Instead of indulging those thoughts any further, I pull the car into a street-side parking spot and check all my mirrors.
Nothing looks out of the ordinary.
Aside from a few cars passing, a few people out walking, a light breeze in the air, it’s quiet. No sign of anyone else around who knows what we’re up to.
Well, almost no sign.
Parked half-way up the block in a sleek black sedan, I catch sight of Gavin. He nods when our eyes meet, a silent acknowledgment.
Callum follows my gaze and grumbles slightly.
“Not a big fan of Gavin?”
Another grumble, but he doesn’t dignify the teasing jab with an answer.
After last night, he’s got nothing to worry about. Actually, since the moment I met him, he’s had nothing to worry about, if I’m being honest. But damn if I don’t enjoy teasing him and seeing him a little jealous.
“Well, no time like the present, I guess,” I say, reaching for my door handle.
Callum tenses, but nods, opening his door as well and following me up the short sidewalk to the front door.
I raise my hand to knock, but it swings open before I can.
I only get half a look at the man standing in the doorway before I’m shoved behind Callum’s back. Silly, that he’d be so protective, especially given that I’m well-stocked with spells and more than capable of dealing with a single wielder if need be.
Stepping out from behind him, I get my first look at the fae queen’s heart.
Just like his house and this neighborhood, the wielder looks like any average, ordinary guy.
Medium height, with dark blond hair and a bit of scruff on his jaw, blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, and a kind face, he seems more tired than anything. Like he’s been waiting for this day for a long time and is ready to get it over with.
“Are you—” I begin, question cut short when I remember we don’t actually know his name.
“Elijah,” he supplies, then takes a step back and gestures us inside. “Please, come in.”
He leads us from the front door down a short hallway into a study. Bookcases line the walls, a heavy wooden desk sits in the center of the room, and the scent of wielder magick permeates the entire space.
Taking a seat behind the desk, he gestures again, this time for the two of us to sit opposite him in a set of chairs upholstered in deep navy velvet.
It feels like a meeting with a middle-aged professor. In this quiet, stately room filled with books, sitting across from a man who looks like he’d be much more at home in the dusty stacks of a library than in the fae queen’s cursed court, it’s hard to square my expectations of this meeting with the reality of Elijah.
“My Archwielder told me you’re here on orders from the queen of Faerie.”
“Not orders, per se,” I hedge, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say we’re on a hunt to bring him back to said queen inexchange for a mind-boggling amount of gold and jewels and other treasures.
Really doesn’t sound all that great, especially now that we’re face to face with the heart himself.
“She put a bounty out on you,” Callum says, apparently not one to mince words today.
Elijah huffs a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t surprise me. She never was one to let a grudge go easily.”
“You’re younger than I expected,” I say, too curious not to. “Gavin mentioned something about you disappearing for over fifty years.”
“Time moves a little differently in Faerie,” he explains. “Faster, or slower, depending on the realm and the whims of its monarch. It’s a tricky thing to keep track of while you’re in it.”
The more I learn about the magick of Faerie, the more it makes my skin crawl.
“When I stepped through the Veil and into the fae realm, I was just a few years shy of thirty. When I stepped out, I looked and felt closer to thirty-five, perhaps forty, but over five decades had passed since I was away. All my friends and family were old, many of them passed on, and there I was, barely changed.”
