Tara licks a bit of lingering honey from her lips, and feels her eyes droop. For breakfast, elves eat pancakes with honey and butter, lingonberry jam, and a soft sort of cheese like Brie on the side.

“Are you sure you can’t eat more?” says a blonde, blue-eyed elf child, poking his head between Tara and Martier, the two-thousand-something-year-old woman who looks all of twenty-one. The little boy looks to be about five. She imagines he is what Lionel looked like once.

“I’m sure,” she says. She feels stuffed to the gills. She’s also warm in borrowed clothes—they even gave her a scarf to cover and tie back her still-wet hair so it isn’t dripping down her neck. The food and the comfort have left her sleepy despite all the excitement.

She glances down the table in Martier’s cozy kitchen. Lionel is at the other end. His mother has disappeared. She wishes he weren’t so far away. There is so much going on that she doesn’t understand. Like how she thinks they’ve put them both at positions of honor at the table ends, men and women serving them both like they’re royalty, but the elves won’t look at Lionel, and they called him “half-breed.” Is the reason for his change that he isn’t full-elf? Why the deference on one hand, and what almost seems like disgust on the other?

“You’re so much bigger than us!” says another child, poking his head around her other side. He has hair with curls that are just slightly looser than her own, and his skin is almost as dark.

Leaning toward his friend, the first boy says, “I hear humans age very fast, and you might be older than us!”

That makes Tara wince, but then the second says, “Do you like to play children’s games? We would like another playmate.”

They’re adorably irrepressible, and Tara finds herself grinning and winking at them despite her fatigue. “Sometimes I play children’s games.” And then she’s simultaneously hit with the worry that she’s broken some taboo and a longing to see her little cousins. To her relief, she hears the adults around her laugh good-naturedly.

“Casir, I’m sure she’s tired,” says a man Tara might have mistaken for African, if it weren’t for his Elvish frame and pointed ears. Tara fights back a yawn at his words and nods sleepily.

“Isn’t that right, Missus …?”

The man inclines his head.

She feels a prickle on her spine. He’s fishing for her full name. Waking up quickly, she says, “You can call me Miss Tara … from Chicago.”

The elves laugh again. They don’t sound cruel, yet she shivers. She looks down the table. Lionel is shooting daggers at the man with his eyes.

“You know our ways!” the man says with a grin.

“And your teeth are so white and straight!” says Martier.

“I bet you’re as strong as a Valkyrie!” says the little boy who must be Casir.

Someone else says, “And no smallpox scars either!”

There are murmurs all around. Tara begins to feel like a bug under a microscope.

“Let’s guess her name!” someone cries.

Someone begins to chant, “Tara McClellan, Tara O’Carey, Tara Johnson …”

“Stop!” Lionel says.

All the laughter stops, and for a moment, everyone freezes. Tara’s eyelids suddenly feel especially heavy, and yet they won’t fall. And then she blinks, and it’s like a spell has broken, and time has resumed. People are shifting in their seats. Martier glares accusingly at Lionel.

His eyes are wide and shocked. “She needs sleep,” he murmurs, and it sounds almost like an apology. Tara wonders what just happened.

“Of course,” says Martier tightly. Snapping her fingers, she starts giving directions and the elves jump from their seats. Men and women both put the dishes away and clean up after the meal.

“Follow me,” says Martier, gesturing to Tara.

Standing fast, Lionel comes to her side. Putting his hand on her back, he whispers, “It will be all right.” Muscles she hadn’t known were tense relax.

They follow the tiny woman outside, across a square of smooth stones, to a thatched cottage that is larger than the others. “This is our village’s guest cottage,” says Martier as she opens the door. Lionel’s mother Tavende is inside, a broom in hand, as well as half a dozen other elves, all cleaning. Tavende smiles at Tara.

“All honored guests sleep here,” Martier continues. “Humans, the queen’s couriers … once we even had a king and his retinue stay in this cottage.” The last she says meaningfully … but Tara’s brain is fuzzy and getting fuzzier. She hides a yawn behind her hand.

“This way,” says Martier, leading her through a tidy but snug living space into a bedroom. There is a fireplace to one side, and a large bed on the other. The bed looks very “country,” with a quilt and heavy wood headboard. Elves bustle everywhere. Dumping some firewood into a metal box, one of the elves she’d seen in the Dark Lands says, “I never got your full name, missus …” He smiles, and Tara thinks he glows. She feels the oddest urge to tell him even though she knows it’s wrong …

“Stop,” Lionel growls.

The man goes very still. Everyone goes still. Tara feels like her heart forgets to beat.

“Get out,” Lionel says, this time sounding tired.

