XLIV
"As for why they are here. I can explain more about that." A tall stately man, dressed in aristocratic royal blue and green mixed with local leathers steps into view.
"You came through my gate. The one I set up with my love, to visit each other's worlds."
A tall, stately man steps into the square, his presence commanding yet strangely familiar. His clothes are a blend of worlds. His vest a royal blue and deep green, cut in aristocratic lines but softened by local leathers and forest‑woven fabrics. Silver clasps gleam at his shoulders, and a faint shimmer of magic ripples through the air around him.
I freeze. The resemblance is uncanny. He looks exactly like the portrait that hung in great‑aunt's sitting room, the one she always called her husband's likeness from before the crossing. He stops a few paces away, eyes the color of polished jade locking onto mine.
"Great‑uncle?" I whisper.
The word trembles in the air, and for a moment, even the fountain seems to hush.
His expression softens slightly and he inclines his head, the gesture both regal and heartbreakingly human.
"You've come far," he says, his voice rich and resonant, carrying the cadence of both worlds. "And through a mirror no mortal should have touched."
Lorian stiffens beside you, recognition dawning in his eyes. The guards lower their spears, murmuring among themselves. The council members exchange glances. They look at him with wariness, and some reverence.
The man that looked like great‑uncle steps closer, the glow of the elves' light orbs catching the silver threads in his hair. "You carry Olivia's mark," he gestures to the portal keys decorated with leaves," continues softly. "And her courage."
Around the glowing fire, our shared great-uncle shared his history with my great-aunt.
My great aunt Olivia always said that the night she met the Count felt like stepping into a dream she wasn't meant to remember. She was twenty years old, newly orphaned by the war, and determined to do something useful with the life she still had. Europe was bleeding, refugees were pouring across borders, and the charity ball in New York was meant to be a balm on a wound too large for any one nation to heal.
The ballroom glittered with chandeliers and borrowed optimism. The war had ended only months earlier, and people were desperate to believe in beauty again. Olivia arrived in a dress she had mended three times, her shoes scuffed from walking to the soup kitchens where she volunteered. She felt out of place among the nobles and diplomats, but she had been invited because she spoke three languages and could charm donors into opening their wallets.
She was pouring wine for a table of foreign dignitaries when she first saw him.
He stood near the balcony doors, half in shadow, watching the crowd with an expression that was both curious and distant. His hair was dark, his posture elegant, and his eyes seemed sad. She would later say that they looked like they had seen centuries. He wore an Austrian nobleman's uniform, immaculate and old‑fashioned, as though he had stepped out of a portrait.
When their eyes met, he smiled. Not politely. Not flirtatiously. But with recognition, as though he had been waiting for her.
He crossed the room with the kind of grace that made people step aside without realizing why. When he reached her, he bowed, a gesture so formal it startled her.
"Fräulein," he said, his voice warm and resonant. "May I introduce myself? I am Sigmund Reichstein von Walberg, late of Austria."
Olivia blinked. "I'm afraid I don't know that name."
"Few do," he replied with a soft laugh. "My family keeps to itself."
She didn't know it then, but that was the first truth he ever told her.
They spoke for nearly an hour, standing beside the balcony doors while the orchestra played waltzes behind them. He asked about her work with refugees, about her hopes for the future, about the languages she loved. He listened as though every word mattered. She found herself telling him things she had never said aloud. About how she feared the world would never recover, how she felt small and powerless, how she wished she could do more.
"You already do more than most," he said gently. "You give people hope."
She blushed, embarrassed. "I'm just trying to help."
"That," he said, "is the rarest thing in any world."
She didn't understand what he meant. Not yet.
When the ball ended, he offered her his arm and walked her to the carriage line. Snow had begun to fall, soft and silent. He paused beneath a gas lamp, the light catching in his eyes.
"May I call on you?" he asked.
Olivia hesitated. He was a nobleman. She was a volunteer with patched sleeves. Their worlds were not meant to touch. But something in his gaze made her say yes.
He visited her the next day. And the next. And the next. He brought books, flowers, stories of distant places she had never heard of. He never spoke of his family, never explained why he seemed to know so much about the world yet belonged to none of it. She didn't press him. She was young, in love, and grateful for the warmth he brought into her life. He built her a house, the classic Victorian mansion that she had lived in most of her life.
Months later, during their honeymoon in Europe, he told her the truth.
They were sitting beside the Danube, watching the river carry winter's last ice downstream. He took her hand, his expression solemn.
"Olivia," he said, "there is something you must know. I am not only a count. I am a duke, but not of Austria."
She laughed softly. "Then of where?"
"Of Fairy."
She thought he was teasing. But he explained everything: the ancient pact, the changeling exchange, the century‑long cycle that bound his family to the mortal world. He told her how he had lived among humans for decades, learning their inventions, their languages, their ways of thinking. How he had returned to Fairy many times, bringing knowledge that helped his realm survive.
And how he had broken tradition by falling truly in love with Olivia.
She didn't believe him at first. But he showed her something otherworldly. He pulled out a soul coin, at first doing small slight of hand tricks, then more complicated magic. A flicker of magic, a shimmer of light, a ripple in the air that felt like stepping into a dream. She touched it, and it hummed beneath her fingers like a heartbeat.
He asked her to marry him that night.
She said yes.
For years, he traveled between worlds, slipping through the fairy gate to visit her, and then back to his realm. Sometimes he stayed for weeks, sometimes only hours. He never aged. She did. But they loved each other fiercely, stubbornly, as though time itself could be defied.
Then the gate began to fail.
Its magic weakened, its edges frayed. Each crossing became dangerous. He tried to stabilize it, tried to bargain with fairy courts, tried everything he could, to reinforce it with soul magic, to add mirrors to and reinforce the soul energy, but the gate was unstable, and he could not hold it open.
One winter, he crossed through and found the way back sealed.
He never saw Olivia again.
She lived to 102, still wearing the ring he had given her, still speaking of him as though he had only stepped out for a moment. She never knew that he had been trapped on the other side, unable to reach her, unable even to send word.
His own death had been staged decades earlier, after World War I, when the world grew too modern for an immortal to hide. Photographs, passports, census records. Humans were becoming meticulous. A nobleman who never aged would have drawn dangerous attention. So he allowed himself to "die," a carefully orchestrated passing that severed his human identity and protected the secret of Fairy. Olivia knew him as her husband, not as a ghost. And he knew her as the one mortal he could never forget.
Tears came unbidden. Their love story was so tragic that tears couldn't help fall down my face. Lorian too looked pensive.
"Lorian, you are a direct descendant of generations of changelings who filtered into Europe from this world, the realms of fairy. Here, your powers will be enhanced. This village will help you to discover yourself. You've been taught bits and pieces in the human world, traditions, remnants of language. We will do our best to expand your knowledge." He patted Lorian on the back encouragingly.
"You, dear girl, have been brought here by fate itself, the power of the gates pulled you in. We prayed for an answer to a small problem that has emerged in this world. The gates brought us you. Hopefully you will be our answer."