“Let Salvation through!” I yelled at the cottage. At the world. At the giant ash tree in the yard and at the kelpie. “Please,” I whispered.
The air shifted toward warmth as if the world had stepped back from its winter dormancy and decided to hold onto its summer life.
Bloodyhoof tossed his head. His front quarters tensed, then his hind. And the three of us jumped the fence into the cottage’s yard.
I don’t know if the cottage listened to me, or if something else did, but my horse rammed the kelpie into the ash tree with such force I heard bones snap.
I jumped off the horse.
The kelpie panted and thrust his chin at Ellie. “I’m gonnae drag ye under an’ eat yer eyeballs, ye pissy little frog-faced—” he yelled.
I curled my hand around his throat. “My axe wants to cut you in half.” I pulled Sal from her scabbard and swung her blade at the tree just above his head. I stopped her momentum a fraction of an inch before cutting into the bark. I did, though, skim curls off his head.
He yelped when Ellie pressed the end of the bat into his wounded shoulder. “You can’t intimidate us when we’re both on the same side of the fence, now can you?”
He groaned. I grinned.
“Control means you do as commanded,” Ellie said. “Do you understand that you must submit to and follow the commands of the individual who possesses your bridle?”
“Yes,” the kelpie hissed.
“I command you to go back to your loch,” Ellie said. “I command you to inflict no more harm. You are to say nothing of me or my home. You will listen for my call, and when I desire your company, you will come. Do you understand these commands?”
The kelpie groaned. “Yes,” he hissed out like a deflating tire.
“If you break these commands, I will destroy you and your bridle. Do you understand the consequences?”
“Yes,” he hissed out a third time.
She pointed the gate. “Leave.”
We need to kill him, Sal said.
The helix of magic around Ellie flared up toward the sky. “Not yet,” she responded.
The kelpie looked confused.
Ellie snarled. Her eyes shimmered dark with the cosmos. Magic flared from their sides in much the same way as it had from Hrokr’s while we were in the veil—like a witch about to overheat. “I will string a violin with your entrails, horse.” Her voice echoed between the cottage and the trees. “I will drain your loch and burn your bones.”
He blinked. “Witch,” he breathed.
“Kelpie in five pieces,” she responded as she moved her hand to indicate the chopping off of his head and limbs.
He blinked rapidly as he worked his face away from his terror and into a mask of pure, unadulterated hate. He pointed at me. “Ye’re gonnae pay, dead boy.”
Magical dust blossomed around Ellie as if her emotions had exploded into a sweet, lovely firework. It burst up and out, then flowed down her shoulders, over her arms, to settle around her hands.
“Harm my mate and I will geld you with a dull saw blade, you pathetic excuse for a fae,” Ellie said.
She will, Sal said.
I had no doubt that if we didn’t drain off her overheating magical power, she would—and that she might not be able to stop with just the kelpie.
“Listen to Titania’s daughter,” I growled.
The kelpie slowly pushed off the tree and limped toward the gate. He stopped just before crossing and looked over his shoulder. His lips thinned to a line.
He stepped through and disappeared, hopefully forever.
Chapter 21
Most of the snow had melted. Dripping icicles hung from the roofline over the cottage’s big window, each glistening in the early evening sun. The remainder of a drift leaned against the cottage, and every time melt water landed in the crispy snow, it crackled and cracked like an iceberg.
Bloodyhoof pawed at the mud and nibbled on the little bit of grass still available. Up in the tree, a jay called. Somewhere out in the woods, a raven answered. The cottage’s ash rustled in the slow, cold breeze. And Ellie shimmered like a goddess of chaos.
She stared at the gate as if waiting for the kelpie to crawl back on his hands and knees begging her to rip him to pieces.
“Ellie,” I said.
She twitched and continued to stare at the gate. “Kelpie’s blood burns bright,” she muttered.
A century ago I watched the same thing happen to Rose. The same fires. The same mutterings about blood and magic. The elves helped then. They couldn’t now.
“Hey. Hey, honey. Look at me.” I touched her shoulder.
Her overheating witch power ripped up my arm and into my shoulder socket, and I pulled back my hand as if I’d just touched a hot stove.
Dark power pulsed out the sides of her eyes. She looked at my hand, blinked twice, and her face contorted into the same mask of pain and self-hate I’d seen on Hrokr.
Her body resisted her natural fae power and it was eating her alive.
Fire blipped through my mind, not as a word or a memory or anything that made conscious sense. Fire surfaced uncalled and unwanted from the feral depths as tunnel vision and a pounding heart.
But the part of my mind that sits just under the part that overthinks the world knew this particular flashback all too well, and took its own immediate action—I jerked back not from Ellie, but from myself.
She didn’t notice. She stared at her own hand as if she also could see the power swirling around her body. “The cottage is confused.” She blinked again. “It made a decision. It minimized part of the concealments to let in the horse and the axe. It’s never made a decision before.”
Hello?… Calm down.… Sal called.
She wasn’t talking to me.
Ellie’s brow furrowed.
In my head, Sal’s voice stammered. He’s mine!
Ellie lifted her face to the sky. “No, Salvation,” she snapped.
Sal didn’t answer. Her attention wasn’t on us.
“She’s talking to the cottage.” I put my axe back in her scabbard. “Honey, you’re burning up.” Fire flitted
