He laughed, a deep throaty sound that made the willow branches tremble and something deep in my belly tremble too. He lifted his hand over my breastbone, holding it about an inch above my skin. I felt golden light caress my skin. He moved his hand, over one breast and then another, the Aelvesgold running like warm syrup over my skin. “Am I making this up?” he asked. “Are you telling me you can’t feel the connection between us?”

He moved his hand lower, swirling the hot syrup in spirals around my belly. It pooled in my navel and dripped between my legs. When it reached the cleft between my legs, I moaned and arched my back.

“Yes, I feel it,” I moaned, rolling over and straddling him. “Why haven’t we done this before?” I asked, riding the gold wave and coming down on him. “Why don’t we do this forever?” The gold light moved with me, a wave of heat that lifted me up and then down onto him. I guided him inside me and that heat pushed up into my core. I looked down but the light had grown so bright, so dazzling, that I couldn’t make out his face.

“Liam?” I cried, as he rocked into me, our bodies moving as if controlled by some external force. “Liam, is it really you?”

In answer, he drew my head down to his. Through the glare I saw his eyes: black with specks of green, as they’d appeared when I’d met him in Faerie. “Who else would it be, lass?” he whispered as the gold light began to spread inside me. I felt it filling me up and then it burst, encircling us both in a golden corona of pure pleasure.

“Ah,” Liam’s voice crooned in my head. “That’s why we can’t do this forever, love. We would never want to wake up.”

I collapsed beside him, onto a bed of velvety moss. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, gasping sweet draughts of air. He turned to me and I could just make out his lips smiling through the golden haze.

“You’ll lose yourself in the Aelvesgold,” he told me. “Here.” He took my hand in his and pressed something into it. When I opened the hand I saw that I held the Aelvestone.

“How …?”

“You’d better put it someplace safe,” he told me. “Lock it up. Or you’ll lose it … and lose yourself.”

I felt its pulse in my hand, like the heart of a trapped animal trying to escape. I closed my hand around it, but that only made it beat harder. It was beating so hard, I heard it pounding.

I turned back to Liam, but he was fading, melting into the golden haze of Faerie.