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
