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and reached into his bag for the binding swath, swinging her around to face him.
    She was young. Couldn’t be over two hundred; her eyes had yet to turn.
    To be sure, her eyes appeared green, as brilliant as the jewels she meant to steal. But that color quickly faded, and the baby blue of a young fairy reasserted itself. Her heart-shaped mouth was sweet, her full red lips pursed.
    “Ooh!” She caught her breath, and the sound of it sent a thrill through Max’s being. So lovely. So full of audacity… and fire.
    She felt something too, he could tell. She looked him over. Desire bloomed on her face—the green returned. Without thinking, he pulled her close and kissed her.
    A thousand tingling prickles danced from her lips to his. Shocks of desire flooded his senses in waves. He pushed his tongue between her lips. She accepted him, teased him, and lured him on. He ran a hand through her hair and pressed her to the wall, his chest against hers, his growing desire evident to them both.
    Was he still on earth or had Brother Sun and Sister Moon transported him to heaven? He pulled back. “Who are you?”
    His words broke the spell, and she gasped.
    “Give me your name,” he said.
    Her cute fairy mouth constricted in a pert O. Her devilish eyebrows shot up, and her eyes widened. She put a delicate hand over her heart, her painted nails like pomegranate seeds begging to be tasted, and fingered the glittering emerald necklace. She seemed to remember where she was and why she was there. She gave him an impish grin. Her eyes flashed. Her dimple deepened.
    She disappeared.
    She was gone.
    Max stared dumbly at his image in the long mirror. He was alone, holding the emerald bracelet the fairy had dropped before popping out. The bauble looked all wrong lying on his open palm. He couldn’t imagine it on anyone else’s wrist. Had this room, this cottage ever felt so empty?
    She was gone!
    His heart pounded so forcefully he wondered if he would be ill… until he became aware that the sound originated elsewhere. Someone was pounding on his front door.

« Chapter 4 »
Merlyn
    T HE MAN AT THE door was no goblin. No fairy, no leprechaun, no brownie. No fae at all at all , as Niall of the Nine used to say.
    The man pounding on Max’s front door was human.
    He was Max’s height, a little over six feet tall, stick thin—and gaudy, all pink and red and black and white. What was a king’s fool from the human realm doing in fae? And how had he come so deep as the Blue Vale without being put to use as some fairy’s toy?
    On closer examination, this was no fool. The fabrics of his costume were of far too superior quality. Over a calf-length, rose-pink silk tunic he wore a lush dove-gray mantle embroidered with pink and red apple blossoms. On his brow was a hammered copper circlet in the shape of blackberry leaves. Strands of silver and gray infiltrated his long black hair, yet his face and demeanor were that of a young and vigorous warrior.
    His blue-gray eyes were old, and his gaze burned with intent.
    “The wyrd have no power here,” Max blurted out. He’d never seen a wyrder in the vale—and he was disoriented. The taste and sizzle and befuddlement of that red-haired fairy’s kiss had yet to leave him.
    He scanned the area beyond his door, embarrassed by his uncivil tone. There were but few gobs about, and all going about their business. Indeed, no one seemed to notice the strange visitor on his doorstep.
    “Eh, you’d better come in.” Max led the wyrder inside.
    To make up for the rude greeting, he went to the kitchen and pulled two pints of stout. He returned with the tankards to find the wyrder sitting by the cold fireplace in the good chair.
    Max had carved the rocking chair from a single burl and infused it with a comfort charm. No gob who ever sat there got up again without making an offer on it, but the wyrder didn’t even look at ease, let alone extraordinarily comfortable.
    “Well, you’re in my house, wyrder.”