No one, no matter how good or brilliant or strong, was worthy of the love of a woman like Ellie.
Her breath tickled the crook of my neck. “Hmm…” She slid her hand over my hip. “You’re warm now.”
I chuckled.
She kissed my neck and ran her hand up my side to my chest. “I’m going to take more photos of you,” she said in a husky hungry voice.
The look in her eyes said she was serious.
This is new, I thought, though it wasn’t surprising. We had no problem fitting together physically, which had made her as happy as it made me. Gleeful, honestly, and enthusiastic.
The part where a woman wanted photos of me was new. Since the eighties, the novelty of my height and build had made me as attractive as it had terrifying. It was nice, I supposed, to be the human equivalent of a roller coaster—scary yet too entertaining to pass up.
Ellie traced her finger along the scar across my right pec. “I’m going to find every tight muscle and every tissue pull and I’m going to fix them for you.”
Did I want to be a project? “That’s a lot of work,” I said.
She blinked. Her mouth rounded. “I’m half fae, Frank.” She said it as if her meaning was as clear as the sweet, bell-like tinkling from the plants around us.
And there it was, the all-in nature of the fae.
Ellie frowned.
What had Arne said about his fae princess? The woman he knew long ago before he came to the New World? The one who, even though elves did not speak of the past, had made enough of an impact on his life that he was willing to speak of her now?
She was all things feminine, son. You can’t fight that.
I was in love with a fae-born seer. We were on this rollercoaster together. I might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.
“What happened to your father?”
She returned her head to my shoulder. “He’s dead. A mundane disease took him.” She sniffed.
“I’m sorry.”
“My mother won’t hurt you,” she said.
New, screamed through the back of my brain. But what the hell was I expecting? I should probably throw my hands in the air and hoot as we rolled through this particular corkscrew.
Ellie grinned. “Frank, you’ve figured out who my mom is, right?” She waved her hand at the plants. “This isn’t some nymph’s work.” She kissed my shoulder. “The cottage and the concealments are a lot of effort for a random witch.”
Yes, they were.
“My mom’s never been all that open as to why the cottage moves, or why I have to deal with the concealments.” She snuggled in again. “She’s hiding me, obviously.” She shrugged. “Though I honestly think she wanted to make sure that anyone who got close to me was worthy.”
Worthy. I reflexively hugged her.
She tapped my chest. “You have nothing to worry about.”
I chuckled even though I needed to get a handle on what was happening here, magic-wise.
“I’ve long suspected she’s hiding me from her husband. I’ve never met him. He’s an ass.”
There were a lot of high-born fae. They varied in how they interacted with mundanes and with other magicals. The most powerful had their own realms, pockets like the elven space around The Great Hall, but with the fae, those realms were kingdoms.
The magical tooled-leather exterior of the portfolio Ellie used to carry her photographs represented one such realm. Her camera came from one, as well. So I’d always known she was high-born.
I shouldn’t tense. I shouldn’t let real fear creep in, either. The fae were just another group of magicals. I could handle magicals.
But I needed to know, just in case. “Who’s your stepfather?”
Ellie sniffed. “He’s not part of my life.”
If he knew about her, he was part of her life. “Okay,” I said.
She sat up. “He won’t bother you. Or the elves. He’s not stupid.”
The evasion of the question wasn’t helping my anxiety.
Ellie sighed and looked up at the skylight. “I’m a princess,” she said. “Like a daughter-of-royalty type princess.”
I stroked her thigh. “I figured as much.” My girlfriend was a stunningly beautiful fae princess with a terrifying family. You can’t fight that, Arne had said.
She watched me intently for a moment as if trying to figure out what all-in meant from the fae side of the magicks. Then she sighed again.
“My mother is the Queen of the Fae,” she said.
“Which one?” There were several Fae Queens in the same way there were several Elven Queens. We had Dag. The other enclaves had their own.
“Frank.” She leaned closer. “My mom is the Queen of the Fae.”
“Like Dag’s father is the Elven Emperor?” I asked.
She nodded. “It’s not quite the same.” Her eyebrows crunched together. “It is, though. The same. Everyone’s autonomous unless they do something that might put all the fae at risk. Then Mom steps in. I mean, would you like to spend your days micromanaging goblins and brownies? Mom and her husband don’t even interfere with each other.”
“Who are they?” I asked softly. She clearly wanted to tell me.
She looked toward my—our—hound. “Emperors are a pain in the ass. Except the puppy kind.”
Marcus Aurelius responded with his own soft, sleepy woof.
I continued to stroke her thigh. Should I start guessing? Her mother was the Queen, and she hedged. I had a few guesses, and none of them were simple, “Hello, dear fae friend! Welcome to Alfheim!” kind of situations.
Ellie looked up at the clearing sky on the other side of the skylight. “My stepfather is Oberon.”
I sat up. “Oberon?” It’d take more than one Elven Court to protect Alfheim from Oberon, if he decided to come looking for his wife’s wayward child.
Which meant Ellie Jones was the witch-daughter