Bowing to Tara, casting worried glances at Lionel, the elves leave the room. Tara swallows. “Are they going to keep trying to find out my name?”

“Probably,” says Lionel.

Tara shivers.

“They don’t mean any harm by it,” Lionel says. “They’re not strong enough to make you do anything drastic … but they’d probably play pranks.”

“Pranks?” Tara asks, walking toward the bed as though it’s pulling her by a string.

“Making you cluck like a chicken or walk like a duck,” Lionel replies.

“Not a very nice way to treat a guest,” Tara says.

“No,” Lionel agrees.

“I wish they’d stop,” Tara hears herself murmur as she flops down on the bed, not even bothering to crawl under the covers. She looks up at Lionel standing above the bed and thinks, I wish you’d stay. They scare me. Their pranks aren’t fair.

She closes her eyes and immediately finds herself in a tangled dream that is obviously her brain trying to tie her crazy day with something familiar and comforting, because Lionel leans over her bed and whispers, “As you wish.”

“As you wish.”

Tara’s eyes are closed, and if she heard him, she gives no sign. He hopes it means that his presence has given her some subconscious release from her fears.

Sitting down on top of the covers next to Tara, he wipes his face with his hands and feels the unfamiliar bite of stubble.

He wishes he was less afraid.

Something is wrong with him, something more than his growth or fading soulmark, and something more than his heritage. He shouldn’t have invoked the Destroyer last night in the swamp, but even worse, it shouldn’t have worked. The jolt of power on the Golden Road … and when he’d gotten angry and told his former neighbors to stop, they had, as though by compulsion. That such a thing would work on a human like Tara is possible, but on elves? Not from someone like Lionel. He’s talented, but he’s not that strong. He looks down at the braided keychain around his wrist. He hadn’t even used it. The power had just been in him, waiting to be used.

It shouldn’t be happening. He leans back against the headboard. But he shouldn’t have the ability to World Walk either, should not have acquired the talent so young, and when he had walked that first terrible time, he should have been exiled to the Dark Lands, not sent to magic school in the palace. He should never have been made steward, either, and the ravens have no business helping him.

Lionel’s eyes slide around the room. Martier had so pointedly mentioned, “A king had slept here.” He knows the town lore … He picks at the golden cord holding the magic key and tries not to think about it.

What’s more important is; can he fix it?

Tara shivers on the bed, curls her legs almost to her chin, and wraps her arms around herself. Her golden-brown fingers, clasped tight on her shoulders, are long, delicate, and slender. Lionel reaches out and almost puts his hand over hers, but then he sees his own hand. His nails grew as well as his bones, and his hand looks mitt-like and monstrous. He pulls back, and his jaw tightens. She’s cold. He’d chased the others away before they lit the hearth. He drapes the wool throw from the base of the bed over her shoulders. She shivers again and he throws out an arm. The fireplace leaps with flame.

Tara opens her eyes and finds herself blinking at Lionel. He is sitting with his back against the headboard and his legs are outstretched in front of him. His eyes are on the fireplace across the room. She can feel its heat on her feet.

“You stayed,” she says.

He looks down at her, his expression flat and unreadable, the fireplace giving his skin an orange glow. “You asked me to.”

She’d said that aloud? It doesn’t matter. Seeing him, she thinks she would have been fine with him reading her mind. “Thank you,” she says.

He blinks at her. He has long lashes. They’re just very fair, and she’d missed them before. “It was my pleasure,” he says, his voice low and rolling.

Tara hopes her face is expressionless. The way he says it, she hears heat beneath the words … but maybe she just wants to hear that? He has a soulmate, she reminds herself. Averting her eyes, she tells herself that she and Lionel are just friends and can only be friends. This morning when she woke up—well, elves and human males obviously have some physiological similarities when they wake up in the morning.

… And being friends isn’t bad. Lord knows, she’s been the BFF of gorgeous guys before. She always likes nice guys; they always like girls who are petite, extroverted, and more feminine.

Her brow furrows. Hadn’t Lionel said that elves weren’t monogamous before marriage? Her body suddenly feels like it’s sinking into the mattress, as though gravity on this world is greater. Maybe she hadn’t imagined any heat? Does she like that?

Outside she hears happy and excited shouts.

“They’re preparing a feast and a dance for you,” says Lionel.

She focuses on the quilt. “Oh.” She swallows. Shouldn’t they be celebrating his return, too?

Lionel says, “We both need to bathe …”

Tara freezes.

“And they will want to dress you up,” he finishes.

Tara can feel Lionel looking down on her. She doesn’t look up.

