Robin came close and seemed to be searching Gwen’s face curiously. Gwen couldn’t tell what color their eyes were. Dark brown? Midnight blue? A deep forest green? They weren’t just black. “Its spell was dowsing for Henrik…and it found onlyyou. Why would it findyou?”
As Gwen was wondering if she should feel insulted, Robin shook their head. “I don’t mean to slight you, Gwen. But the magic was very certain that coming here would take me toHenrik.”
“A glitch in the code? Can you file a bug report with the developer?”
Robin’s mouth twitched into a smile that suggested that, even if they were from another world, they got the joke.
“Maybe you should tell me more,” Gwen suggested. “Do you want something other than a Kit Kat? A thimble of soda, maybe?”
Robin shook their head. “I don’t need anything.”
“Good, because I’m not sure I actually have a thimble.”
Gwen got a soda from the fridge and settled into her gaming chair. Robin fluttered down to the surface of the desk. They didn’t exactlyfly, Gwen though, but it was more than just floating. “So, tell me more about this knight and your fairyland.”
“Are you familiar with parallel universe theory?” Robin perched on the case for Gwen’s headphones.
“Passingly,” Gwen said.
“I come from a world adjacent to this, a world of magic and light. But the crown was broken and the world was plunged into darkness and evil.”
“The crown? Like the Queen of Faery?”
Robin’s little mouth twitched in humor. “Like it, but also not. I was given charge of these knights, our world’s last hope, and during our final battle, we were thrust intothisworld. A spell caught my knights to make them vulnerable and turned them into glass. They were separated here, nearly a year ago, and I have been searching for them ever since.”
“Literal magic,” Gwen said.
“Literal in a number of ways,” Robin said wryly. “Spells often take on unintended meaning, and there was a soup of conflicting enchantment going on at the time. Cerad—our enemy—was casting one thing, I was casting another. Henrik was doing a counterspell…it was a hot freaking mess.”
Despite their modern snark, Robin had an odd otherworldly serenity that Gwen found herself puzzled with. They were a mix of melancholy and merry that she couldn’t put her finger on, willing to jest, but with an underlying grimness.
They could be a hundred years old, Gwen thought. They reminded her of old men she knew who talked about wars that were only filmed in black and white and yet used cell phones for cat photos and memes. “And your quest for Henrik led you here for some reason.” She popped open her soda.
“I do not believe it was only chance, and my search has recently become more urgent. Trey, another of my knights, has finally been released, but evil from my world has followed us in the form ofdoursand was attracted by the breaking of his curse.”
“I can protect myself,” Gwen said confidently. “I don’t know if you know about a thing we have here called martial arts, but I’m a black belt, fifth degree.” It was always a strange mix of pride and humility to admit it. She knew she didn’t look particularly strong or skilled, and the trophies on the shelf in front of her sword were all second places, not championships.
“You are a warrior yourself,” Robin said thoughtfully, glancing up at the sword above them. “But this is not an enemy you will be prepared for. Dours are evil shreds of magic itself, and they corrupt a human soul, turning a person suspicious, angry, and malicious.”
“Like certain news outlets and social media?” Gwen suggested.
Robin gave a huff of a laugh. “Like that.And also very much not.I fear that your people will have no protection from the darkness of our world.” Their little face scrunched up thoughtfully. “Except that one did—the woman that unlocked Trey’s spell seems connected to him, and resistant to the dour’s power. I wonder if you don’t have the same connection with Henrik in some way.”
Gwen had to damp down a little thrill of excitement at the idea. She had dated, wistful for the idea of romantic companionship, even if she was too practical to believe in truelove. She’d gone out with college classmates, and nice Korean boys her parents picked out, and she’d even tried dating apps. But none of them lasted past the shine of possibility, always proving to be too desperate, too demanding, or too dull.
Maybe she’d been waiting formagic.
Gwen gave herself a little shake. She was more tired than she realized. She’d been up most of the night before doing a game tournament with people in other time zones, and hanging out with her parents and her brother had exhausted her.
“Well, this is great.” She made a show of yawning. “But it’s really late and I’m still not sure you aren’t a figment of bad fruitcake. I’m going to go to bed now, and you are welcome to hang out for a few days and see if this knight in shining armor shows up. You can sleep in a drawer and eat my leftover Halloween candy if you want.”
Robin flipped her off and Gwen fled to her bedroom.
CHAPTER TWO
Gwen woke up and immediately wondered if the night before had been some kind of delirium. Had her mother’s attempt at an American Christmas Eve dinner involved psychedelics? She put on a bathrobe before she came out of her bedroom, just in case, and was somehow unsurprised to find Robin standing on her desk, frowning at the computer screen. Had they gotten past her passcode with magic?
“What are you doing to my browser history, Tinker Bell?” Gwen demanded, looking over their head at the screen. “No fairy porn or gnome fetish sites, I hope.”
