pile of leaves and my arms around the woman I loved before I finished my sentence.
Chapter 23
Sheep lips nibbled on my ear and I was suddenly completely awake.
We’d fallen asleep out in the cold, in the mud, but I was dry, warm, and inside a pile of fresh, sweet-smelling hay heaped so high I couldn’t really make out much of the world beyond the straw and the lamb’s fluffy head.
The sheep sniffed at my face. His little nose wiggled, and he licked my cheek.
I knew this lamb. I’d carried him up to the barn while in the veil. “Do you mind?” I wiggled to get away from the next lick, but Ellie slept snuggled in under the hay and next to my side. She sighed and smacked her lips, and instead of rolling away, rolled against my hip. I didn’t dare move.
The lamb laid a full lick onto my face from my jaw all the way to my hairline.
I swatted at him, trying to shoo him away. He backed up a bit but stopped when his butt hit another sheep.
Bells rang. Baas and bleats filled the air. I lifted my head as best I could to get a look around. We were still in Ellie’s yard, inside the fence and under the ash tree. The cottage looked the same in terms of its size and layout. No extra overheating magic filled the air. Morning sun spread out over the roofline and set the remaining icicles glowing. And Sal slumbered in her scabbard nearby, close enough I could feel her presence, even if I couldn’t see her at the moment.
Someone had lifted us out of the cold mud and put us into the warm heap of hay currently feeding not just the lamb, but at least thirty other sheep.
“Good morning, my sweet princeling.”
I startled and rolled back toward Ellie.
Titania leaned over her daughter as she peered at my face. “Why, aren’t you the problem solver!” She winked.
She’d changed out of the stolen dryad armor into a tightfitting white snow-bunny ski jacket and matching pants, complete with white gloves and a pair of goggles sitting on Ellie’s bright yellow pompom hat.
“Titania,” I said.
“You remember my name. Good. Do you remember your own, young man?” She nodded toward the tree as if to insinuate that it had drained a lot more than energy.
“Frank Victorsson,” I said.
“And who’s your daddy?” She grinned like a trickster.
“I am the adopted son of the King and Queen of Alfheim, Arne Odinsson and Dagrun Tyrsdottir.”
She nodded sagely. “Good answer.”
I snorted.
Titania bopped her daughter’s nose. Ellie sighed again. Her fingers wiggled next to her face, but she didn’t wake up.
“She does the sleeping princess thing so well.” Titania grinned. “Your little plan worked exactly as it was supposed to.”
Why was I surprised the Queen of the Fae had known exactly what would happen? Then again, maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she just wanted me to think she had. “I don’t think the cottage will move again, even if you try to force it,” I said.
She shrugged. “Not my problem anymore.”
All the hell she’d caused, and she shrugged it off? “What about your husband?” I asked.
Titania stood up straight and pressed her fists into her waist in a very Akeyla-like move. “The handsome elf gave me half his sheep and several hives of his finest honeybees in exchange for… things.”
I carefully pulled my arm out from under Ellie and sat up. “What things, Titania?” A deal had been struck, but with what consequences? There were always consequences.
She grinned and shrugged again.
But that grin vanished into her awe-invoking Dread Queen stare. “Neither your King, his Second, nor I wish to face the next Ragnarok unarmed.” She looked up at the top of the ash tree. “I am afraid that such deals, while they ease the tension of the monarchs, make the lives of our paladins much, much more difficult.”
The ease granted by the magical sleep evaporated into tightening neck and back muscles. Those consequences would come calling, and probably soon. “And what precisely do you mean by that, Queen Titania?”
She touched the tip of her nose, then pointed at me. “The thing is, my dear big ball of exhilarating handsomeness, that you’re not really the Odin elves’ paladin, now are you?” She nodded sagely once more.
I wasn’t anyone’s paladin. Except, perhaps, the woman sleeping next to me. I’d fight to the death to protect her.
The sweetness of the smile lighting up T
itania’s face surprised me, and when she leaned in and stroked my cheek, I was just as surprised by the tenderness of the touch. “What did my daughter call that expression? Your lack-of-poker face?” She kissed my lips. “I will bet on you any day, my dear young man.”
I think my mother-in-law likes me, danced through my head as uncalled and random as any of my more problematic thoughts.
Titania pulled the goggles down around her neck and laid the hat gently next to Ellie’s head. “I will give you a boon for your defense of my daughter.”
