“It’s more like I’ll combust,” she countered in a strangled voice. Her body was on fire. If Jake wasn’t there and likely to walk in the room any minute, she’d wrap her legs around Andor’s waist and demand he carry her to her bedroom. Forget Thanksgiving dinner.
She twined his ponytail around her hand instead and kissed his neck in the same place he’d tickled hers. He groaned at her touch and squeezed her harder. “I’m not very patient,” she said.
Andor slowly peeled her off him, his breathing shallow and a blush riding the high ridges of his cheekbones. His eyes had gone that same cobalt color she’d seen earlier. “Call it Neanderthal or antiquated, but I don’t want to share you with someone else, Claire.”
Her cheeks heated at that. “Not a problem, since you’re the only guy I’ve dated in almost three years.”
“I want to be the only one for the next twenty.”
Claire hoped she didn’t have a coronary brought on by sheer excitement. “That’s rather fickle of you, don’t you think?” She winked and was rewarded with Andor’s deep laughter. She gave his arm a light stroke as she passed him on the way to the bedrooms. “Get the wine; I’ll get Jake. While we’re growing hot, the food is growing cold.”
Dinner was a feast, and Claire was certain she’d be eating enough leftover turkey to sprout feathers. And that was after she sent most of it home with Andor. The weather outside had gone from dreary to miserable, with a steady drizzle making a murk of the last bit of daylight. A damp cold hung in the air, defying every attempt to layer up and keep it from seeping through clothing and skin. Claire disliked such days when she had to get out in it to go to work or run errands. Today, however, she loved it. Her house was warm and smelled of coffee and pumpkin spice. She sat on her comfortable couch, sandwiched between Jake who played his favorite game, Dumb Ways to Die, and Andor, whose acerbic commentary about Santa’s outfit in the movie they were watching on TV made her laugh.
“I hate that red leotard. Nicholas was a bishop. He would have worn vestments.”
Claire gave him a puzzled side-eye and tried not to nestle too hard against the arm wrapped around her shoulder. Who knew someone got that worked up over a Santa suit? “I thought it was a Kriss Kringle thing. It’s not?”
“No. Kriss Kringle is the Anglicization of the Austrian and German word Christkindl. The red suit is a modern element. Saint Nicholas is a lot older than that. A bishop of Myra, now Demre in Turkey. He was Greek. Some called him Nicholas Wonderworker or Nikaolos ho Thaumaturgos. He’s the patron saint of sailors, children and pawnbrokers.”
Claire almost choked on the coffee she just swallowed. “Are you serious? Santa protects pawn shops?” Somehow that just didn’t fit with jolly, merry and ho, ho, ho.
Andor’s expression was enigmatic as he stared at the TV screen. “Saint Nicholas is a lot more interesting than the rotund man we think of now in the red suit.”
“I’ll say. I’m guessing you came by your Santa knowledge while working on an exhibit?” God knew she’d stumbled across all kinds of bizarre and interesting things during her research projects.
Andor danced around her question. “You’re an archivist. I’m sure you’ve discovered unusual things in your research.”
Claire casually slid one hand over Jake’s ear and nestled him close to her side to muffle his other ear. He’d put up with that for all of four seconds, so she spoke fast. “Oh, yeah. So I guess when I say I don’t believe in Santa, I need to qualify that since he did exist.”
Something flickered in Andor’s eyes. It spoke of melancholy and regret. “When did you lose your belief?”
She released a squirming Jake and shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly. Later than a lot of kids. I think I might have been twelve.”
“That is later. Most are younger.”
That was true. She’d held onto her beliefs, even in the face of the cynical scorn dished out by her peers. Her certainty that Santa existed had been fueled by more than her mother’s assurances. “I think it was because I had this really vivid dream of meeting Santa one Christmas Eve. I was sure it was real and that I was wide awake. He was standing by this sad little tree my mom bought at a garage sale. I loved that tree.”
