He understood Ellie’s concealments.
The bridle is part of him, Sal said.
So part of him had, like me, gotten inside the enchantments. And now that part was no longer affected. But from the way he sniffed the air, his breaking of the concealments was only partial—or the cottage was actively fighting him.
Kill him, Sal said.
I knew Sal was correct—the danger this kelpie presented ranged well beyond the threat to the town St. Martin had carried in with him. It ranged beyond his clear and present danger to Ellie. She had me. She had the cottage.
If the kelpie got away, he’d go on a murder spree. “If I chop off your legs, you won’t be able to run to the lake,” I said.
He frowned. “She’s gonnae give herself tae me willingly. They always do, y’ brutish plum.”
A flare of magic moved along the far roofline of the cottage’s new sunroom addition. Someone with exceptionally high amounts of natural magic was creeping along back there, doing her best to keep quiet and invisible.
Ellie. She’d come out the door on the other side of the cottage and was sneaking up on the kelpie, who sensed her but couldn’t see her.
I would not look and give away her presence. The magic roaring up and over the roof rivaled the intensity of anything I’d seen from the elves and I had no idea what that meant, or how she would use it, or if she could, or…
Or if she’d get hurt.
And for the second time in all this, the hole left behind by my stolen mate magic became a gulf. We weren’t connected and I had no idea, or feeling, or gut understanding, data, words—anything—to tell me a truth I could trust. I was out here as blind as the kelpie and full of every single yearning and need and desire I’d experienced this morning but without the safety net.
No matter what I did, the certainty that the woman I loved wasn’t going to reject me had evaporated at Titania’s hands.
And there it was, the most familiar and agonizing of all the knives in my gut.
The kelpie peered at me. “Och, ye poor dear laddie.” He leaned toward Bloodyhoof. “Ye yearn.” He clapped his hands. Bloodyhoof neighed and tossed his head, but reading my emotions held the kelpie’s attention.
Ellie rounded the corner of the addition, her back against the wall and a baseball bat in her hand. Her magic coiled in opposite directions from itself as green, blue, and a scattering of red flame-like licks. She moved as a double helix of power.
I’d never, not once in all her time in Alfheim, seen anything other than mundane-level wisps of magic around her body. The cottage always drained it off at night.
It wasn’t drained right now.
The kelpie hopped off the fence. “Will she love ye when this is all said an’ done? I doubt it.” He sniffed the air, leaned back against the rail, and smirked up at me. “She knows what ye are. She loves the idea o’ an attack dog.” He sniffed the air again. “Until that dog kills somethin’ in front o’ her. Lasses dinnae like guts on the floor.”
Killing him might make everything he’d just said come true. Ellie might turn away. I put my hand on Sal’s handle anyway.
“That’s how ye show all yer ugliness, paladin. All those scars take on meanin’ when ye slice an’ dice, aye?” He sniffed once more and his face crunched up as if he was confused about something.
Ellie ran across the yard, bat up and aimed at his head.
I needed to keep his attention. Once Ellie smacked him and he was down, I’d get between them. “Shut up, kelpie!” I barked.
He glared and pointed up at me. “I ne’er kill where th’ lasses can see! I’m th’ beauty that lets them—”
The bat slammed against his right temple with enough force to knock him sideways. He rolled with it, twisting around and doing a header over the fence into the yard.
I slapped Bloodyhoof’s neck. “Jump the fence, boy!”
Ellie swung the bat again. “Submit, kelpie!” she screamed.
Bloodyhoof backed up to do as asked, but stopped.
The kelpie roared as he stood up. “Submit tae what, lass?” He rolled his shoulders. “I smelled ye but I couldn’t see ye beyond th’ fence. Nice of ye tae knock me in from th’ other side.” He rubbed the side of head. “Where’s mah bridle, mah sweet an’ lovely mistress?”
“Bloodyhoof…” I said. He wouldn’t jump the fence.
“I burned it,” Ellie said.
The kelpie laughed. “Ye did no such thing, sweets. I’d know.”
The place of the helpful fae magic is beyond the fence, isn’t it? Sal asked.
“Yes,” I said.
The stallion is like the kelpie. He’s seeing one thing and smelling another. That’s why he won’t jump.
“You can’t hurt me.” Ellie held the bat between them. “The rules say that whoever has the bridle controls the kelpie.”
The kelpie laughed again. “Let’s talk about what control means, shall we?” He quickly thrust his chest out to scare and startle Ellie.
“You gotta trust me,” I said to the horse. “You’ll be safe if you take the leap.”
Ellie’s magic condensed down toward her, but it didn’t respond as if she could direct it toward the kelpie. “Let the elf horse in!” she yelled.
The energy around the cottage shifted and the boundary at the fence pushed toward us as if reaching out to Bloodyhoof. The horse snorted.
Salvation pushed out her own inquiry to the cottage’s magic.
The horse can enter, Sal said. I cannot. I am dangerous.
So was I.
The kelpie slapped his chest again. “Ye need tae be specific, lass,” he drawled.
He was too close to Ellie. She held her ground, but the kelpie was taller and stronger.
I could drop Sal again. I could leave her behind. But I’d promised not to allow the fae to get her, and if the kelpie jumped the fence again, she’d be vulnerable. I was pretty sure I’d allowed the fae to get Hrokr. And
