Chapter 11
Though he was much stronger than a mortal, Ash didn’t have enough power to create a Light Fae portal. He tried—burning through the last of his reserves, he tried—but the most he conjured were a few sparks between his forefinger and his thumb.
That was a huge problem. Now that Melisandre’s pet had been compromised, it wouldn’t be long before she sent someone else to check on Callie, especially now that the dead human’s plan to bring Callie before the Fae Queen had failed.
They had to leave, but traveling through a portal was out of the question.
Nibbling on her nail, Callie suggested in a blank voice that they could turn to her family for help. Ash had to gently point out why that wasn’t a good idea. To get at their child, Melisandre wouldn’t think twice about ordering the deaths of a few more humans.
She couldn’t help but keep looking down at the blank space where the human had died. She finally accepted that that wasn’t her friend, but that didn’t change the fact that the Mitch she knew was also gone. If she ran to her hometown, she was putting her family at risk.
And Callie would never do that.
Between Callie and Mitch, they shared one car.
Living in the city, relying on public transportation made more sense than maintaining a vehicle and paying for a parking space.
Technically, it belonged to Mitch, and he’d driven it home when he left last summer.
Whoever it was that returned it—real Mitch or fake Mitch—Callie knew that the car was nearby.
It was something at least.
Ash didn’t argue when she suggested it. She could tell he wasn’t a fan of the idea. In Faerie, the fae relied on a horse and carriage if they couldn’t use their portals, and he’d never ridden in a car before.
First time for everything, right?
Callie grasped at the whisper of a plan with both hands, holding tight. Plotting their next step gave her something to focus on that wasn’t poor Mitch’s fate and how she’d spent months living with a stranger—
“Mitch always kept the keys in his room, I’m betting the fake Mitch did, too,” she told Ash, speaking louder than normal as if to drown out her intrusive thoughts. “I’ll go get them.”
“Let me.”
She shook her head. It would be too easy to let Ash take over for her, but she had something just as important to stand up for.
Melisandre fucked up by targeting her baby.
So what if she couldn’t take on the queen herself?
Or that she’d been fooled by the fake Mitch?
She still had her sight, and she was going to use it.
The time for pretending was over. Callie was going to take every advantage that she had to stay one step ahead of her.
“I got it. But give me a sec, then we can start packing up whatever we need to get the hell out of here.”
There was no time to make proper arrangements. She hated that she was running out without letting Buster now, and she hoped her landlord didn’t flip out when she broke her lease.
What else could she do? Stick around and wait for the queen to try again?
No fucking way.
Setting her expression in a look of grim determination, she cupped the edge of Ash’s jaw, giving him a jolt of power with her touch. Some of his color returned, and though he leaned into her palm, nuzzling her with his cheek, he stayed quiet when Callie shuffled past him, heading for Mitch’s room.
The keys were tossed on top of his dresser. So was his wallet.
Callie quickly pocketed the keys, her hand hovering over the wallet as she grabbed for that next. Melisandre’s seemingly innocent smile flashed before her mind’s eye, firming her resolve. Mitch was dead, she reminded herself. What use did he have for money now?
She snagged the wallet, shoving it in her back pocket.
After that, it was a blur. She’d always known that Ash was a soldier first, a guard second, and he proved it. Fae or not, when Callie barked orders at her mate, he immediately jumped into action.
Less than an hour later, she’d packed every piece of luggage and storage case she owned with whatever she couldn’t replace.
Ash used glamour to shield them as he made three trips up and down the ten flights, packing the car for her.
Since the last thing she wanted was for one of her neighbors to figure out she was moving out, when she left her apartment for the last time, the only thing Callie carried was her prized camera and the bag full of lenses.
Just a regular day, she thought. A regular day when she went out to shoot the local scenery.
And, no, she wasn’t running for her life… why do you ask?
Ash was already sitting inside of the car when she anxiously met him in the parking garage.
Callie passed him her camera bag as she dropped onto the driver’s seat, purposely choosing not to notice how much paler he seemed.
