“Marcus Aurelius!” I pulled my face away from the sweet warmth of Ellie’s neck. “Do you mind?”
Ellie giggled.
My dog woofed as he padded toward the stone hearth, open both front and back, that dominated the main room. On the other side of the hearth, I saw the outline of a bathtub. On this side, a settee and a couple of upholstered chairs had been pushed against the wall to make room for the mattress that took up most of the space in front of the fire.
Ellie shivered. I’d let the fae magic uncork the genie under my rational brain and now the woman I loved was shaking because I wasn’t making the heat of a living man.
I set her down. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m cold.”
Her mouth opened, then snapped shut. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You were in the blizzard.”
“The fire will help.” I reached for her hand but pulled back when I realized what I was doing. “You’re shivering.”
She looked over her shoulder at the fire. When she looked back at me, her face clearly showed that she was processing all this.
Not that she was confused. Or annoyed. Or even that she was surprised. Only that this was not what she’d expected—or wanted, more likely—and that sorting how to deal with my chilly body was something she now had to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I always said I was sorry when a woman became fully aware of my lack-of-heat. When it sunk in that it wasn’t simply a little chilled flesh in the mornings, or cold fingers after coming in from outside.
This was baked into my bones, though “baked” wasn’t the best term. More like freeze-dried.
Her lips thinned. “I’ll get towels.” She kissed my chin and darted toward the corner that must lead into the bathroom.
I got a quick jab-like impression that the magic wanted me to move away from the door. “What?” I asked. Was the cottage talking to me? Like Sal?
No response.
The whole moment felt odd, and distracted, and full of an embarrassed me. And a cold Ellie. An Ellie who had thought she’d have a warm me with her tonight.
My head—my heart, my body—were reeling.
Our canine emperor circled three times then curled up on a big cushion between the fire and the mattress that took up most of the main room’s floor space. Cold leaked through the big window as small, whistling rattles. The wall with the sideboard opened into an arch leading into a kitchen. On the other side of the cottage, to the side of the hearth, a rickety-looking spiral staircase wound up into the shadows.
Ellie’s home wasn’t all that different than my cabin. Smaller. Less modern, but it did its job.
I pulled off my soaked boots and jacket, and picked my way through the pillows, blankets, cushions, magazines, books, and a wooden chest or two surrounding the mattress.
The fire crackled. I breathed and did my best to calm the lightheadedness caused by the fae magic swimming in my mind.
Maybe I shouldn’t fight it, I thought. Or maybe I should. I didn’t know. But wasn’t that the point of life?
The pile of blankets shimmered in lovely greens and blues as if I’d found the freshest, clearest lake. Several more wooden boxes lined the head of the mattress like an uneven mountain range of painted and carved wonder. A vase of lovely pink roses sat on one, and Ellie’s melon-sized camera seer-stone on another.
The mattress, though big for Ellie, wasn’t long enough for me.
She reappeared with an armful of thick white towels. “They’re warm,” she said. “I keep them next to the hearth.”
She’d already wrapped one around her shoulders. She’d put on new socks and arm warmers under her nightgown, too. The other towels, she handed to me as she sat next to me.
Warmth radiated off the fabric. Heat crackled from the fire. Yet all I saw was that Ellie still shivered.
I didn’t dare touch her again. Not until I could do so without causing harm.
She wrapped one of the fluffy towels around my head. “Does the door look different?”
I glanced over her shoulder. The…
What was I looking at? Something important was there, but not at the same time, as if the concealment enchantments had done to it what it did to my memories each evening. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Every evening, my concealment enchantments crash against the world. Then they crash against my cottage.” She touched my cheek. “I think they’re crashing against you.” She stroked my face before touching my lips. “They are,” she said.
I nodded.
“You’re here.” Her kiss was as warm as the towel, and as soft. “That’s all I care about.”
My breath hitched. Two hundred years of living with magicals, of seeing and feeling and surviving, of learning how to be my own rock under the creature sunning itself for warmth…
Not the creature itself. Not the living man.
Ellie looked toward the cottage’s door. Her brow furrowed. “Could you wait, please?” she said.
I swear the cottage responded. I swear the sparks of pixie light, of bright yellows and whites and perfect, shimmering pinks that popped in and out of existence on the edges of this place—the edges of my mind—made a memory of a conversation. A node of a past that happened, but didn’t happen. I knew about it anyway, as if I was standing on the other side of a veil between one realm and another, experiencing the same time but not the same space.
One side, me in Alfheim; the other, the cottage’s fae realm.
It didn’t matter which side I was on, as long as I was with Ellie.
Then she pulled me down onto the bed. “The magic’s going to make us sleep,” she whispered.
Marcus Aurelius sighed. The fire warmed my back and a tingling release moved through my flesh. My beautiful Ellie kissed my cheek.
And I think sleep came even before I closed my eyes.
Chapter 3
The magic—or the cottage itself, I couldn’t
