Chapter 33
Seren
The house is in a nondescript, working-class neighborhood in the outer part of the city.
On a quiet, tree-lined street filled with small but tidy homes, there’s absolutely nothing to set it apart or mark it as the home of a wielder. Much less a wielder who used to be tangled up with a fae queen.
“This is it?” Callum asks, peering out the window with confusion furrowing his brow.
We got him a second set of clothes yesterday, and even though the dark wash jeans and soft charcoal sweater look great on him, I miss his demon form.
Especially after last night.
As much as I want my head to be in the game, to be fully here and ready to talk to the wielder, I keep getting distracted.
Every time I look at Callum, every time I catch even the smallest whiff of his scent, I get distracted.
My magick is turbulent, unsettled, and I’m sure he can feel it.
Goddess, he can probably scent it.
What did he say last night?
You have no idea how delectable you smell, star. You have no idea how crazed it makes me when I can scent your arousal, when I know you’re thinking about me, that you want this just as much as I do.
As if just remembering those words is enough for him to pick up on the direction my mind is wandering, Callum pulls his attention from the wielder’s house and fixes it squarely on me.
He inhales sharply, and his glamoured pupils expand until they’ve nearly eclipsed the temporary brown of his eyes.
“Star—”
“Yes. This is it.”
Not the time.
It’s absolutely not the time.
Instead of indulging those thoughts any further, I pull the car into a street-side parking spot and check all my mirrors.
Nothing looks out of the ordinary.
Aside from a few cars passing, a few people out walking, a light breeze in the air, it’s quiet. No sign of anyone else around who knows what we’re up to.
Well, almost no sign.
Parked half-way up the block in a sleek black sedan, I catch sight of Gavin. He nods when our eyes meet, a silent acknowledgment.
Callum follows my gaze and grumbles slightly.
“Not a big fan of Gavin?”
Another grumble, but he doesn’t dignify the teasing jab with an answer.
After last night, he’s got nothing to worry about. Actually, since the moment I met him, he’s had nothing to worry about, if I’m being honest. But damn if I don’t enjoy teasing him and seeing him a little jealous.
“Well, no time like the present, I guess,” I say, reaching for my door handle.
Callum tenses, but nods, opening his door as well and following me up the short sidewalk to the front door.
I raise my hand to knock, but it swings open before I can.
I only get half a look at the man standing in the doorway before I’m shoved behind Callum’s back. Silly, that he’d be so protective, especially given that I’m well-stocked with spells and more than capable of dealing with a single wielder if need be.
Stepping out from behind him, I get my first look at the fae queen’s heart.
Just like his house and this neighborhood, the wielder looks like any average, ordinary guy.
Medium height, with dark blond hair and a bit of scruff on his jaw, blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, and a kind face, he seems more tired than anything. Like he’s been waiting for this day for a long time and is ready to get it over with.
“Are you—” I begin, question cut short when I remember we don’t actually know his name.
“Elijah,” he supplies, then takes a step back and gestures us inside. “Please, come in.”
He leads us from the front door down a short hallway into a study. Bookcases line the walls, a heavy wooden desk sits in the center of the room, and the scent of wielder magick permeates the entire space.
Taking a seat behind the desk, he gestures again, this time for the two of us to sit opposite him in a set of chairs upholstered in deep navy velvet.
It feels like a meeting with a middle-aged professor.
In this quiet, stately room filled with books, sitting across from a man who looks like he’d be much more at home in the dusty stacks of a library than in the fae queen’s cursed court, it’s hard to square my expectations of this meeting with the reality of Elijah.
“My Archwielder told me you’re here on orders from the queen of Faerie.”
“Not orders, per se,” I hedge, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say we’re on a hunt to bring him back to said queen in exchange for a mind-boggling amount of gold and jewels and other treasures.
Really doesn’t sound all that great, especially now that we’re face to face with the heart himself.
“She put a bounty out on you,” Callum says, apparently not one to mince words today.
Elijah huffs a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t surprise me. She never was one to let a grudge go easily.”
“You’re younger than I expected,” I say, too curious not to. “Gavin mentioned something about you disappearing for over fifty years.”
“Time moves a little differently in Faerie,” he explains. “Faster, or slower, depending on the realm and the whims of its monarch. It’s a tricky thing to keep track of while you’re in it.”