The car wasn’t doing him any favors. The iron in the steel frame was too much, but what else could they do?
Especially since the queen would never expect Ash would sicken himself by willingly riding inside of the car—which was precisely why he told her to drive when Callie hesitated behind the wheel.
The iron might make him sick, but if the queen found them, that would be the least of their worries.
Helix knew where to find Callie. As soon as Melisandre learned that her human pet was killed, she would send someone else to the apartment. They had to get as far away as possible.
She didn’t have a destination in mind when she peeled out of the lot; her intention was to get out of the city and as far away from the suburbs where her family lived.
Ash suggested another big city full of iron since, in the human realm, his kind were drawn to the few patches of nature and greenery that remained.
Melisandre’s soldiers would follow them everywhere, but finding a tall building surrounded by iron that she could cover in her wards…
if they were lucky, it should buy them some time until their child was born, at least.
Three hours later and close to two hundred miles away from her apartment, Mitch’s car started to shudder. Callie wasn’t sure if it was because she was pushing it harder than she should have, but a few minutes later, the front headlight popped.
Ash cursed under his breath.
She dug her fingers into the backside of the steering wheel.
His power might have faded, but Ash was still fae. He was still inherently magic. Considering how many appliances, lights, and tech his presence in her apartment had blown out since she’d known him, she probably should’ve expected that he would do something to a friggin’ car.
“I’m going to take the next exit,” she said, raising her voice over the whine coming from the front of the car. The engine? Probably. “We don’t want to be walking on the highway if we can help it.”
“We need to get somewhere high,” was all Ash said.
A hotel, Callie figured. Until they could find somewhere else to hide out, something more permanent, she would have to find them a hotel that was taller than a few stories. If Ash wanted them off the ground, she wasn’t going to argue.
For once that night, luck was finally on her side. When the car finally gave out—and it did, jolting to a stop as the engine dropped with a thunk—it died on the outskirts of Newport, one of the biggest cities the next state over.
Or, as Callie would come to think of it, her new home.
To Ash, the apartment they rented, then warded on the fourteenth floor was just the same as the one Callie used to live in. It was essentially an iron cage, and only his determination to keep his mate and child safe had him willingly locking himself inside of it.
Living with the wards was hard. It was like sludging through tar those first few days after she set pouches around the space, but he put up with it because he knew it would be close to impossible for someone with faerie blood to get past them.
The more he grew accustomed to them—grew accustomed to the human world—the easier he found it to tolerate them.
But if Ash could tolerate them, then so could one of the fae. He pushed Callie to add more wards, only putting a limit when she confessed that she was worried about him. About how he was visibly affected by the countless sachets littered around their home.
It was, admittedly, a bit of a shock to him. He’d never had another soul be concerned for him; before Callie, he’d never shown concern for another soul, either. He was more than willing to risk his own life to save hers, but he couldn’t bear to see her be worried for him.
Ever since he claimed her, everything he did was in the name of his ffrindau. He didn’t just have to save her from Melisandre. In a way, he needed to save her from himself.
And he did. Whatever she wanted, he gave it to her. When she was worried that money was running out, he found some. He was fae, not mortal. It didn’t matter that he was living in the human world now. He wasn’t human, would never be human, and he didn’t think like a human.
Callie wanted money. He got it for her.
She wanted a roof over her head. Done.
She wanted to protect their child with a fierceness only a mother would? He might not be able to conjure enough faerie fire to open a portal, but he still was connected to his pocket in Faerie. As he proved when he killed Melisandre’s pet, he had his sword at hand whenever he needed it.
He’d wielded that diamond-edged blade for centaurs, always in the queen’s honor. It was his duty.
For Callie, he’d turn that sword on anyone if only she asked him to.
She owned him. From that first touch, he’d been hers. She might have offered him a piece of her soul, but his heart—icy cold until she thawed it out for him—belonged to Callie.
And it always would.
