Good kid, Wrenn thought.
“See?” Ranger said.
Queen Titania looked around the child. “Oh! Ranger, you disobedient boy!” she called as if she’d just noticed the sword. “Did you steal the elves’ pointy object?”
“Th’ Royal Guard woman did it!” Ranger yelled.
Wrenn gave him a good shove. “Be quiet.”
Titania took young Gabriel’s hand. “Come, young man, and bring your dear stunned father.” She pulled him up the slope, toward Wrenn and Ranger. The kid, still somehow keeping his composure, managed to haul his father up the hill too. The little girl followed. They left Red where she was.
We bind thee!
The Queen winced again as she stopped directly in front of Wrenn. She peered up as if Wrenn had a wart on her chin. “My, my! The resemblance is uncanny.”
And there it was again, the “resemblance” thing. Wrenn frowned.
Titania shrugged off the rest of the armor to reveal a simple t-shirt and jeans underneath. She looked deceptively like all the pretty mundanes walking around Texas. “Here, son.” She handed Gabriel a tiny bit of metal, a ring or a bit of mail from the armor. “That’s for you and all your siblings.”
“No gifts from the fae,” Ed muttered. He rubbed at his head as if running headlong into Titania had caused him actual damage.
“Now, now.” Titania stepped forward and kissed his forehead. Magic flared out around them all, then settled down onto Ed and the boy, but dripped off the girl as if it had hit something slippery. “It’ll all be okay.”
Wrenn saw no enchantments around any of the mundanes. Nothing overtly elven, and nothing newly fae, which meant either they were clean, or the enchantments were so close to their skin and so thin that they weren’t visible.
If she had to bet, she’d take the latter.
We bind thee!
Titania winced again. “Paladin,” she said, “I will deal with the kelpies.”
All those sprites, all the victims—their families needed justice.
Or not. With the fae, justice and revenge were so closely interwoven that any official acknowledgement of kelpie wrongdoing could easily spin up into house against house, royal against royal, sprite against satyr, and fae taking out their aggressions on the local witches.
Yet they’d been trafficking. “But…” Wrenn said.
Titania held up her hand. “Diplomacy, young lady. The totality of this is a delicate situation and none of your business.”
“So it’s above my pay grade, is it?” She shouldn’t be short with the Queen, but sometimes it was difficult to hold in her annoyance.
Titania sighed. “He is not the only kelpie I need to collect this evening.” She turned away from Wrenn. “Now gather that horrid armor and make your way back to my husband.”
Dare Wrenn argue with the Queen? Damned royals. There were laws and a Royal Guard for a reason. “They’re trafficking sprites, Queen—”
The Queen of the Fae grabbed Wrenn’s hands. “I will deal with it.” A spell rolled down the Queen’s arms and onto Wrenn’s wrists as she spoke. It flared out more blue and purple than any fae magic Wrenn was used to, and coiled itself around her wrists.
“What—”
Titania touched her lips and shook her head. “Make sure you are gone before the elves show up,” she said to Wrenn. “No incidents, understand?”
“She has business in Alfheim,” Ed said.
Titania laughed. “That she does!” She tapped Wrenn’s arm and leaned close to her ear. “Be kind,” she whispered. She pulled back and smiled. “Can’t happen until morning, anyway, so go home and feed your fishes, my love.”
Was she talking about the monster hidden among Alfheim’s people? And how did the Queen know about Wrenn’s fish?
Titania grabbed Ranger by the scruff of his neck. “I give you a home, a place where you’re fed and cared for, and you do this? You’re no better than the vampires.” She looked at Ed. “Gather your younglings, my dear Sheriff. Time to return you to my favorite handsome Odin elf.”
They all vanished. All of them—Ed, his kids, Titania, and Ranger—and left Wrenn alone on the shadowy beach with a dryad’s armor and an elven sword stuck in some kind of memory loop.
The two bands of Titania-made magic around her wrists tightened and flattened. And slowly, delicately, they snaked their way in and around the tattoos she already carried. “Hmm…” Wrenn said. The Queen didn’t want other fae to see the enchantments she’d left on Wrenn’s body.
Had Titania just given her token spells like the others she carried in the tattoos? Why? Was this part of Titania’s “delicate situation”? Because everything was part of a delicate situation with the fae. Being Royal Guard helped insulate her from most of the royal posturing, but this? Just how much bigger than a blood syndicate was this? Would Titania deal with the kelpies? Would the trafficking stop? Would the Queen kill Ranger?
But… she couldn’t. The kid had his bridle. The Queen of the Fae might have taken him back to his stable but the Martinez family controlled his destiny.
Wrenn chuckled. The little girl really had given that bastard a boon.
She looked up at the sky. How did the elves and Alfheim fit into all of this? She still didn’t know if Victor’s vampiric monster was somehow involved. Or his other… her brother. She might as well admit it to herself.
She’d always known, really, what “saving her from drowning” meant. She knew. But being a witch got a lot more respect from the fae than being a monster.
But she was a witch. And not a monster. So nothing had changed. Not really. And now she was to “be kind.”
She picked up the dryad’s armor and draped it over her arm. Should she take the sword back, too?
We bind thee!
But something told her that taking Red into the Heartway right now wasn’t smart, especially without a token. The last thing any realm needed was for the Heartway’s reflection of Victor Frankenstein to get his hands on an explode-y sword.
Ghosts shouldn’t have power,
