Page 90 of Faerie Fate
“The fae tried to sack the place?”
Tension thrummed from Mike to me and he hesitated. “The pixies claimed it was an impenetrable fortress and I’m pretty sure the fae took it as a personal challenge. They’d do whatever it took to prove their superiority and make sure the pixies and the threat of their magic was wiped out.”
“Why make enemies with a race so powerful? It makes more sense to be allies,” I whispered.
“Not if you’re scared oflosingpower. The war went on for like another ten years before the pixies finally retreated.”
That had to be when Elfwaite moved to the human realm with her family. She said it was at the end of the war. Had she really been in the mortal realm for over three hundred years?
My hand on Mike’s, I trace my thumb over his knuckles. “I’m fairly certain that Elfhame is Elfwaite’s mother. That’s how she was friends with Barbara in the mortal realm.”
Elfwaite told me that her family fled during the war. For half a second, I thought Elfwaite fought in the war but I must have had it wrong in my head. She’d probably been born during the war.
“Oh yeah?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong about things and misremembering. I could have sworn she said her family left Faerie over a hundred years ago, and that she was born and raised in the mortal realm.”
The longer I thought about it, the deeper the ache in my skull.
Mike, sensing the stress, rubbed his thumbs across my waist. “We shouldn’t change history. My teachers warned me just how easy it is to do. So we have to be diligent and stay absolutely utterly uninvolved.”
I shook my head slightly but it didn’t clear away the strange disconnect between what I remembered Elfwaite saying and what I knew about the war now.
Had she really said it was only a hundred years ago?
“Your teachers were right,” I murmured.
“They’d have to be in order to teach me and the others with this power.” His exhale tickled my hair. “If we go to EverRose, get the morsana flower, and then leave immediately before the battle happens…then we should be fine. If my power is back.”
“I’m not keen to be drawn into a damn war.”
Mike felt solid and familiar behind me. A presence as old as the earth and more present than ever when he took my hand in his. “It would be the worst decision of our lives,” he agreed.
I wasn’t sure about that but it would certainly be among the worst.
Eventually we drifted off, Mike first, his breathing evening out and his muscles jerking as sleep took him.
Footsteps stole me right back to wakefulness before dawn. Thin slats of gray light pushed through the curtains drawn over the windows. A round of laughter accompanied the footsteps and someone made a shushing sound.
Those first furtive footsteps were the quietest. Then the door slammed open and all hell broke loose inside the house.
Mike startled awake and grabbed me against him, rolling slightly as though he’d use his body as a shield.
“We have guests!” Elfhame’s hushed warning fell on deaf ears at the stampede. “Will you be quiet?”
Noren wasn’t growling, so we were okay. Especially when I pried an eye open to see three pixie heads staring at me and another two staring down at the direwolf.
“Is this a real direwolf?” the nearest pixie asked.
Elfwaite was always so small and her size made it impossible to see the details of her face, the fine wispy hairs. These were boys. Perfectly formed and inherently masculine boy pixies who stared at my wolf like he was their newest pet and they were ready to convince Mom to keep him.
Elfhame stepped between them and Noren. “Sorry. These monsters are mine and they’ve been out with their father in preparation for our departure. They know better than to make so much noise and disturb guests.”
“I’ve never seen a real direwolf before,” one of the boys said, wide-eyed. “He’s pretty.”
“He’s huge!” another remarked.
Eight sons in total filed into the house, trailed by an exhausted-looking male with wings the rich blue color of the deepest sea.
