Chapter 12

"Lose your ward, luv?"the elf cackles, rubbing their hands together super villain style.

They're wearing loose cotton clothes in the style that people who lived a few hundred years ago would wear. They even have suspenders, which probably means they're too poor to afford a tailor to fit their clothes right. I assume that's why suspenders were invented anyway. Who knows. I doubt Google is going to work for me in Fae.

How do I know I'm in the land of fairies?

Well, that buzzing that I couldn't see? I can see the source now. Fairies or pixies or whatever they call themselves—little winged people with huge bug eyes and antennae instead of ears, hands, feet, clothes—zip around us, darting between us and flying overhead. They're everywhere, landing on the moving plants and doing fuck knows what. Guiding the plants maybe? I don't know. Tag doesn't talk about his home realm very much.

"Come on, then, let's go. I've been tasked with bringing the Harbinger to The Mab, and that's you."

The elf takes a few threatening steps toward me, but they're not getting past my ward unless I fight back, which is how I ended up here. I should have kept my wits about me. If I hadn't smacked that damn fairy I'd be in Fox's arms right now.

I cross my arms and shake my head. I am definitely not doing what this person wants just because The Mab decided they didn't want to go through proper channels to meet me. And also, the last time anyone mentioned the word ‘Mab,' it was in reference to seeing through a Mab's invisibility glamour, and Fox told us that Tag was a Mab himself, so who the fuck is The Mab?

The elf reaches for me, but my ward stops their hand about three inches from my skin. They make a frustrated noise and try again. They increase the force, and their hand bounces off my ward with the same force. They narrow their eyes and slowly reach out. The ward stops them.

I'm not going anywhere I don't want to go. The ward knows this person is a threat, and that's all it needs to keep them from doing anything to me.

"Fairies, help me!" they order the fairies flying around.

The little creatures take off from their perches en masse and swarm around me, buzzing loudly. But as long as I don't hit any of them, they too can't get past my ward. They got lucky when they startled me before. I'm not making that mistake again.

Since I'm relatively safe, and this realm isn't unaffected by my ward, I choose a direction at random and start walking. I'm literally going off path, but since the last path I walked down ended up being an interdimensional portal, I think it's ok if I stick to creating my own.

"That is not the way! The Mab will see you! You must go to The Mab!" the elf cries out, frustration but no real fear in his voice. He's upset, but not so upset that I think The Mab's going to kill him if he fails to bring me to her.

Tag hasn't ever indicated that his people are genuinely monstrous, and he was appalled that Fox had killed one of them, so I assume failure isn't going to be a death sentence for the elf sent to fetch me.

Honestly, if The Mab had just asked, I probably would have visited out of curiosity. Now that she's tried to abduct me, I have to resist on principle. It's upsetting really. I'm finally in another realm that isn't Hell, and I still don't get to enjoy it because someone decided it was too hard to use their words.

I'm mute and even I know how to ask people to come visit. I did it yesterday when I invited everyone over for a family meeting. It's not that hard.

And now I'm annoyed because all my plans for an egg(plant)cellent vegetarian dinner have been ruined. All the myths say that time runs differently on Fae. What's a few days here would be weeks on Earth. By the time I get home all the eggplants will be ruined.

"Just turn this direction!" The elf hasn't stopped nagging me since I started to complain in my head about all this inconvenience.

I turn on my heels and point my finger at them, thinking really hard about how they've ruined my plans for dinner. I'd type it all out, but I'm not sure they deserve that much of my effort. Instead, I shake my finger and frown viciously at them.

They take a step back, because obviously my frown is the stuff of legends and they know to be very afraid now that I've invoked it, and out of pure spite, I turn ninety degrees to the direction they want me to go in and start walking.

The elf makes another noise of pure frustration, which delights the shit out of me. The fairies give up their buzzing and fly off, leaving me and the elf who can't control me to walk aimlessly through the—I don't know what kind of landscape this is. Is it a jungle? A forest? A dense grassland? I don't know! There's a lot of foliage that I can't see through, but it moves out of the way every time I take a step. I haven't touched a single plant since I started walking, and everywhere I place my feet is on soil, but as soon as I lift my foot away, plants fill in the gap. It's magnificent, honestly. No path, but the plants aren"t bothered about that, they're just letting me walk through.

"Listen, I apologize for pushing you into the wilds. I could have probably gone about this differently, but I'm an elf! I'm meant to play tricks and make a nuisance of myself. I promise if you just turn this way that The Mab will probably talk to you. She said she wanted to meet you, and if you go there now, she can!"

