Fire spat and slapped in his magic. The control of his elven sigils had given way to that slippery, burning truth that had always been underneath.
But it was his eyes that frightened me the most.
The concealed elf, the man whose father had hidden him not only from Alfheim, but from the fae, stood in front of me with eyes as utterly black as his clothes. Eyes that held the cosmos, and eyes that stole souls. Magic flickered out the sides of those eyes as if his vision was on fire.
The witch in the bayou, the one from whom I took Rose, had eyes like that. She’d stared off into her own raw, uncontrolled power. Rose had too, at the end.
Hrokr whipped up a counter sigil to slow his father’s grinding shield. He glanced toward his father. “I’m sorry, Dad. I was trying to divert her magic.”
I touched Ellie’s arm. “Honey?”
She blinked. A retch-like shudder spasmed through her body. “Mom’s magic…”
“I severed the ropes.” I helped her to her feet. “So she couldn’t pull you into her realm.”
She looked up and to the southeast. “The cottage…” Her entire body shivered. “It’s terrified. It can’t quite feel me. It doesn’t know what to do.”
“Is it pulling you back? Is it trying to move?” If it was only pulling her back, then she’d be safe. But it moved, too…
Ellie continued to stare southwest. “Sal cut the routing magic?”
“Yes,” I said. How long would Titania and the elves be frozen? “Arne and Magnus can get us back to Alfheim.” If they realized we were between realms. If they didn’t fall to the oscillations.
She rubbed her arms. “We need to get out of here.” She leaned against me, and magical sparks flew when her backpack knocked against Sal’s handle. “Mom is caught here.” She shivered again, but this time I was sure it was more out of terror than chill. “She’ll be in pain when she’s fully through, and driven to reconnect to the correct pathways.”
I’d hurt Titania when I slashed her connection to Ellie and Hrokr. I’d caused her pain and disorientation and now we were stuck inside the veil with the most powerful, soon to be the most vengeful, of the fae.
And two also-disoriented elder elves whose power levels I understood intellectually, but had only seen peripherally.
Hrokr whipped up another sigil, this between him and Titania. “She’ll hunt,” he said.
Ellie tugged on my hand. “We need to get to the cottage. It will protect us.”
She meant the cottage would protect her. I was the one who had done this. I doubted it would protect me from Titania’s rage.
“It’s going to move, Frank,” she said. “If it moves me without Mom interfering, we’ll…” She looked up at me. “We’ll be able to find each other. I’ll remember you. You’ll remember, like Chihiro. We’ll find each other.”
Her face said she didn’t believe her own words. “I’ll find you. I promise,” I said.
Ellie bit her lip and hugged me tightly. “I know.”
Hrokr cleared his throat. “This place shifts,” he said. “You might make it. Or you might end up purifying yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.”
Ellie looked down at the ground and slowly nodded her head. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She looked up at me. “We have to try.”
She wasn’t giving up. She looked back at Hrokr. “Come with us.”
The fire streaming from the sides of his cosmos-eyes blazed with all the glory of his god. “Are you offering me shelter inside your concealments?” he asked.
Ellie must have realized what she’d just done. “I am offering you an audience at my gate to state your case.”
He’d wanted to know if Ellie would protect him, too. Now he had his answer. He bowed his head. “Go!” He turned back to his father, but thought better of it. “Take my sheep,” he said.
The or else in his voice rode out on a wave of slippery, fiery magic and dripped between us—unspoken yet just as destructive as a splash of acid.
Ellie sucked in her breath. “Loki,” she breathed.
“Yes,” Hrokr said.
Tension hardened her face and neck. “Do not attempt to trick my mother, Loki elf,” she said. “She will chew you up and spit you out.”
If he heard her, much less understood, I could not tell. He pointed at the sheep again. “Snowdrop,” he said.
Hrokr turned his back to us.
We needed a way to get to the cottage. “Will we find vehicles here?” I pointed at the barn. Anything that might help us make the twelve miles back to the cottage before the cottage closed up for the night.
“I don’t know,” Ellie said.
I scooped the lamb up in my arms as we ran up the hill, hoping for one small bit of luck.
Chapter 16
We were between realms, in the fabric of the veil itself, in the in-between where magic influenced the real world. We were quite literally inside the geometric lock that opened and closed contact between The Land of the Living and all the other Lands, Dead or otherwise.
I had my doubts about access to combustion engines here, or either of the elves’ lovely electric vehicles. This was not a plane where mundane science worked.
We had to try anyway.
With Sal on one shoulder and the lamb tucked under my other arm, I followed Ellie and the three ewes up the hill. A bonfire of magic blazed behind us, a tortured mix of fae chaos and streamlined elven spells. Hrokr stood in the center, between his father and his step-grandmother, adding—or subtracting, I couldn’t tell. He disrupted, for sure.
Perhaps leaving the Loki elf in the center of what might just turn into the magical equivalent of an international incident wasn’t the best idea.
Not one moment of this had been a good idea. Not my misinterpreting
