Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(90)

I realized that I should have said this by now, and stepped back to let them all tromp inside, banging the snow off their boots. Mord and Aslaug had brought an almond cake called a hvitkag, while Finn had a loaf of the dark Ljoslander bread, baked in the hot earth, as well as some salted chocolates.

Mord looked around the cottage. “Krystjan’s fixed the place up since I last saw it. Calling it a shack would have been generous, then.”

He paused before the forest mirror, gazing open-mouthed into the swaying greenery. “This looks like the forest I used to play in as a boy, just outside Loab?r. Look! There is the willow with the face in the trunk.”

“Where are the tea things, Wendell?” Aslaug asked. “I’ve brought a bottle of red, too, in case anyone cares for something stronger.”

“I’ll start with the books,” Finn said.

And that was that; suddenly the place was as noisy and bustling as a train station. Finn went back to the main house to fetch spare luggage, returning with Krystjan and several wooden crates. Wendell and I had accumulated a variety of things over the course of our stay, from Aud’s gifts to the faerie cloak, which prompted a great deal of curiosity and discussion. Wendell floated about the room, chatting with this person and that, giving off the impression of contributing while doing no actual work at all.

The whole time, I worried that Aslaug or Mord would burst into tears of gratitude or offer some extravagant thank-you gift, and tried to come up with a strategy for how I might respond. Fortunately, they did no such thing, only cheerfully stormed around with the others, folding and packing and calling out questions to me and to Wendell. Eventually I began to worry if perhaps I should be the one making some grand gesture of thanks. They had all saved me, after all, as surely as Wendell and I had saved little Ari.

“What’s with you?” Lilja hissed at me as we manoeuvred the enchanted mirror into a crate stuffed with wool. “Didn’t Wendell heal you?”

“No, I—” I paused. Had Wendell healed me? I felt perfectly myself, apart from the chill. “It’s not that. I can’t think what I should say.”

“Why must you say anything?”

“Well—” I hadn’t been expecting this. “Because you rescued me. All of you, but especially Finn and Aslaug—”

“What?” Aslaug had come up behind me without my realizing. “Did you call me?”

“Emily feels bad because she wishes to thank us, but doesn’t know how,” Lilja said, and I went red and began to sputter, to hear it all spelled out so bluntly.

“Oh! Don’t be silly,” Aslaug said simply, and gave me a hug. “We are as good as family now.” Then she went back to bustling about as if nothing had changed. As if it was nothing, what she’d said.

Lilja smiled and squeezed my arm. “Some cake?”

I nodded dumbly. Lilja pushed me into a chair and passed me a plate of cake, and I ate it. It was very good.

The bottle of wine was polished off by Mord, who had spent most of the evening quietly beaming at everyone, particularly when they asked after his son, and telling the same story over and over, about how Ari had taken to putting unexpected objects into his mouth, including the tail of their long-suffering cat. No one seemed to mind.

By the time all the hvitkag was gone, I was quite weary, and the clamour of so much company was not helping matters. To my relief, Wendell chose that moment to begin herding everyone out of the cottage, and one by one they went, donning cloaks and boots and wading out cheerfully into the blowy weather, curls of snowflakes spinning through the cottage in their wakes. Wendell glared at the snow and pressed the door closed with a grimace.

“One more,” he said grimly, and I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Though I was not as relieved to be leaving Ljosland as he was—what I felt was a complicated tangle of things, topmost of which was melancholy. I would miss Lilja and Margret and the others. When had that ever happened before? I was beginning to wonder if the faerie king had changed me somehow.

“Wendell,” I said as he neurotically adjusted the doormat, “I believe I know why the king’s spell—why it took when it did.”

He raised his eyebrows. It was interesting—he was not exactly unattractive in this form, when you actually stopped to parse his appearance. It was mostly that he was muted, yet this did nothing to affect his natural grace, or indeed his ego.

“Well.” I fumbled the words as I thought back to that night. “I was going to— After you asked me about—well—”

“After I asked you to marry me,” he said in a tone I thought louder than necessary.

“Yes,” I said, trying my hardest to keep my voice ordinary, as if we were talking about our research. I felt ridiculous. Any sane person would have already turned down his proposal. If there is one thing about which the stories, regardless of origin, agree, it is that marrying the Folk is a very bad idea. Romance generally is a bad idea where they are concerned; it hardly ever ends well. And what about my scientific objectivity? It is looking very tattered of late.

“I—that night—I was thinking about it. And I suppose that’s my answer. That I would like to—well, continue thinking about it.”

He gazed at me with an unreadable expression. Then, to my astonishment, he smiled.

“What?” I said suspiciously.