She frowned, clawing at the hazy memory of a childhood she’d put behind her long ago. “He was wearing long robes.” She glanced at Andor, who no longer stared at the TV but watched her with a stoic face. “Bishop’s vestments I bet. He was standing next to an elf. A really tall one wearing armor of all things.” She shook her head. “I thought Santa’s elves were little like the Keebler elves. And they don’t go in armed to the teeth.” She was getting a headache and tucked the memory back into the recesses of her mind. “Then again,” she joked, “if Santa is the patron saint of pawn brokers, he probably needs a bodyguard elf.”
Her smile faded when Andor didn’t return it, and his eyes had a faraway look. She really needed to stop making jokes. She sucked at it. Serious was more her speed. “When did you stop believing?” she asked.
He came back to her with the question. His tempting mouth curved into her favorite expression. “I haven’t.”
“Haven’t what?”
“Stopped believing.”
Claire eyed him suspiciously. “Really?”
“Really.”
Andor was handsome, intelligent, funny and good with her son. He was also a little odd about all things Christmas. Claire celebrated the last. Finally. The guy wasn’t perfect. She leaned into his side. “That’s nice. I like that you believe in magic.”
Andor’s fingertips combed through her hair. “The world is filled with magic, Claire. Jake is proof of that. You just have to look a little deeper.”
Claire was falling hard for him. Falling hard and fast. She almost broke the sound barrier at his words. She had chosen so badly with Lucas. Did she actually get it right this time with Andor?
Her cell phone’s ringtone knocked her back into reality. She grabbed it off the coffee table. “Speak of the devil,” she murmured. Lucas’s name and phone number flashed on the screen. Andor muted the TV.
Claire answered on the third ring. “Hey, Lucas.”
“Hey yourself, gorgeous,” her ex said. “Happy Thansgifing.” He slurred the words, and Claire suspected Thanksgiving dinner had been a buffet of double martinis or several shots of expensive single malt.
She raised a staying hand as Andor stood. “You too, Lucas,” she replied. Leave it to her ex to spoil a perfect evening. “Do you want to speak to Jake?”
“Yeah. Wanna wish him Haffy Thansgif.”
Claire rolled her eyes. Jake was more articulate than this, and he had speech therapy three times a week. “Hold on, I’ll get him.” She pressed the mute button and grasped Andor’s hand. “Do you have to go?”
He nodded, his fingers caressing her knuckles. “I have to stop at the museum and check a few things. We were having trouble with the lighting on three of the trees in the Christmas exhibit.” He lifted her hand to his mouth. Claire made a strangled sound when she felt the tip of his tongue glide across her fingers. His gaze was gaslight blue, full of heat and promise. “You beguiled me into staying longer than I meant to, Claire.”
“Sorcery,” she teased.
“The best kind,” he replied. “I’ll see myself out.” He released her hand, waved to Jake and gestured to the phone. “Your ex will wonder if you’ve forgotten him.”
She watched him disappear around the corner of the short hallway, heard the front door open and close, and listened to his car back out of her driveway. “I did that the moment I met you,” she said softly.
8
Every year, on December sixth, Andor joined the throng of worshippers who entered the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari, Italy and found a pew near the back of the church where he sat beside its namesake. This year was no different.
Nicholas, dressed in the garb of a twenty-first century gentleman, leaned over and whispered, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
> Andor kept his gaze on the altar and the steady parade of people looking for places to sit. “You say that every year, and I’m here every year.”
He’d balked at attending the saint’s feast day the first twenty years of his exile. This was ground sacred to a deity whose existence he acknowledged but didn’t worship. He was ljósálfar-born and sensitive to the warp and weft of the magic woven into the air and ground peculiar to Midgard. It pulsed in sacred wells, grass-capped kurgans and temples like these. In this church built in Nicholas’s honor, it resonated heavy in his bones, a power colossal beyond measure and ancient beyond comprehension. The first time he crossed the church’s threshold, he’d nearly bolted right back out. It had taken sheer will to hold his glamour in place and keep his feet planted on the floor.
Nicholas muttered near his ear again. “This year is quite different. Someone else occupies your time and thoughts.”
“Spying on me?”
