A Kind of Magic

Thirty-One

"Mum, Gollum's here, and we're going shopping!" Fiona called as she opened the door of the flat, and Gollum ran inside towards the kitchen from where a muffled reply reached her.

"All right, Bells. Just make sure you buy everything I put on that list!"

Fiona grabbed a couple of shopping bags from the clothes rack before she let the door shut again behind them.

"What?" She asked challengingly when she looked up at Peregrine, who stood waiting for her statue still, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, a smile tugging at his lips.

"Bells?" he asked, making her close her eyes in exasperation. She really had hoped he hadn't heard that.

Fiona preceded him down the gloomy staircase while she explained, not looking at him. "My name is Fiona Isabella. I much prefer Fiona, I'm not a Bella... However, my mum always preferred my second name, saying it was way more elegant and grand. So I grew up as Isabella, Issie, Bells... But no one ever called me that in my adult life except for her. I'm Fiona."

She narrowed her eyes at the dark man to stress her point as they exited the house and she led him in the opposite direction to the one they had taken before, past The Hobbit, dark and desolate this time of the day, and down the high road towards the supermarket barely visible in the distance. 

"But Bella suits you," Peregrine said seriously, looking in front of him despite feeling her eyes intent on his face as she tried to guess whether he was teasing her.

"No, it doesn't. It means beautiful, a quality I don't possess."

"You obviously don't see yourself clearly," he replied, quite without thinking his words through, just as seriously as before. This time, he looked at her, his eyes spilling into hers, making her heart skip a beat or two. "To me, yo..."

She didn't let him finish. "Don't. Please. You don't have to lie. And anyway, there is something else I want to talk about. I need to know what you see in Freddie that I don't, you must tell me before you leave. Please," she said, tearing her eyes off him. Botheration... She... would miss him. He was one intriguing man...

Shaking his head in desperation, Peregrine watched her turn away from him. She was so stubborn. She still believed that he would leave her here... Like he could. 

Apart from his promise to Alaric about bringing her home, he had his own, selfish reasons now, too. This small, intriguing redhead walking at his side, fighting her way through life like an ordinary human, ignorant of the magic running through her veins, so petite and pretty and generous and loving... had everything he had ever dreamed of finding within a woman. Inevitably, she, her essence seeped into his heart through a chink in the armour he had been building around it for years. He couldn't afford to nurture dreams of falling in love, couldn't allow himself to hope that she would fall for him because he could never stay around, in her life, as much as he wished; his presence in anyone else's existence was too dangerous. 

But there was no way he was going to leave her here, alone and unprotected. In Silmarea, he could watch over her and her son safely as their guard at least, he knew that Alaric would allow him that. No Higlander would attack him at court, and if he hid his feelings from everyone, he would pose no threat at all to her.

"It is Freddie's father we were supposed to talk about," he reminded her, finally banishing those thoughts, and looking away from her. There was a slight change in the air, a scent he had not perceived before carried towards them on the breeze... But he would think about it later, solve the problem if and when it occurred. Right now she was more important. "I need to know more about him before I tell you anything about your son."