Don’t do it, I thought. Never ever make deals with the fae. Except this fae liked me. And I was already one hundred percent in. “… Okay,” I said.
Her fingers danced. She shifted her feet, wound up her arm, and pitched a ball of magic at my face.
I took it head on. It’d hit me no matter what, so why not let the fae magic do what the fae magic was going to do?
It hit with a twinkle and a tingle, and burst into a bright cloud of magical dust.
She’d given me back my mate magic.
“Thank you,” I said.
Titania looked out over her new flock of healthy, happy, prime New Zealand sheep. “Nice to see that Odinsson raised you with good manners,” she said. “Kids these days don’t know their pleases and thank-yous from a hole in their brain-sucking machines.” She mimicked dancing her thumbs over a phone screen.
I chuckled.
The Queen of the Fae laughed. “You fought well for my daughter,” she said. “You and that jealous axe of yours.” She pointed at the ground next to our pile of hay.
Sal and her new scabbard rested on her own dry pile just out of reach.
The scabbard looked different. The bag was the same, but small tendrils of green and red magic danced with the blue and purple elven enchantments.
Titania touched her lips and shook her head as if to tell me not to speak of what I saw. I nodded to indicate that I understood.
“Ragnarok is a cycle.” She stared out at the sky. “But I suspect you understand that already.”
I didn’t want to think about Ragnarok right now. I just wanted a day of touches with Ellie.
Titania looked me right in the eye, as if to say listen. “The new one’s been in the making for two-hundred-plus years.” And then the Queen of the Fae, and all her sheep, vanished.
Two-hundred-plus years. The length of time since my rebirth. And Brother’s.
I looked down at Salvation. She’d been forged in the fires of a Ragnarok.
A small, weird little thought poked at the back of my mind: Had I been, as well?
Ellie stirred. She stretched and yawned, and wiggled like an exquisite cat. “Is this…” She picked up a handful of hay. “Straw?”
My mate magic welled up around my hands. It wanted to touch. I wanted to touch—but I was morning cold, even with the magical hay. “I think your mom wanted to make sure we didn’t freeze during the night.”
“My mom was here?” She looked around. “Did she do something terrible again?” A sniff followed. “I smell sheep.”
I laughed. “Let’s go in.” It’d give me a chance to warm up. “I’ll tell you everything over coffee.”
“Hmmm…” She pouted. “But the hay smells so nice.”
Ellie snuck her dusty fingers under my shirt and tickled my abs.
We had a lot to talk about, and a lot to figure out. Sal and the cottage both still slept. I needed to check in with the elves. We didn’t know if her concealments had changed, or if Arne had found Hrokr, or…
Ellie pushed her hands down into the waist of my pants.
The overthinking stopped. I smiled.
We had a few hours. The world could wait.
Epilogue
I.
* * *
The shore of Frank’s lake, Alfheim, Minnesota….
Hrokr Arnesson sat on a cold boulder on the edge of the lake’s sloshing water. He clutched his book friend, the one with “Rygnyrök” scrolled across its leather cover in classic jotunn script, close to his chest.
The horrid Queen of the Fae stole his sheep friends, and her equally horrid daughter turned his not-a-jotunn friend away from him. His book friend wouldn’t be going home to the fae-witch’s library. Not now. Not ever. Not after Victorsson unceremoniously dumped him off the side of Blodughofi like a sack of whale bones. (Hrokr had tried. He’d tried so hard. One tiny little miniscule joke to relieve the tension and bam! That was it for poor Hrokr.)
Not to mention Arne’s—Hrokr refused to call him “father” anymore—ice-cold stare and twitching lip when he’d kicked his son out of the veil and back into his “no bother” zone.
He’d been as angry about Hrokr not coming to him about the dryads as he was about Hrokr’s “interference” with “his” seer, as if the witch’s photographs were more important than his own son.
Arne Odinsson and Magnus Freyrsson had supplemented Hrokr’s concealments right then and there because, like Victorsson, they had the most fragile of feelings.
He had options, though. Options that would not meet Arne Odinsson’s and his oh-so-pretty Freyr elf sidekick’s approval.
Hrokr rubbed at his nose and watched the woods. Lots was going on over at the cottage. Fae magic rolled through the trees like the fog from that horror story he’d read a couple of years ago—the one his vampire friend Tony Biterson had given him. Tony sure did know his pop culture.
“The Mist.” That’s what it was called. Some mundane with a royal name wrote it decades ago. There’d been nasty stuff in that haze, too.