The saint gave an affronted sniff. “I’m also the patron saint of one wayward ljósálfar.”
An elderly woman sitting on the other side of Nicholas leaned forward, glared at them both and made shushing noises.
Andor almost broke a rib trying not to laugh out loud at the idea of Nicholas being ordered to be quiet by a congregant in a church built in his honor on a day that celebrated his sainthood.
A mortified Nicholas hastily apologized in Italian to the woman and motioned for Andor to follow him outside the church. Andor didn’t need to be told twice.
Once outside, the elf glanced back at the church doors; they were closing, a signal that the mass was about to begin. “You’re going to miss the mass.”
Nicholas waved away Andor’s concerns. “I’ll attend the Thursday hymnals or an all-night vigil at one of the Eastern Orthodox churches. There’s also the Departure celebration in the Coptic church on the nineteenth. You’re welcome to attend that.”
“Humans certainly throw you a lot of parties.”
The saint sighed and offered a rueful smile. “I get a lot of requests for intercession.”
Andor shifted restlessly, the rhythmic surge of power moving like high tide under the church steps, sending arcane vibrations through his legs. “What did you want to tell me that’s so important, you’d miss the biggest celebration in your honor?”
“You found Claire again.”
Andor frowned, sensing more to Nicholas’s brief statement. “I did. And what strings did you pull to make that happen?”
Nicholas shook his head. “Not a one. I might suggest you look to your Norns for such machinations, but I’m a Christian bishop and believe something greater is at work there.” He began to pace, and Andor’s unease ratcheted up a good six notches. The saint was typically a calm, good-natured presence. “If you hadn’t come, I would have sent for you. The queen has summoned you to audience at the Ljósálfar court.”
Andor didn’t think his spine would freeze any colder if someone had poured ice water down his back. His exile wasn’t yet finished, yet Dagrun summoned him home. “Why? I still have a dozen years left to my exile.”
Nicholas’s pacing sped up. “I don’t know, but I received a message from Ljósálfheimr. Dagrun and Alfr both want to talk to you.
The elf instinctively reached for the sword he no longer wore at his hip. “If Alfr wants my head, he’ll have to fight me for it.” He wouldn’t surrender to his own execution without a struggle. He had too much to live for. One woman, one child. He’d slaughter his way across Ljósálfheimr if he must to stay alive.
“Peace, son.” Nicholas laid a hand on Andor’s arm. “I don’t think you’re being summoned to die.”
Every muscle in Andor’s body had gone tight, readying for battle. “When do we go?”
“Now, if you’re ready.”
The royal palace was unchanged since he’d last seen it a thousand years earlier. The fact shouldn’t have surprised him. A thousand years was merely a breath in time to the near-immortal ljósálfar. Yet, Andor paused before entering the soaring structure whose crystalline walls gleamed in the shifting, multicolored light from far-off Asbrú. The static sameness weighed down on him, a claustrophobic stillness that had watched time pass and never blinked. How had he ever lived in such stagnancy and not been driven mad by boredom?
Beside him, Nicholas cast an admiring gaze on his surroundings. “I will never adjust to how beautiful this palace is.” He glanced at Andor. “Are you glad to be back?”
“No.”
The saint’s eyes widened in surprise. The king and queen’s arrival forestalled any reply. Elf and bishop bowed before the ljósálfar monarchs who took their seats on the two great thrones set on a raised dais.
“Rise.” King Alfr’s single-word command formed icicles on the windows lining the throne room.
Judging by his tone, the king had not summoned Andor back to share ale and good company. Andor glanced first at the elf king. Tall and striking, he was an equal counterpart in appearance to his blindingly beautiful queen, except for the reptilian coldness she lacked. That alone had always made Andor’s hackles rise anytime he was in his king’s presence.
Dagrun spoke, her voice the sweetest music. Beside Andor, Nicholas sighed. “We have missed your presence at court, Andor.” The king snorted and was ignored.
She was his aunt and his liege. And a thousand years earlier, she’d been his judge and savior. Andor loved her as much as ljósálfar could love each other and prayed that whatever spurred this unexpected meeting between them, it remained peaceful.