The more I learn about the magick of Faerie, the more it makes my skin crawl.
“When I stepped through the Veil and into the fae realm, I was just a few years shy of thirty. When I stepped out, I looked and felt closer to thirty-five, perhaps forty, but over five decades had passed since I was away. All my friends and family were old, many of them passed on, and there I was, barely changed.”
The mood in the room instantly sobers, not that it was all that cheerful to begin with.
“How did you end up in her court?” Callum asks.
“I was always fascinated by the idea of other realms,” Elijah says. “From the moment I heard about the Veil and the pathways it offered to new worlds, I was insatiable. I needed to see them for myself.”
His words hit a little too close to home.
Isn’t that the same urge I was consumed with when I learned about the Veil? And Goddess knows I haven’t been able to stop myself from indulging the temptation of stepping through.
“How’d you get past the coven’s wards?”
He smiles wryly. “The Crescent Coven doesn’t hold a monopoly on Veil gates. There are others not so fiercely guarded.”
“So, you what? Found one of those gates and went poking around on the other side of the Veil?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“And then you traipsed on into Faerie and hopped into bed with the fae queen? Thought it would turn out all right for you?”
Beside me, Callum clears his throat. A reminder I’m being a bit of a jerk right now.
And fine. Maybe I am. But I find it pretty damn hard to believe anyone would be that stupid. Or be stupider still to leave a faerie queen and think she wouldn’t try to come after him, eventually.
“She wasn’t always like that, you know,” he murmurs, eyes going distant in memory. “She was… kind, when I first met her. Tempestuous and changeable, yes, but it was all just part of her nature. She was nature. A force to be reckoned with.”
“What happened?” Callum asks softly, and Elijah snaps back to the here and now, a flash of pain breaking across his face.
“What always happens in Faerie. The monarchs get bored with their too-long lives. They meddle with each other's courts, start wars, enact some bit of cruelty just because they can. Because it’s entertaining for them. It breaks up their monotony and gives them some way to feel as if their lives have drama and purpose. What fun would it be for them to simply relax and enjoy the beauty of their realm, revel in their magick, and renounce the violence they love so much?”
He laughs bitterly, pausing for a few moments and gathering his composure before he continues.
“I’d had enough. Enough of Faerie. Enough of the sick games the fae play.”
Elijah meets my eye, then Callum’s, like he’s waiting for us to question his word.
What’s there to question?
We’ve seen the fae queen and her terrible court. I believe every word out of Elijah’s mouth.
“How did you manage to leave?” I ask.
Elijah shrugs, though the movement seems forced. “There were enough fae in her court who hated her and knew it would weaken her to lose her consort. All I had to do was bargain with one of them to get me back to the Veil, and I was free.”
I try not to shudder thinking about what kind of bargain he may have had to strike to entice one of those awful courtiers to help him defy their queen’s orders.
“She never tried to come after you?” Callum asks.
“She can’t come here. I don’t know how familiar you are with Faerie and its monarchs, but they’re so closely tied to their realm’s magick that it’s almost impossible for them to leave.”
I think of the faerie queen and her vines, the way she seemed to grow up out of the court itself. Another shiver runs down my spine.
“And her courtiers?” Callum asks. “None of them were sent, either?”
“She may have tried to send them, but they don’t fare much better in this realm. Their magick doesn’t work the same as it does in Faerie. It’s why they’re all so obsessed with luring humans there.”
“Like you?”
Callum nudges me with his elbow, another silent reminder to play nice.
Elijah sighs, not put out in the slightest. “Yes, like me. There’s a reason fae myths are so pervasive throughout our literature, even to this day.” He gestures to his bookshelves. “Mine isn’t the first imagination to be captured by the lure of the beyond, and it certainly won’t be the last.”
He’s not wrong, though it’s still hard to imagine how he ended up where he did, how he tolerated that strange realm and its queen for so long.
But what do I know?
Maybe it really was like he said.
Maybe the fae queen wasn’t always so… well, so like she is.
“Do you think there are others who’ll be after me?”
I glance uneasily at Callum. What’s the best way to tell this guy that dozens of the most fearsome and cutthroat fortune hunters from across the thirteen realms are all bent on kidnapping him and dragging him back to his ex-lover?
“Probably,” Callum says, and I respect his honesty.
No use sugar-coating it, I guess.