“I think that perhaps your culture is more modest than mine …” She thinks she hears him nervously lick his lips. “Would you feel comfortable with my mother aiding you?” Very hastily, he adds, “She will not try to extract your name, and can help you with the bath and other things. We have running water, but it doesn’t work the same.”

He sounds so concerned. She does look up, and finds his eyes on her.

“I would like that,” she says.

Lionel smiles and his dimple appears.

She can’t help smiling back.

His smile drops, his blue eyes flick to her lips, and back to her eyes. His pupils are very dark.

Tara looks away in confusion, torn between elation and … disappointment? What is she to him? Just available? She thinks she’d rather be just friends. Her eyes fall on his hands balled loosely in his lap.

“I will go get her,” he says. The bed creaks as he stands. Tara mumbles a “thanks” as he leaves and closes the door behind him.

Sitting up, she wraps the blanket draped over her around her shoulders. When had she draped it around herself? Tara looks around the room. There’s a window hidden behind a curtain that she doesn’t want to look through, lest someone look back and try to extract her name. There is a wardrobe that is enormous, carved with an elaborate scene of a unicorn battling a dragon. She can’t help smiling, thinking that it might be magical. Maybe an elf child would wind up in Times Square or at Chicago’s Bean if they walked through on a rainy day? There’s a fireplace made of stones, not brick, filled with a roaring blaze, and a copper metal bin, green with age, filled with wood.

It’s very rustic. Tara wonders what sort of king had slept in this guest house, how he’d come to be waylaid in a tiny village, and what he’d done while he was here. There are no books or even a writing desk.

There’s a second doorway and Tara pads through it to find a room tiled with smooth-ish stones. There’s a raised portion. She peeks in and discovers a shallow basin. She presumes it is a bath, but it is empty, and there are no spigots. There is a mirror, but her reflection is distorted and unrecognizable. The glass is so ancient it’s “melted” like the windows of old houses she’s repaired with her dad. There is a tiny little stool in front of the mirror, and dark globes of glass line the corners between the walls and ceiling.

The room is surprisingly warm. She turns around and notices that the heat seems to be emanating from some stones suspended in a copper mesh bag hanging above the probably-tub. She reaches out to feel their heat.

“Oh, don’t touch them!” Lionel’s mother’s voice makes Tara jump.

Spinning, Tara finds Tavende carrying a stack of towels, what is maybe a robe, and a pair of shears.

The elf woman puts them down, and then moves a stone that makes water gurgle into the tub, and touches a few globes, which makes them flick on. Putting her hands on her hips, she eyes Tara’s headscarf. “We need to trim the burnt ends of your hair, and a dry cut will work better with your hair texture.”

Stomach sinking, Tara bows her head and unbinds the scarf. “It probably looks terrible,” she murmurs embarrassedly.

“It does look terrible,” Lionel’s mother says.

Tara feels her heart sinking and casts a furtive glance at the tiny woman. The expression on the little elf woman’s face catches Tara off guard. She expected judgment, smug disdain perhaps, but Lionel’s mom looks … confused. Tavende cocks her head. “Does anyone look good with burnt hair?”

Tara remembers the ragged ends of Lionel’s hair … he’d still looked good to her.

Picking the shears, Lionel’s mother waves them and says, “Don’t worry! Hairdressing isn’t my magical talent, but I am very good at it.”

Tara reaches back, touches another lock of hair at the back of her neck, and it disintegrates in her hand. There is no way around this, unless she wants to keep shedding clumps of hair like her childhood pet Collie in spring, it’s got to be cut. She eyes the shears in the hands of the tiny elf … the tiny white elf, with straight blonde hair that hangs loose in a gorgeous cascade halfway down her back. Tara opens her mouth to ask for someone else, but then remembers the elves’ attempts to get her name.

Lionel’s mom points at the stool. “Have a seat.”

Obeying, Tara reminds herself that it has to be done.

Tavende sighs. “Such a shame, such a shame, I cannot grow it back, I can only even it out,” and then there is a furious flurry of snips. Tara looks down in horror as inches of her hair fall to the floor, and she feels the cool brush of the scissors near her nape. She can’t imagine how this could get worse.

The snips stop and Tavende runs her fingers over Tara’s scalp. “I think the waters from the delta have damaged your hair … your hair type is so delicate and prone to dryness.” She tsks. “My talent isn’t cutting hair, but it is restoring pluffomage to optimal health.”

Pluffomage? Tara blinks at the word that apparently has no translation in English.

“You should see Henrietta's feathers!” Tavende says happily.

Tara’s eyes go wide. This could get worse.

Lionel needs to bathe and get a haircut, but his mission can’t wait. As he walks through the village, the only two children scatter before him like leaves. He can’t imagine feeling worse. And then he knocks on Kalee and Jaben’s door and they don’t answer.

