“Just being overprotective. I’ll wake you in an hour.” She pulled the door closed between them.
After a rest that ended up lasting two hours, Charlie led Liam to the great hall and beamed when she saw the tree. The massive pot it was in anchored the magnificent specimen, which rose almost to the rafters at the center of the round room.
Liam walked up to it, his mouth falling open. “When you said they wouldn’t kill it, I assumed they were going to cut off the top or something. How did they manage potting it? This tree is massive.”
“Probably sang to it,” Charlie said.
When Liam turned disbelieving eyes on her, she shrugged. “Fairies have a special relationship with trees. When they build their homes, they sing to the trees to coax them into the shapes they want.”
“Incredible.” He slid his fingers over one of the branches. “But how does it work? Are the trees here… sentient? Or are their singing voices acting on the plants at the cellular level?”
“Neither. It’s magic. Fairy magic.” Charlie loved how fascinated he was by something she took for granted.
“But how does the magic work?” Liam’s expression was nothing short of puzzled.
She moved in closer to him, trailing her fingers along the edge of the pot. “It’s in their blood, their celestial energy, the vibration of their souls, the ancestral roots of their species. Their voices hold the power of generations.”
He shook his head, laughing. “That makes no sense.”
“How hard did you hit your head?” She smirked at him.
“You know what I mean. You’re an educated woman. There has to be an explanation for how things work. Things don’t just happen. Trees don’t uproot themselves for a song.” His jaw clenched, and Charlie was worried he might come out of his skin.
“Liam, do women have wings where you come from?”
He met her gaze. “Uh, no.”
“But I do, and I’m standing right in front of you. How do my wings work? Why was I born with them?”
“We could find out with an MRI, some blood tests. There’s an explanation. There always is.” He frowned.
She tucked her hair behind her ears. “And how did I get you here from your world? Is there an explanation for that?”
“Must be.”
“You’re right, there is. Magic. Ancient magic.”
“I don’t believe in magic.” He cast her one of his trademark scowls.
Her brows shot up to her hairline fast enough that she felt her ears lift. “What a dark existence you must have if you can only believe in the things you fully understand.”
“I don’t have to fully understand them to know that there is a scientific explanation. There’s an order to things. What appears to be magic has a rational cause and effect, possibly something that hasn’t been discovered yet but still it exists.”
“Challenge accepted.” She extended her hand to him. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To my ritual room. I am going to demonstrate some magic for you, and in the process, we are going to decorate this tree, a tree that crawled out of the ground and into this pot using magic.”
“You won’t change my mind.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
Liam took her hand, allowing her to lead him back to her chambers. He still had a throbbing headache, and he wasn’t sure if it was from his head hitting the floor or the unbelievable sight of the potted tree in the great hall. He supposed it would be possible to move a tree like that with heavy machinery, maybe an excavator and a crane, but how did they get it into the hall so quickly?
Ah, he was being dim. Considering they were on a different planet, the machinery here must be more advanced. All this nonsense about magic was simply Charlotte’s way of making sense of the world she was in, but with the right equipment, he could puzzle out the physics of it. For now he’d simply accept that it was possible with the technology these creatures possessed.
Charlotte led him through a door off the central area of her apartment and into a room that belonged on a movie set. A large symbol was painted on the floor, surrounded by shelves of candles, herbs, crystals and bones. It was like he’d been transported into one of those touristy magic shops in the city that preyed on people’s psychological problems in order to sell them bags of polished rocks.
