Page 37 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)
Chapter Twenty-Five
“ Y ou guys have a mass of problems. Anyone ever told you? When you figure out what the hell you’re doing, you let me know. Until then, I’m done.”
Poppy rolled her eyes and grabbed one of the blankets and a pillow. She shoved them under her arm then stomped up the stairs, making sure we heard every dull clunk of her boots on the tread.
Whatever guest rooms were up there, she’d obviously decided against bunking down with the rest of us. I didn’t blame her.
To be fair, none of the fae I’d met were fans of the cuddle puddle. Wolves, on the other hand, even halflings like me and Bronwen, needed the closeness of pack. Of family.
She and I snuggled closer on the couch beneath the soft weave the color of a ripe peach. I stared at the pile of blankets and quilts. The one on top appeared hand-stitched, the threading delicate perfection in the design of a flower I’d never seen before.
I’d have never guessed that Elfhame conjured them out of thin air.
“There’s so much we don’t know,” I said with a sigh. A little helpless, a little scared, and a lot exhausted, I dropped my head on Bronwen’s shoulder. “How much has been kept from us, and how much do we just not get?”
Bronwen rested her head on top of mine and her hand found my knee, squeezing. “You’re talking about the EverRose stuff? The Great Pixie War?”
“I was thinking about the blankets and pixie magic, but yeah, all of it. It just seems like we’ve been plunked down into this entirely new universe where the past is written by people who don’t think anyone needs to know the real details.”
“That’s nothing new,” she groaned. “It’s true in the mortal realm. You know what people say about history written by the victors.”
“It doesn’t help us now.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” she agreed. “We’re flying blind the same way we have since this whole business started. At least we’re together. It doesn’t matter what Poppy says. I know we’re all fucked up. But there’s a difference between traumatized and screwed.”
She pushed off the couch and grabbed a pillow for herself, smashing the edges to fluff up the middle. She tossed it on the couch opposite and spread two of the blankets out flat before shucking her shoes. A comfortable little nest.
“I’m happy to be here, you know. Even though I’m scared,” she admitted. Her eyes rounded. “I’m happy we’re together.”
“I wish there were a way not to have anyone I care about be involved but there just…isn’t.”
She smiled at my helpless tone. Only her nose and eyes were visible at the edge of the tassels.
“We’re not just here for you, Tavi, although I will totally kick ass if you need me to. We’re here for all of Faerie. Because things have been divided for too long. And if there’s a way for us to make it right, then I’m sure I speak for everyone, friends and family. We’ll do it.”
Was she speaking for Mike too? The door hadn’t budged. I kept glancing at it, waiting for it to crack open, waiting for something to change. When would Mike be back?
Finally I forced myself to stand, a little wobbly but otherwise not as bad as anticipated. Bronwen looked like she wanted to ask about the whole gun ordeal. What I’d done to myself and why. I wasn’t in the mood.
“Try to get some sleep, Tavi.”
“Good night, Bron.”
Rather than getting comfortable on the couch, I arranged several of the blankets on the floor near Noren. Elfhame had conjured a small fire in the potbelly stove and it added a comfortable and floral-scented warmth to the room.
Under the blankets, things smoothed out. The briars in my mind still snagged my thoughts but everything else felt too far for me to touch.
Eventually the door snicked open and heavy footsteps sounded against the old wood floor.
I didn’t glance up at Mike’s return. Vowed not to move with Noren cuddled to my right infusing me with heat. Sealing the pieces of my soul back together.
Rather than taking the couch, Mike let the last pillow fall beside my head and curled himself around my back, wrapping his lanky body around me. His hands on my waist, he pulled me forward, fitting me to the front of his body.
His nose tickled my hair. “I’m sorry.”
I stiffened but the longer he held me, the further his heat and scent seeped into me, the more I relaxed.
“You think an apology is going to smooth things over?” I asked softly. “You can’t always just walk out.”
“I know. I needed time to think and I didn’t think you’d want me around for it. I know I’m not the easiest when I get in these moods.”
“You do act like a real jerk sometimes.” But he was touching me, so… “I do, too.”
His smile gave me tingles even though I couldn’t see it with him behind me. I felt it anyway. “Think you’ll be able to forgive me one last time?”
Why wouldn’t I forgive him? I wanted it to be easy, to offer the words to tell him how unconditionally I cared for him, but for some reason they were impossible to get out. My throat worked but nothing happened.
Maybe at my core I wasn’t really the unconditional type. Maybe I was tired and wanted to be a little mean with someone who knew me, with someone who already had a problem with me although he refused to admit it.
“What’s there to forgive? You’re pissed at me and I get it.”
I baited him for an answer and waited for him to pull his fingers back.
Soon he’d stop drawing his fingers in neat little circles on my hip.
Soon he’d turn on his back and break the connection because deep down I disgusted him, no matter how he tried to act like we were getting back to what we’d been.
“I’m not mad at you,” he corrected gruffly. “The situation blows. There are things I know we need to do and it kills me because I don’t want to have to put us in those predicaments. I have no power. I’m useless.”
“Us?” I repeated. Dull. Unbelieving.
Did I really think there was going to be an us ? We were a thing in the past, so far gone not even his time manipulation could reach the relationship we used to have and the people we used to be.
Mike still refused to look at the scar on my neck because we both knew exactly what it meant.
“We’re in a unique and fucking terrible position because we know what the battle will cost. I have serious reservations that we’ll survive.” His breathing deepened.
He exhaled and settled his weight closer to me, his hip bones digging into my back.
“I don’t know much about the battle of EverRose,” I admitted.
“Not one of those things they teach at the academy if they can help it.” He pulled to bring me closer. “It’s the first battle of the Great Pixie War. It changed the course of Faerie history. Hundreds of thousands of fae and pixies died.”
“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 of losing power. 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.