He puts his ear to the wood and hears them within. His lip curls, and a charge of magic jumps beneath his fingers. Even without the magic of his key, he could rip the door from its hinges if he wanted.

Remembering the whispers of “savage” earlier, he runs his hands through his hair and resists the urge. He will not live down to their expectations.

He knocks again and gets no answer. I know you were doing more than hunting mushrooms in the delta, he almost says, and catches himself. There is more than his heritage they have to be afraid of. Lionel walks over to one of the tiny windows. The curtains are drawn but the window is cracked a bit.

“I won’t ask about your mushroom-gathering trip,” Lionel whispers into the gap.

There is no answer.

“Please, Kalee and Jaben, I need to talk to you. You’re the most powerful magic users in the village.” Maybe not as powerful as Lord Beddel, or his teachers at the palace, but they’re able to open World Gates, if the rumors are true. And they are very old, far older than his mother. They lived on Midgard before it was closed to the elves. “I need your help.”

Somewhere in the village, a dog barks. Lionel takes a step back, about to turn away, when he hears a creak. He sees Kalee peeking through the door, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if our home is splendid enough for an Asgardian who may be His son.”

“I’m not—” Lionel catches himself before he says Asgardian. “I don’t know who my father is,” Lionel protests instead, his gut wrenching.

She sniffs. “You can probably lie.”

Feeling like he’s been punched in the gut, Lionel rocks back on his feet. The thing is, he might be able to lie. He feels it in him.

“Oh, let him in!” whispers Jaben. “Like you said, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Harrumph!” says Kalee, but she opens the door and ushers him in.

Ducking to keep from banging his head on the doorframe, Lionel enters, and finds the main room—a combination living room, kitchen, and dining room—stripped bare. Kalee and Jaben may be only peasants, but they’re very old, and had managed to acquire things over the centuries: heavy chairs stuffed with goose down, a dragon skin, copper cooking implements that they’d kept polished and hung near the stove with pride, magical canning jars that had always been filled with bright vegetables, a few books and coins from every realm—even Midgardian coins minted before the Law. Lionel had been told the Midgardian coins had never been worth much—even on Midgard—but they’d been kept in a glass case of honor with the rest just the same. Now all that is left are two wooden chairs and two traveling trunks.

The scene reminds him of his mother’s cottage just before he left for the palace. He gulps, fearing for the couple. The only reason elves move house is by invitation of the queen, or to be with a soulmate, like Amir, the elf in their village from the Middle Lands. Where can they possibly go?

He meets Kalee’s eyes and she glares at him. He decides he will not ask why they’ve packed. He hopes, for their sake, that it isn’t related to “mushroom hunting.”

“Have a seat,” says Jaben, gesturing to a chair.

Lionel sits down, and finds the stool shorter than the last time he visited. Jaben and Kalee sit down across from him. “What is it that you wanted to ask us?” Jaben says. “Spit it out.”

“Have you known others like me?” Lionel asks.

“Half-breeds?” asks Kalee.

Recoiling at the word, Lionel tips back the stool, almost losing his balance.

“Sure, we have,” says Jaben.

Gesturing to his now-looming frame, Lionel asks, “Can this be undone?”

Kalee snorts.

Lionel explains desperately, “The queen must have known about my possible heritage, but she’ll never accept me if I don’t look like an elf.” The realization had just come to him as he was walking here. He rubs his hands together in the cottage’s chill; his limbs feel like lead. Remembering how his former neighbors had looked at him, he adds, “I doubt the village will accept me, either.”

Jaben sighs. “Probably not. Those who don’t like mixing of the classes won’t want you here.”

“And those who think that is foolishness won’t want the ravens coming back,” Kalee says sharply.

The ravens … Lionel remembers them visiting the village as a child, and thinking they were spying on him. The question is, on whose behalf had they spied? Was it a favor to someone that He sent them … or …? He shakes his head. It is too much to think about.

No matter who they spied for, the ravens would report to Odin if they’d seen anything suspicious, like Kalee and Jaben’s “mushroom-collecting expeditions.” It is a euphemism for visiting a hidden World Gate, probably to Midgard, somewhere in the delta. He rubs his temple. Kalee and Jaben are so old, the gate might have been located outside the delta in their youth, before the Law. But the Dark Land’s magic has been growing and spreading.

He drops his hand. “Having Huginn and Muninn around must have been difficult for you,” Lionel says. “But you never treated me like a half-breed.”

“We weren’t sure of your heritage. We doubt your own mother knew for sure,” Jaben murmurs.

