wyrd & fae 04 - glimmering girl
Page 20
Apples of the Moon and Sun
It was a beautiful April day in Tintagos. Lord Dumnos answered the front door at Faeview himself and let his aunt in.
“Thanks, Moo,” Cade kissed his aunt’s forehead. “I really appreciate you staying with Lexi today. I can’t believe she’s only three months old. She’s growing like a… I was going to say weed, but…”
“Like a fairy?” Marion huffed a sigh. “You don’t have to spare me, dear. I’ve come to terms with it.”
“If Glory pops in, don’t let her hold the baby. She’s desperate to take Lexi to Mudcastle to show her off, but—”
“You don’t want to risk it. Don’t worry. She’ll have to kill me first.”
Cade laughed. “She’s not deadly. She’s just…”
“Fae. She wants what she wants when she wants it. And little Lady Lexi is the shiniest object of them all.”
“Could not have said it better, Moo.” She was really coming around on the fairy thing. All would be well. “And here are my two girls now.” Cade smiled up at Lilith coming down the stairs. Blue-eyed Lexi, with a mop of strawberry-blond curls, sat on her mother’s hip with the strength of a six-month-old.
Lilith felt fantastic. Her fae childbirth hadn’t been so painless, but recovery from it had been remarkable. Cade drove them out to Igdrasil, which had become their favorite picnic site. He’d packed their ritual Paraduxx red wine, chocolate Hobnobs, and cheese and pickle sandwiches.
He spread out the picnic blanket, and as she unpacked the basket he said, “Watch this.”
He snapped his fingers, and the wind stopped blowing over the blanket, though Igdrasil’s branches still swayed and the Lovers’ leaves still fluttered.
“Magic, I’m so glad!” Lilith said. “But… is the finger snapping required?”
“Dunno.” Cade laughed and poured the wine. “It must just be my style.”
“You’ve been irritatingly cheerful since we’ve been home.”
“Not irritatingly, I hope. And why should I not be cheerful? I’m the luckiest man in all the realms.”
“I’m still turning fae at an alarming rate.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“And you’re… well, perhaps you are turning after all, but more slowly.”
“Don’t care.” He took the tin of chocolate Hobnobs from the picnic basket and offered her one. “All will be well.”
“You’re an odd one,” Lilith said. “And I adore you.”
“Think of it,” he said. “We’re bound together through time, just you and I. There are no marauding ghosts. The high gods want us to be together. I’m filled with gratitude.”
“And I’m not afraid anymore, Cade. Not of time, not of anything. And Lexi is wonderful.”
“Alexandra Lowenwyn Beverly Glory Marion Elyse Bausiney,” Cade said. “What have we done to that poor child?”
“Everything is as it should be—I feel like a blissed-out New Age mystic: Time flows like a river, and we’re all part of the neverending stream.”
“Somewhere Van Morrison is playing our song,” Cade said.
Lilith nodded. “‘Into the Mystic.’”
“To all lovers.” Cade lifted his glass to the hazel and honeysuckle. “You’re my hazel tree, Lilith. I’m the honeysuckle, wrapping my bumbling, gawking self around you, clinging to your magnificence.”
Lilith leaned back against Igdrasil, and Cade laid his head in her lap. She played with his wavy russet hair. “Sometimes my heart is so full, Cade. I could cry for days with happiness, and then start all over again. The worst thing about so much happiness was being so afraid of losing it.”
“All is well and always will be.”
“You sound so sure.”
“When you were in surgery and I feared the worst, I heard the sound of wings and felt someone in the room.”
“A fairy?”
“No. My face was buried in my hands, and when I looked up… He was basketball-player tall, and as fit. He had thick black hair in a braid that fell to his waist, and a mix of crosses tattooed on his biceps.
“Velyn,” Igraine said.
“Your fallen angel of Avalos.”
Lilith hadn’t brought Cade with her when she’d returned Mistcutter, but afterward she’d told him about Velyn and the island.
“He told me all would be well and right, that I had made the right choice this time, and that you and I will be together forever.”
“What choice?”
“I have no idea. I was so relieved I forgot to ask.” Cade twisted around to the basket and took out something wrapped in silk. “And then he was gone, and these were in my hands.”
“Apple blossoms—but they’re jewels.”
“Apple blossoms for my glimmering girl. I knew then it was true. All would be well. All would be right.”
Lilith took another sip of her wine, and as Cade arranged the blossoms in her hair, they attached themselves by their tendrils. “I know I’ll never lose my glimmering girl,” he said.
“I will find out where she has gone,”
He quoted Yeats.
“And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”
A Glimmering Girl
A Tale of Wyrd and Fae
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A Glimmering Girl
A Tale of Wyrd and Fae
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Table of Contents
Also Available in the Wyrd and Fae Series
Chapter 1 » A Wyrding Woman
Chapter 2 » Daughter of the High Gods
Chapter 3 » Wandering Aengus
Chapter 4 » Wings
Chapter 5 » Everyone Wants to be Fae
Chapter 6 » These Dreams of You
Chapter 7 » From War to Rumors of War
Chapter 8 » Tailor and King
Chapter 9 » In the Glimmering
Chapter 10 » The Iron of Dumnos
Chapter 11 » The Fisher King
Chapter 12 » Because a Fire Was in My Head
Chapter 13 » Candle and Goblin
Chapter 14 » Coffee and a Secret
Chapter 15 » Igraine’s Altered Eye
Chapter 16 » Patience
Chapter 17 » Choir of Angels
Chapter 18 » Ride With Me
Chapter 19 » Nine Hazel Lake
Chapter 19 » Entwined
Chapter 20 » The Falcon and the Dove
Chapter 21 » Gobs Can Dance
Chapter 22 » Abomination
Chapter 23 » Lord Dumnos at Faeview
Chapter 24 » Wennie
Chapter 25 » Mistcutter
Chapter 26 » A Simple Choice
Chapter 27 » Apples of the Moon and Sun
A Glimmering Girl
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