Her gaze dropped to the snow, and she turned away from him. “I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have tried to use you like that. If you want to take the tree and go, I’ll understand.” Her voice was quiet, carried off on the wind as a shadow fell over Kol and a pit formed in his stomach. He didn’t want to be right about his darkest thoughts, the ones that proved to him he was only worth the company he could provide in bed. He could be more than that for her, if she’d just let him.
He had to tell her that, to say she didn’t have to be alone, that he would keep up the charade as long as she wanted—forever even, which was completely insane, but he knew in the deepest part of his heart, he preferred orbiting her burning star than floating in the void of his own life. He would rather stand on the outside of her family, under everyone’s suspicion, holding her hand whenever she felt like she needed it, than never see her again.
“Piper?” His voice cracked as he watched her back. He wanted her to turn around so he could see those big eyes of hers to know if he was making yet another mistake or not. There was a pull at his stomach, and then the whole world fell out from under him.
18
One Big Mama Bird
Piper stood in the field and trembled. She was terrified of what Kol might say, the sound of her name on his lips frightening enough, his ensuing silence even worse.
She turned slowly back, and then her heart sank right to the bottom of her boots.I didn’t really mean I wanted you to go…
“Put me the fuck down!”
Head snapping skyward, Piper’s breath caught, and she nearly fell backward right into the snow. There Kol was, or rather, there he went, being carried off by a…raving Rudolph, whatwasthat?
The biggest bird Piper had ever seen, but also somehow didn’t see, streaked straight upward, Kol in its talons, white wings spread as it soared away and…andflickered?
“Kol!” Piper sprinted across the field, or at least she tried. She raised her knees and crashed back into the snowy depths, head tracking the absconder between each deepening step. The way he thrashed around in its talons told her he hadn’t called it up to come and get him. What the hell she was going to do, she had no idea, but if she lost him, she could do nothing.
Piper would have thought it an owl if it weren’t so huge, but it might as well have been—no bird was that big. But geese didn’t have fangs and trees weren’t seven thousand years old and pixies only existed in fairytales, so it might as well have been a snowy owl ten times too big tearing away over the field. She called after Kol again as the beast’s existence continued to flicker incomprehensibly, and then both were lost over the trees. Piper kept up her belabored slog until she reached a dent in the otherwise untouched snow just before the far end of the field. That tablet of Kol’s lay in a divot, fallen through the sky and caught in the thick powder, so she scooped it up and darted into the darkened forest.
It only took her a moment to find the bird again, its wings massive when they fully formed beyond the sticky branches. She trained her eyes on the sky where she could, stumbling as she went. She only hit the ground once, pain bursting through her forearms as she caught herself on the frozen earth, but she was up again in seconds, injury quickly forgotten. Yet try as she might, the bird was simply faster, and soon Kol was no more.
Panic stabbed at her brain as Kol’s name echoed back at her fruitlessly when she called it into the cold. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she squeezed the tablet against it to silence the noise and think.
The tablet!
Piper flipped the thauma-whatsit over in her hands, smooth and black and giving her absolutely nothing to work with. She ripped off her gloves to feel the rectangle’s edges. It was warm, but there were no buttons or seams to turn it on or fold it open. She’d seen Kol do all sorts of things with it using a glowing touch, but that was it, she supposed—it took magic.
And magic, Piper did not have, especially now that Kol was gone.
She grunted and glanced around, but the world was white and brown, devoid of the lights and colors she’d seen him produce. What she needed was someone else with magic, someone who knew everything Kol did, who was familiar with mythological beasts and enchanted ingredients and forests teaming with otherworldly fowl. But she knew no one like that, only Kol, and he was only half because his mother…
His mother!
Piper gripped Kol’s device in two hands, staring down at it, willing it to turn on. She squinted and huffed and nearly burst a blood vessel, but more nothing kept happening, or not happening. Then finally she took a deep breath, put as much bass into her voice as possible, and shouted, “Call mom!”
The screen lit up.Calling Mother.
“Oh, I can’t believe that worked,” she whispered, but of course it did because it had to, you know, for the plot.
“Kolariel, this is not our scheduled bi-lunar communion. Is this a pleasure I should take satisfaction in, or am I to assume disquiet or ailment has befallen you?”
In Piper’s panic, most of the words didn’t compute, but it hardly mattered. “Hello, Mrs. Um,”—fuck, she didn’t know his last name or if elves even had them—“Mrs. Kol’s Mom?”
“Hmm, you do not sound like Kolariel. This truly must be emergent.” The voice was smooth and calm, and it settled Piper’s nerves enough to take a full breath.
“Yes, it’s that.” She gripped the…well, she guessed itwasphone, and she spoke into the light it produced. “Kol’s been birdnapped!”
“Bird,” the voice said very slowly, “napped?”
“Well, elfnapped, I guess? A bird stole him, but a big bird, ahugeone! I mean, obviously, how else would it—oh, my god, he said there would be birds if I kept the tree, and then he wastaken by one!” It hit her all at once—it was all her fault—and she fell back hard against a maple, loosening snow that fell onto her head.
The voice made a ponderous sound that would have been pleasant if things weren’t so dire, but as it stood, things were, and frustration mounted in Piper’s chest at the woman’s lack of urgency. “Troubling,” she finally said.
“Yeah, that’s one word for it, but they’re gone now, and that thing was so big it could be miles away!”