Lionel studies the stone tiles on the floor. He doesn’t think his own mother was sure, either.

“You came so soon after her Sol’s death,” Kalee adds, referring to his mother’s soulmate, her tone accusatory.

Lionel’s jaw gets hard. He will not judge his mother for what she did in grief. “I don’t want to be … look like a … half-breed. Can my growth be undone … and if so, who is strong enough?”

“How did it come about, exactly?” Jaben asks.

Lionel tells the tale, and when he is done, Jaben chuckles.

“It isn’t irreversible?” Lionel asks in dismay.

“If you really want to look like an elf, it can be done,” says Kalee.

“By who?” Lionel asks.

The two stare at him a long moment.

“Lionel,” sighs Kalee. “You wanted to be an elf so badly, your magic bound you up and made you look like us. It was only when your magic was taken away that your true form was revealed.”

Jaben shakes his head. “The only one strong enough and capable of binding you back up …”

Kalee finishes. “Would be you.”

Jaben leans back in his chair.

“Think hard on if you’d want that.”

“I do want it!” says Lionel.

Jaben scratches his neck. “Sounds painful.”

Lionel inhales sharply, feeling an echo of the agony of the night before shoot to his bones.

“You’ll never work again for the queen, either way,” Kalee observes.

Jaben snorts. “Even if you bind yourself back up, she won’t want you back.”

“She’ll know it’s there,” says Kalee.

Lionel’s shoulders hunch. “My height, my—”

“Your aura!” says Jaben.

“Now that you aren’t using it to tie yourself up in the shape of one of us, your aura’s glowing more than a tree on fire,” says Kalee. “Straight through the roof.”

Lionel sits up straighter. All magical creatures have auras. Learning to see them was part of his magical training. Trying to do so used to make his forehead break out in a sweat, even with his keychain for power, but at her words, his vision shimmers. He sees the auras of Kalee and Jaben, both bright orange and licking the ceiling.

Kalee narrows her eyes. “Well, not a tree on fire …”

Her husband adds, “Yours is a steady not light, more like a deep blue shadow, like snow on the far side of a mountain. A shadow so strong it feels like a glow.”

Kalee nods.

Lionel looks down at his too-large hands.

Jaben clears his throat. “You can’t see your own aura.”

Blushing, Lionel remembers that from his lessons, too. It hadn’t sunk in before because he never could see anyone else’s auras before either—at least not without pain and suffering.

“Bind yourself up and it might bind your magic for a while,” says Jaben.

“But she’ll know,” says Kalee. “She may have taken you in on His behest.”

“But you’re a threat to her power now. You’re too strong,” says Jaben.

“I’m not stronger than the queen,” Lionel protests. He’s seen her magic up close.

“Not now, but in a few centuries …” Kalee nods as though she’s confirmed something to herself. “It’ll come out, bound up in a less barbaric Elven body or not.”

Lionel swallows. He feels a chill settle on him. They’re right, he knows it. He thinks of his invocation of the Destroyer. The philosophers said it brought about the end of a life, and now his old life is over. He draws a hand through his hair, feeling the straw-like burnt ends. But his invocation had come after the unbinding.

“What should I do?” he murmurs.

“Go to the dance,” says Jaben.

Lionel lifts his head.

Kalee shrugs. “Nothing you can do now. Might as well enjoy yourself. Focus on the moment you have. You never know when the blight will come again.”

It is a common refrain among the very old elves, a memory from a time when the Elven Seelie and Unseelie Courts had been at war, and the conflict had bled out into the other realms. Focus on now … it was a mental trick designed to shield immortal beings from contemplating an eternity of torment, one that every elf learned. Could it protect a half-blood from endless contemplation of possible death and banishment?

Jaben sniffs. “Well, you could get a bath, shave, and a haircut first.”

Dipping his chin, Lionel avoids their eyes. “Of course.” Rising to his feet, he hastily makes his goodbyes, and half stumbles through the too-small cottage onto the street, now aglow. His neighbors are busily preparing for Tara’s welcome party, stringing ropes of glow globes and early spring flowers between the houses. The globes aren’t lit yet, but his neighbors’ auras fill Lionel’s eyes, and he realizes with a start that he never learned how to turn his aura vision off because he’d never needed to. It makes the scene blurry, and gives him an odd double vision. None of his neighbors have auras as bright as Jaben and Kalee. Magical power is partly a manifestation of age, he recalls.

He sees his mother opening the door to the guest cottage, ushering in a few other women. Her aura is just a slight glow, a pleasant shade of pink. Over his mother’s shoulders, he sees Tara wrapped in an enormous towel, hair full, loose, and very black. She?