I'm not sure what part of that pseudo apology is meant to make me feel better. Promising The Mab will probably talk to me doesn't preclude her trying to kill me. Not that she could with my ward intact, but I don't think I want to risk her being one of the people who knows how to disrupt a council ward. Darcy knows how; I've seen him do it to Santanos's ward. If he wasn't on our side, I'm fairly certain Fox would have killed him just because he could potentially destroy my ward, and my man wouldn't want to risk it.

I'm certainly not going to risk The Mab knowing how to disrupt my ward. Does this elf think I'm stupid?

"Ok, no. I can see how that doesn't sound very reassuring. The problem is that elves have to speak the truth in our home realm, right? So I'm bound by the magic of this realm, and I can't really speak to the queen's motivations."

That's interesting. Does that mean he can lie when he's on Earth?

"So, if you turn this way and start walking with me, we will be in The Mab"s lands in a few hours, and someone there might send you back to earth after you've met with her. The direction you're walking now leads straight to goblin territory, and they've been known to eat their visitors."

I don't want to get eaten, but they mentioned that it's only a few hours to The Mab's land, so we're not in The Mab's land now, and they said this path leads to goblin territory, so we're not in goblin territory yet. Where are we now? I don't know and I'm not going to ask, but I'm fine with finding out since they don't seem to want me to know.

My brain is on fire today with the reading between the lines thing. I'll probably never be this good at it again, but today I'm winning at it.

You know, I might not be able to call for help, but Fox taught me how to put my hands together to make bird call whistles. You know what I'm talking about? You put your hands together and line your thumbs up and blow hard enough to make it whistle? Well, Fox taught me how, and now I'm going to do it. Maybe someone the elf doesn't want me to encounter will hear my whistle and come investigate.

I put my hands together and start blowing sharply.

The elf cries out and runs at me, trying to physically stop me, but they bounce off my shield and onto their butt.

I stop in my tracks, turn to peer at them on the ground, put my hands to my lips, and blow. The whistle is ridiculously loud.

A horn blows in the distance.

The elf scrambles to their feet, wringing their hands. "If we're here when he arrives, I'll be in trouble. He might kill me this time."

Am I supposed to feel sorry for my abductor?

I drop my shoulders, annoyed with myself because now I do feel sorry for them.

Still, I whistle back in response to the horn.

The elf looks around, eyes wide with worry. It's not fear, as in they're worried for their life, but they are definitely anxious.

The horn responds, closer this time. So I whistle again. Hopefully whoever he is will help me.

The horn sounds from so close I would swear it's right next to me, and then the plants part and an indigo skinned elf with long shimmering midnight blue hair appears riding a wave. The look on his face is arrogance personified, and he glares down his upturned nose at me. He forgot to wear a shirt but remembered his BDSM belts, and his soft leather pants are somehow water resistant because they're not soaked from the wave. His broad shoulders and huge biceps are on full display as he hefts a golden trident with glowing tips. The ivory horn he kept blowing hangs from his neck with the blowie end pointed at his shallow belly button.

My elf squeaks, "Kelpie," and it takes me a few seconds to remember what that is. It's a fae, shapeshifting water horse, which I guess explains the whole riding a wave, which by the way is still roiling around his bare feet even though he's no longer moving—honestly, it's an epic entrance.

The kelpie sneers down at my elf. "What have you done, Tova?"

Ah, my elf's name is Tova! Nice. I like it when I get information I didn't have to ask for.

"The Mab wants to meet the Harbinger," Tova explains, cowering under the weight of the kelpie's disdain.

The kelpie heaves out a heavy sigh and rolls his eyes, shaking his head. "You need to stop trying to gain Gwendolyn's favor. She is never going to look twice at you. You are beneath her and nothing you ever do will be good enough."

I really hate hearing anything like that out of anyone's mouth. No one is beneath anyone else, and I'm already reaching for my phone to put this beautiful fucker in his place when he says, "Have more self-respect. You deserve for someone to see you from above and lift you to your place beside them."

Ok, it's better, but why the fuck would he say that Tova's beneath anyone at all.

Tova whimpers and lets out what sounds suspiciously like a sob.

The kelpie turns his attention to me. "I'm the lord of these lands, Ashley Thane. Who are you?"

I hold up my phone and shake it at him before typing out a message and letting RoboRom read it out. "My name is Romily Butcher. I am Arlington Fox's Harbinger. I would like to get back to my Reaper as soon as possible."

He stares at me with a blank expression for three whole seconds before answering. "That is unfortunate. Macfilsenghe will have to retrieve you. Come."

He holds out his palm to me. It's as big as my head, so when I tentatively take it, my hand is dwarfed like I'm a child. He pulls me up onto the wave, tucks me into his side, holding me firmly like I'm one of those old romance cover heroines, and then we're off. Riding a wave, and to be honest, it's better than any other non-conventional mode of travel I've been on since I met Fox.