Despite how he did everything he could to make the last few months of Callie’s pregnancy as calm and as easy as possible, it wasn’t really a surprise when the baby came a few weeks earlier than they’d been hoping it would.
Still, they were prepared. One room of their apartment had been turned into a nursery specifically for their child.
Because they agreed that they couldn’t risk going to a human hospital just in case, Callie had used the Yellow Pages to find a practicing midwife in Newport when she was eight months along.
Even after living in the Iron for two months, he still retained two of his powers: the ability to cloak himself in glamour and how easily he could compel weak-minded humans to do what he wanted, touch or no touch.
He charmed the midwife, a fifty-something human woman called Louise, implanting the suggestion that, when Callie called for her, she would drop everything and come to the apartment.
It was a short labor, though that might’ve been because neither Ash nor Callie recognized that the slight twinges she felt were actually contractions up until the moment her water broke.
She made the call, Louise arrived within fifteen minutes, and Ash was shooed out of the bedroom where Callie was laid up.
Wracked with worry for his growing family, Ash’s aura flared. For the first time in weeks, his fae power surged enough to have three separate bulbs popping, leaving the glass shards to twinkle against the tile.
He couldn’t risk exploding another. Or, worse, the reach of his aura burning out the light in the bedroom while Callie was giving birth.
Instead, he busied himself with cleaning up the mess so that it wouldn’t be a danger to Callie, until he finally heard the bedroom door open.
His head swiveled, long tawny hair nearly slapping him in the cheek with how quick he turned. He hopped to his feet when he saw Louise standing in the doorway.
The midwife was smiling at him. “Congratulations, Daddy. It’s a girl.”
A breath caught in his throat.
A girl.
A daughter.
And quite possibly the halfling spoken of in the Shadow Prophecy...
“Come on in,” Louise continued in her soft voice. “She’s asking for you.”
Ash was already striding for the door before she even finished her sentence.
As he approached her, he waved his hand, ready to compel her to leave the apartment and forget ever meeting them. After all, once he was done with her, he would do the same.
Except that was how Aislinn would react. The Light Fae. The member of the Fae Queen’s elite guard. He would use the human, then discard her once he had no need for her.
But Ash… Callie’s Ash… he paused.
Then, because he was sure his mate would want him to, he gestured for Louise to wait. He had a roll of human money in his pants pocket. He started to peel off a few bills, hesitated again, then handed the whole roll to Louise before sending her on her way.
He didn’t say ‘thank you’—old habits died hard, it seemed, and Ash would forever be fae—but he was sure the midwife would much prefer the money anyway.
Once she was gone, the door closed behind her, Ash slipped into the bedroom.
Part of the preparations Ash had made was bringing a second, smaller bed into the space.
Like they planned, Callie had moved to it while she was in labor.
Now, cleaned up and wearing a simple nightdress that, to Ash, was more beautiful than any of Melisandre’s elaborate gowns, she was propped up against a wall of pillows, cradling the baby against her chest as if afraid to let her out of her sight.
He could sense her exhaustion, but there was a steely determination in her blue eyes as Callie spared him a quick glance. “They’ll come for her. Won’t they, Ash?”
He was fae. He couldn’t lie. And even if he could? When it came to Callie, he wouldn’t.
So, in the name of Oberon, he wished he could say otherwise, he nodded. “Yes.”
“The queen… she won’t stop until she has her.”
That was also true. But, watching as his beloved ffrindau cradled their child to her chest, Ash made a solemn vow to both Callie and their daughter.
“Melisandre can try. But I won’t let her.”
It was the truth. At least, Ash believed it to be. For the next year, he was sure he could protect Callie and Zella, even when he could no longer deny that she was the halfling child spoken of in the prophecy.
Half-human. Half-fae. Drawn to the shadows, even though she carried Seelie blood in her veins… Zella was the only threat to the Fae Queen in two hundred years, and all too soon, Melisandre finally went after her.
And Ash was right. He didn’t let her get to Zella. Neither did Callie.
If only they could’ve saved themselves, though...