Titania grabbed the straps of Ellie’s backpack and hauled her onto the stallion’s back.
Chapter 17
The only way for me to vault onto Bloodyhoof was to hand Sal to a Loki elf.
Horkr hadn’t called up a saddle or armor. I needed to vault onto the back of a draft-horse-sized enchanted stallion while carrying an extremely sharp weapon whose magic kept everyone but the elves and me from touching her.
Titania threw her daughter over the front of her stallion’s newly-manifested saddle and bolted for the open field.
I looked up at Hrokr.
He didn’t have any more of a poker face than I did. He knew exactly why I paused. And any hope we had of him shrugging off his anger and reactivity vanished.
“I can’t touch the horse!” Sal said.
Arne, now on the fully-rigged white Percheron Comet, pointed at Titania as she rode by. “Go!” he yelled.
Magnus, on Lucky, galloped after the Queen.
I dropped Salvation onto the ground. “Sorry!” I said, and vaulted onto Bloodyhoof’s back behind Hrokr.
Anger burst off Salvation. How many times was I going to leave her behind? There was an elf right there on the horse.
“Go!” I slapped Hrokr’s shoulder. “I couldn’t chance your enchantments interacting with the magic on her handle,” I said.
It was an excuse. Hrokr knew it was an excuse, but he seemed to accept it, at least for the moment.
He slapped Bloodyhoof’s neck. “Catch the kelpie, boy!”
Behind us, Arne magicked Sal off the ground and stowed her in his scabbard. Ahead, Magnus chased Titania and Ellie.
And the kelpie. “She brought through kelpies?” We couldn’t let it through back into Alfheim. What if it took up residence in one of our lakes? Kelpies murdered mundanes every chance they got.
They murdered witches, too.
“I bet he’s a handsome young man when he’s in human form,” Hrokr said. “Quite handsome, actually. More handsome than you.”
Nothing about my reaction contained a thought-out response. Not for one splinter of a second did I think about the ramifications of my action, or the likely consequences, or the very real, bordering-on-visible reverberations it would cause into the future.
I planted my hand against Hrokr’s shoulder and pushed.
He squeaked, obviously surprised, and tumbled off Bloodyhoof’s side. “Hey!” he yelled.
We rode away, Bloodyhoof the magnificent stallion, and me, the man who’d just left Hrokr muddy and vulnerable.
The kelpie outpaced Lucky, and Magnus was falling behind even with a magic power boost to the Percheron’s speed and stamina.
Horses as large and heavy as Bloodyhoof tire easily, but not Magnus’s elven breeds. Bloodyhoof was as fast as a racehorse. I slapped the horse’s neck. “Get the kelpie, boy,” I said. “Show the fae who’s best.”
We overtook Magnus. He tossed me a confused look as if to ask why I chased a clearly dangerous fae. “Titania has the seer,” I called.
The concealments had kicked in again, but Magnus understood seer. “She’s hit the boundary,” he said.
Magnus whipped a bright blue blot of magic at Titania—no, not at the Queen. He whipped it in front of her, at the fence line.
Titania, on the greenish kelpie, jumped the pasture’s far fence and directly into the bolt. The air wobbled and shimmered, and for a second I thought she’d taken Ellie through another portal, but they landed squarely on the service road on the other side.
All boundaries seemed to carry extra magic in the veil, which meant that at any time, any jump, any edge cut or ditch crossed, could be what Titania needed to vanish into her realm. Magnus’s bolt must have diminished that magic, the same way Hrokr’s had disrupted the routing magic in the first place.
We bolted for the fence.
“Frank! Don’t—”
We jumped and…
We were still in the veil. Still on the surface of the bubble. Still on the service road but Magnus’s farm and the pasture were farther away.
We were not in the same place.
I looked back. No Magnus. No Arne or Hrokr. No sheep or any living things other than Bloodyhoof, the kelpie, Titania, and Ellie.
The Dread Queen of the Fae reined the kelpie around. “Did you think an elf’s magic would stop me, son?” she called.
Bloodyhoof snorted and sidestepped as if he wanted to ram the kelpie. I almost let him. We were alone with Titania. Alone in a place where we’d been cut off from all support—Norse elf and Celtic fae.
Yet we weren’t. There were more pantheons out there. Gods of the mundanes who had heard Axlam’s calls. I’d felt them in St. Martin’s church.
“Why does this place look like Magnus’s field?” I asked.
Titania cocked her head and looked at me from under her helmet’s edge. “He’s smarter than he looks, isn’t he?” she asked.
“If you hurt him, I swear to you right now, Mother, you will pay,” Ellie shouted.
More likely Titania would make her daughter pay.
“The cottage…” Ellie said.
“Let her go.” Let the cottage do what it was meant to do. Let me find her once again.
Titania reined the kelpie around again. “This place looks like the handsome elf’s world because the Loki elf’s interference caused it to default to mimicking the exit point.” The kelpie tossed his head but she expertly controlled his tantrum. “Otherwise it would have looked like where we were going.”
What was more frightening here, the level of fae magic she’d just explained, or that she’d explained it to me? Now she could say I knew a secret.
I’m an idiot.
The cottage had wanted me to know that there was more magic under the heavens and on the earth than were dreamt of by fae. Magic Titania had harnessed to help build the cottage. The magic of the land. Of the stag and the eagle. Of cat and wolf and tree. World magic.
I slapped my hand over the Yggdrasil tattoo on the side of my face. “Please help,” I said.
What was I doing? What was I calling?
Part of me suspected I’d just signed a deal far worse than anything the fae could offer. Or maybe not. Maybe this was part