“I treasure your affection for me, my queen,” he said.
She smiled, and where ice had hung on the windows at Alfr’s voice, crimson roses grew and spiraled around the columns. “Nicholas tells me you’ve been exemplary during your exile with him.”
Andor glanced at Nicholas who winked. “He has been a mentor of great wisdom.” And unstinting patience for the elf under his charge.
“Do you regret the actions that sent you to him in the first place?” Alfr’s serpent gaze did its best to strip the skin off Andor’s bones.
He could say he didn’t regret them in the least. Alfr’s favorite concubine was a lusty mara between the sheets but hardly worth a thousand-year punishment. Midgard, with its joys and its struggles, its short-lived humanity that embraced chaos, pondered the existence of gods and strove to conquer the stars, had bound him in both heart and spirit. Those tethers had drawn tight and fast when he met Claire for the second time in her life and fell in love with her. He regretted nothing of his actions.
That long answer would see his head separated from his shoulders.
“Yes,” he said. “I regret them deeply.” No doubt Alfr’s colossal vanity would blind him to Andor’s blatant lie.
Nicholas coughed and cleared his throat but otherwise stayed silent and kept his gaze on Alfr and Dagrun.
The king settled back in his throne, his approval of Andor’s answer written in his posture and the relaxing of his mouth. He still made Andor’s blood run cold. “I can be forgiving,” he said. “You may return to Ljósálfheimr.” His eyes narrowed. “My mercy isn’t limitless. Another mistake like the first one, and death, not exile, will be your punishment.”
Having offered his judgment, Alfr stood and strode out of the throne room. When Andor straightened from his bow, he discovered Dagrun still seated on her throne, watching him. She motioned him and Nicholas closer. “Welcome back, nephew.”
Andor didn’t want to come back. Not any longer. A decision loomed before him, one that would change the course of his existence. He’d pondered the question in the darkness when he was alone in the bare garage apartment he rented as simply a roof over his head while he stayed in Houston. Then he’d assumed he had another twelve years of exile. In human terms, it was a long stretch in which anything could change, and he’d grown to see time in the way humans did.
He’d forgotten that ljósálfar could be fickle in many ways, as quick to forgive as to punish. Alfr’s anger ha
d cooled a little sooner than anticipated, and his pardon had caught Andor off guard. He would have to leave Claire and never see her again. The thought made his chest burn and his stomach roil. If he stayed in Midgard, he’d sacrifice something just as important.
Andor inhaled slowly, exhaled just as slowly and made his choice. “You have my gratitude, Your Majesty, however; I have no wish to return to Ljósálfheimr.”
Nicholas’s robes sent a draft swirling up from the floor as he spun to gawk at Andor. Dagrun’s surprise was less obvious—the twitch of her hand where it rested on the throne’s arm.
“Why ever not?” she asked. The roses on the soaring columns began to wither.
Andor edged closer to the throne. “I’ve grown to enjoy Midgard and all it offers.”
The queen’s upper lip curled. “There is no comparison between Ljósálfheimr and Midgard.”
“No, there isn’t. They are too different, but exile has taught me the charm of other realms, and I am content in that one. I wish to stay.”
Nicholas grasped Andor’s arm. His dark eyes held both wonder and desperation. “Andor, because I move freely among men, you could too as my ward. It’s a dispensation granted to you during your exile. You can’t live them among them elfin and immortal now.”
Andor nodded. “I know.”
The saint’s fingers dug into his bicep. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t just Midgard, is it, Andor?” Dagrun had abandoned her throne to stand in front of her nephew.
Andor bowed to her. “No, my queen.”
Where before her mouth had curled in contempt, it now curved in a knowing smile tinged with sadness. “I will hold you to exile a little longer so you may help Nicholas one final year. And to give you more time to consider your decision. If you don’t return to Ljósálfheimr by the dawn of Solis Invicti, your grace will leave you. You will be mortal, human, and without magic. Our realm will be forever closed to you. You will age, and you will die.”