Page 83 of Her Irish Treasures
“Because of Balor?”
He sighed. “I’m sure that played a part, though he didn’t explicitly raid the castle and burn it to the ground, if that’s what you be thinking. Everything in Faerie is sustained by magic. As my powers faded over time, so did my place in Faerie. It is no more.”
I frowned. “Like an island sinking into the ocean? Atlantis?”
“You’re thinking of Faerie as physical ground and land,” Warwick said. “That’s not the way Faerie works at all. It’s not a place on a map that you can go to. It’s a dimension. An alternate plane of existence that few mortals are even aware of. That’s howShamrockedmoved in the mortal world depending on where the treasurekeeper was located. You pulled that dimension of Faerie to you just by existing.”
“But I walked in your garden. It was real. I could smell the flowers. I could touch them, see them. They werereal.”
“They’re real, just as I’m real. But I do not naturally exist in the mortal dimension. There’s a cost for me to be here, which I pay gladly,” he added quickly, giving me a wicked, knowing grin. “The longer I’m here, the more power I must draw to remain. As I pull more power to this realm, Summer Isle will shrink, wilt, and eventually fade away if I don’t return to sustain it.”
I stretched out my hand and gripped his knee. “Then you must go back. I won’t risk your home just so I can see you whenever I want.”
He picked up my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm, his fingers stroking my knuckles. “Never fear,mo stór.I would pay any cost to simply see your face and hear your voice, but it would take decades of constant mortal life before I would begin to risk losing Summer Isle.”
“I still don’t really get how you can travel back and forth to Faerie if it’s not a physical place.Shamrockedis a real place that I can see and walk into from the street.” I frowned, remembering when I’d taken Vivi back in broad daylight, only to find an empty, abandoned house. “Though I guess it did look different. I thought that was your magic working to protect the bar. Was it… not actually there? Until night?”
“How good is your understanding of mathematics?”
My involuntary grimace made him laugh.
“Very well. I’ll see if I can explain it in a way that you’ll understand.” He adjusted our hands so that my index finger pointed upward. “The tip of your finger is one point in this room, a three-dimensional space. The tip of Doran’s impressive nose is another point in space. Once you know the two points, you can draw a straight line directly to his nose, right?”
He released my hand, and I moved my index finger straight up to lightly touch Doran’s nose. “Of course.”
“But when it’s just the tip of your finger, a single point, you could go in infinite directions. Some you can see with your eyes or at least comprehend as a part of your physical existence. A point on the ceiling. A point on the floor. A point in the bottom of the lake where the kelpie’s remains lie rotting. Some points you can’t see with mortal eyes but you could at least imagine. Like a point on the surface of your sun. An impossibly distant planet in a galaxy you’ve never even heard of. Then there are places of mythology and legend born of magic, like the roots of Yggdrasil. The top of the brightest golden pyramid in Heliopolis. Or the Land Beneath the Waves, Tír na nÓg. These points lie in alternative, magical dimensions that I assure you exist, even if you’ve never seen them with mortal eyes or walked there with your own two feet as you did on the Summer Isle. But if you have the power, and know a point in that dimension…”
Between one breath and another, the bed suddenly sat in the middle of Warwick’s lush garden. Flowers tumbled down overhead in colorful curtains of fragrant blossoms. Everything was slow and stretched out, as if time didn’t matter. Bright sparkles hung in the air, making it thick with glittering stardust and fragrance. My ears rang with heavy, slow notes. Chimes, or strums on a harp’s strings, drawn out over infinity to enjoy every last nuance.
Ever so slowly, I turned my head and met Warwick’s gaze. His emerald eyes flashed with spinning golden bursts of power, dazzling to behold. Sucking me down in a dizzying whirlpool of magic.
I blinked and we were back in the bedroom. My stomach quivered, my heart jolting in my chest, as if startled by the sudden change in gravity and time. Though I could still smell the spicy fragrance of flowers in my nostrils.
“Fae don’t need to draw a line from point to point. We simply pull the locations together so they overlap, or they’re so close they’re part of the same dimension, at least for a time. Like a wrinkle, a small pocket of an alternative reality.” With his other hand, he used his fingers to gather up the sheet, folding it into a messy accordion. “It’s not a physical distance we travel but a fabric of space and time that folds, stretches, and bends to our will.”
I took in a shaky breath. My heart skipped a beat, quickened, and then finally settled into its normal rhythm. “Wow.”
They let me think in silence for a moment. Warwick holding my hand. Doran’s thick arm around me, steading me. I looked up at him suddenly. “If your prison was in an alternate dimension, a plane like the Summer Isle, then theoretically, I should have been able to access it from anywhere here, right? I didn’t need to drive down to the lake to find you.”
“You were reaching me when you dreamed me. We were together. We touched. That was real, a shared dream where I wasn’t trapped in stone. You made that possible. So aye, you could have freed me from anywhere. But sometimes you need a physical journey to reach a destination because it gives you the mental space and exercise you needed to make the leap.”
“What’s to keep Jonathan from pulling me intohisreality?” My voice trembled and a chill crept down my spine. “Whenever he wants?”
Doran let out a deep, low growl that vibrated my bones. “That’s why one of us will be with you always, ready to defend you at a moment’s notice. Anything could be a trap like the fucking fountain. At least he doesn’t know your current location, which makes the task more difficult. That’s the main reason we chose this place outside of the city where none of us have ever been before.”
Shivering, I closed my eyes a moment. Any moment, sucked away into Fhroig’s lair. Or even worse. Trapped. No way to reach Doran. Jonathan was too smart to make the same mistake twice. Next time, he’d figure out a way to keep even Warwick out.
Not to mention Balor, who was even more powerful, bent on a hopeless, endless war that would end in my treasures’ death. While I endured a changeling’s nefarious attentions in Faerie for the rest of my mortal life.
Fucking hell. What kind of bullshit legendary story was that?
Warwick squeezed my hand gently, drawing my gaze up to his face. “It’s not as bleak as all that. High Court fae agreed thousands of years ago on what they can and cannot do on the mortal plane. Granted, not all fae still abide by the old rules, but for the most part, elder Tuatha de Danaan do. I find it encouraging that you said the changeling offered his hand—but didn’t touch you without your permission. That’s an old rule put upon us long ago to give mortals free will.”
“Plus, not all fae can move through the veil to this plane as easily as Warwick,” Doran added. “The darker, lesser fae, like Balor’s imps, can’t bear sunlight and don’t have enough power to penetrate the veil between without assistance. Which is the sole reason we’ve been able to keep your world from being overrun entirely despite losing ground to Evil Eye the past centuries. Even he needs time, resources, and power to move his fae army to the mortal realm.”
Nervous energy pulsed through me. As much as I loved the idea of being able to lay around and cuddle with the guys as long as I wanted, I needed todosomething. Anything. I couldn’t wait like a sitting duck, picked off because I was frozen with fear.
Tipping my chin up firmly, I turned to Doran. “Isn’t there a fight somewhere that I can help with? A nest of imps you need to drive out? Something I can do to help?”
