Fae Touched by Kris Austen Radcliffe

Author:Kris Austen Radcliffe [Radcliffe, Kris Austen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-939730-73-2
Publisher: Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance

Chapter 13

The fae—who was not a mere dryad—grasped the arm of someone on the other side of Hrokr’s concealments, and…

I blinked. Hrokr shrieked like a rat skewered to a board. And we were in a pasture, in the snow still, but surrounded by sheep. Big, strong, magically-volatile New Zealand sheep.

About three hundred feet up a small slope, behind the dryad, loomed the massive horse barn of Magnus’s compound.

The fae had moved us from the woods between my cabin and the cottage to a field twelve miles outside of town.

“Arne Odinsson!” the dryad bellowed. “Explain this!” She pushed Hrokr away.

She’d brought us to Hrokr’s father, or at least close. Me, Hrokr, and… “Ellie?” I yelled. The fae had grabbed someone I couldn’t see. Ellie was here. I felt her in the mate dust dancing on my skin.

“Frank!”

I turned around just as Ellie ran up the slope toward us.

She dove into my arms. “I felt other concealments then you disappeared!” She quickly hugged my chest. “Where are we?” She looked around my bicep. “Who are y—oh, no.”

The way she said oh, no made me want to pick her up and run toward the buildings. She said it as if we’d just stumbled into the David and Goliath situation I dreaded.

Ellie stepped protectively between me and the fae.

The dryad winked and held her finger to her lips.

Ellie inhaled deeply to yell but the dryad whipped a spell that slapped onto Ellie’s mouth like a gag. Ellie pawed at the magic, yelling muffled words under the aurora lights dancing on her lips, but nothing coherent came out.

St. Martin had done the same to me under the Samhain blizzard. He’d slapped a shell of magic onto my face and I’d almost suffocated. “Remove the—”

The fae hit me with one, too.

I swiped at my face, growling and yelling under the gag made of shimmering blue and green light. I shouted under the magic.

Ellie stopped pawing at her own gag and grabbed my face. She signaled for me to breathe.

Cold air rushed in through my nostrils but the gag was just a fraction of an inch under my nose. I pawed at it again. Ellie tried to dig her fingers under its edges but the magic was too slippery.

She scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the fae.

The dryad squinted at me from under her antlered helmet. “Are you panicking, young man?” Her expression shifted into a narrow-eyed, concerned annoyance. “I am not impressed by your lack of fortitude.”

She waved her hand and my gag vanished.

I sucked in my breath. I couldn’t panic. I wouldn’t. What if Ellie couldn’t breathe? “Remove Ellie’s gag!” I bellowed. “Now!”

The fae shrugged.

She wasn’t fuzzing in and out the way the other two dryads had. Her armor didn’t carry the same oaken strength as theirs did. It glimmered in the sun as if it carried more air and water than earth and fire.

This fae was pretending to be a dryad.

Confronting any magical with the power to move not only herself but also three other people to a new location would likely get me maimed.

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