Branches crashed. Saplings snapped. Titania’s kelpie ran out of the trees spewing at least three languages’ worth of swear words. He stopped at the shore, turned his back to the lake, and lifted his kilt in a grand show of Scottish crassness.
“Kelpie!” Hrokr shouted.
The kelpie dropped his kilt and sniffed at the air.
Arne’s supplemental enchantments were more annoying than Victorsson’s antics. But kelpies could smell a good yearning ten miles away, and Hrokr was only thirty feet down the shore, so there was hope.
Hrokr gazed longingly at the kelpie’s perfectly proportioned—if bleeding—bicep. His low body fat percentage was the stuff of legends. Hrokr fanned himself and thought about how lovely it would be to run his fingers through the kelpie’s lush ebony locks.
The kelpie sniffed again. His eyes narrowed and he turned in Hrokr’s direction.
“Yesssss,” Hrokr said. “Come to me, my gor-gee-ousss murder pony.”
The kelpie sauntered along the shoreline, sniffing the air and careful of the bigger washed up logs, until he stood directly in front of Hrokr’s boulder. “I smell an elf,” he said, even as he didn’t bother to look at the obvious in front of him.
Hrokr stood. He dusted his knees, tucked the book under his jacket, and extended his hand. “Prince Hrokr Lokisson of the Alfheim elves. And you are?”
The kelpie blinked. He looked around, then finally noticed Hrokr standing close enough to kiss. “Aye, lad, ye’ve got some strong concealments there, dinnae ye?” He sniffed again, and glanced away, as if he couldn’t be bothered to continue their conversation.
“Hey! Wayne! Pay attention!” Hrokr snapped his fingers in front of the kelpie’s face.
“I thought ye left,” the kelpie said. “Mah name’s not Wayne.”
Ah, but the annoyance kept his attention. “Zander, then?”
The kelpie frowned. “Like I’d tell a Loki elf mah real name.”
Kelpies did have their rules. Hrokr shrugged. “Well then, Travis, that’s just too bad, now isn’t it?”
The kelpie’s eyes wandered out over the lake. “There be lasses here.” He growled. “The Queen’s pup is makin’ mah life hard. Can’t harm bitches.” He took a step toward the water. “Must go home. Been commanded so.”
So Hrokr had been correct; Ellie Jones had stolen the kelpie’s bridle. Jones must have slapped some sort of “no murdering” order on him, which made sense. Hrokr
would have done the same. The fewer lasses he tortured, the less likely it was that Alfheim’s parental sheriff would make a ruckus by putting a silver bullet in his handsome skull. “Sucks to be you, Mason.”
Though Hrokr would rather he stayed in Alfheim.
The kelpie snarled. “Mah name’s not Mason.”
“Sure thing, Kyle.”
“What d’ye want, elf?” The kelpie gave Hrokr a little shove.
He did not move backward, or twist, or shift his center of gravity. He was an elf and this beautiful murdering fae was not worth the faintest twitch.
The kelpie frowned again.
A wave of magic burst through the trees and out over the water. The kelpie breathed it in, as did Hrokr, and they stood there for a long moment bathed in the fire of an overheating witch.
“Serves her right.” The kelpie spat on the rocks. “Sad little custard.”
Hrokr sighed. Kelpies were a chore. Their attitudes were as predictable as they were grating and this one was no different than the rest of his kind. Next he’d be spewing some dumb conspiracy theory about how red lipstick was invented specifically to harass his personal senses, or some nonsense about tidiness and crustacean gods.
Right now, Hrokr needed him to focus. “Frank Victorsson’s mean, isn’t he, Tyler?” So very untrusting and nasty, and so very in Hrokr’s way. “Interfering like that.”
If Frank wasn’t going to help Hrokr hide from his grandfather, then Hrokr was going to take matters into his own hands.
“And?” the kelpie said.
“Brodie, Brodie, Brodie…” Hrokr pinched the bridge of his nose. “Revenge, you handsome numpty.”
“Brodie?” The kelpie’s face twisted up in confusion. “Ye’re th’ numpty, elf.”
Hrokr looked up at the sky and sighed again. This kelpie was as thick as a Scottish castle wall. “Do you want your bridle back or not, Kylo?”
The kelpie dipped the toe of his boot into the lake. “I wanna drag that nettle-faced cragwanker under an’ watch her gasp in th’ deepest of the dark places. That’ll get me mah bridle back.”
Fae Touched Page 15
