I thought about that as Trent started to hum, the sound going deep into my psyche and setting my blood to slow. Elven magic stirred, rising like fog in a dusky meadow, tingling and heavy. It didn’t hurt like the ley lines did, and my muscles grew slack. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “You’re going to kill me!” I exclaimed, and the magic faltered as Trent’s humming cut off.

“I’ll keep it alive. Get it on life support. Your soul needs to regain its strength. It can do that in a bottle, and when it does, I’ll put it back in.”

He began humming again, rocking me. The prick of wild magic tingled across me, heady and slow. Until a thought pinged against the muzzy softness and shredded it into pinpricks. “You can do that?” I asked, and the magic broke. “You want to put me in a baby bottle?”

The humming stopped. “You’re going to have to trust me. I’ve been practicing this, but I need your consent. I’m not good enough to do this without it.”

I blinked up at him, trying to understand. My breath came in and out, and Trent waited, impatience in his eyes. “How many times have you done this?” I asked.

“And had it work? Never. But I’ve only tried it with birds, and they are rather stupid. Be quiet. I’ve got to concentrate.”

I felt like I was floating. “You want my permission to kill me?”

He sighed, and Bis shifted his wings nervously. “Yes,” Trent said.

I was numb, his magic already having taken hold. It was either that or I was dying in his arms. “Okay,” I said, closing my eyes, and he sighed again, but it was different—as if he finally believed I trusted him. The world got spongy and black as the humming evolved into words I couldn’t understand, the vowels deep in his throat and the pitch rising and falling in unexpected beauty. It was the wind in the leaves given voice, and the movement of the stars in the heavens, and I started to cry again as I remembered the elf under the arch singing me to sleep.

“Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay, cooreen na da,” he sang, the words circling, going around and around in my head, pulling energy into existence from his soul, not a ley line, and giving my thoughts something to hide behind from the pain. His voice coated me in soothing darkness. My heart slowed until it decided to stop, but I didn’t care. I didn’t hurt anymore, and Trent’s aura was warm.

So very warm.

Thirty-one

I looked at my hands as they pressed the cookie cutter into the dough, realizing that I’d been making cookies for quite a while—but not consciously aware of it. It was as if I’d been sleepwalking. Maybe I still was. A pleasant sense of lassitude lay heavily on me, and I used a pancake turner to carefully set the cut cookie, smelling like milk, onto the baking tray. I was making trees, but it didn’t feel like the solstice. It was too warm.