Chapter Text
The first thing I noticed was the smell.
Burnt ozone and roses.
The second thing was the groan echoing out of the alley near my building, which in my experience, usually meant someone was either dying or about to ask me a favor.
I was carrying a fresh cup of coffee, still piping hot from the corner café. I’d been looking forward to it all morning. The gods of caffeine must’ve sensed that, because of course something had to go wrong.
I paused outside the alley, squinting into the shadows. Early morning fog coiled along the bricks, clinging to the fuse and puddles. But it couldn't quite hide the faint shimmer of light, or the wings .
Yeah. Wings.
Half-crumpled against the brick, was a girl glowing like a prom night disco ball.
Sparkles. Wings . Hair the color of a firetruck mid-rescue.
She was wearing... well, calling it a costume would be an understatement. She looked like someone had dropped an anime heroine into a blender with a rave flyer and a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Her outfit was all blue glitter and skin, and her legs went on for days. Her wings shimmered (actual, literal wings ) but they twitched like they'd been zapped one too many times.
She was breathing. Barely.
I sipped my coffee.
Her hair was long, red, and tangled with soot and ash, strands stuck to her face with blood. Magic clung to her like static. Big magic. The kind that didn’t belong in Chicago.
"Well," I muttered, setting down the coffee, "there goes normal."
I approached slowly, keeping my shielding bracelet loose on my wrist and blasting rod tucked in my coat. Faeries are like stray cats. You don’t want to get too close unless you’re comfortable losing blood, or a finger, or your name.
The girl’s eyes fluttered open. Summer blue. Bright blue. Too bright. That kind of blue doesn’t exist without magic.
“You alright?” I asked.
“Where...?” she croaked, voice rough. She looked around, blinking like she expected the alley to dissolve.
“You’re in Chicago,” I said. “My name’s Harry Dresden. I’m a wizard. Local variety. You look like... well, like someone lit Tinkerbell on fire and tossed her through a wall.”
She tried to sit up and failed spectacularly.
“I was... fighting,” she murmured. “The Trix. They threw me through, through something. I don’t know what happened.”
Terrific. More homicidal fae women.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Beautiful, terrifying, and a combined sense of morality equivalent to a toddler with a flamethrower.”
She blinked. I’ll take that as a yes.
I looked her over again. Her outfit was singed. Skin scraped. Her aura sparked and fizzled like a dying sparkler. Whatever kind of fae she was, she was high-powered and very much not from any Court I knew.
Which meant I absolutely did not want to know more.
“Okay,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Some kind of rogue Summer nymph with glitter-based trauma. I’m going to pretend you’re not interdimensional and just really, really weird.”
She coughed, painful and human-sounding. Stars, there goes my damsel in distress saving mode.
Not that it ever makes me feel any better.
“Listen,” I said, crouching beside her and trying to avoid contact with anything glowing, which wasn’t easy. “You’re banged up, probably concussed, and leaking magic like a glowstick in a wood chipper. You need a place to lie low.”
I offered her my coat. She looked at it like I’d just handed her a live rat—mildly horrified but too polite to say anything—then took it anyway and draped it around herself.
Only, she wrapped it forward , more cloak than coat, keeping the back clear.
It took me a second.
Right. Wings.
She had wings.
Good God. Since when did fairies have wings ?
No, seriously. Wings . Big, gleaming, semi-translucent things that shimmered like stained glass dunked in glitter. I hadn’t seen anything like that outside Saturday morning cartoons and bad cosplay conventions. Not from the fae. Not here .
“My name’s Bloom,” she said faintly.
And just like that, her voice rang . Power curled around the syllables like heat off pavement. I felt it hit me low in the gut, coiling, anchoring. Oh good. Names with weight.
My sense of comfort packed its bags and threw itself out a window.
She’d just given me her name . No hedge, no courtesy title, no evasions. That meant one of three things:
- She was incredibly naïve.
- She’d heard of me and figured I was a sucker for a pretty face.
- She was so far out of my league that my knowing her name didn’t mean squat.
None of those were comforting.
“I’m from -”
“Nope,” I said, raising a hand. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Not before coffee.”
She blinked at me.
“You think I’m joking.” I sighed. “That’s cute.”
I helped her up. She was light, but radiating fever heat and the kind of slow-burning magic that makes veteran wizards start pricing industrial salt in bulk.
“Let’s just get you off the street before someone calls Animal Control and they try to cage you with the escaped pixie strippers.”
She frowned up at me. Her eyes were very blue. Ethereal, cosmic, look-into-the-abyss blue. The kind of eyes you saw before making incredibly bad decisions.
“That’s inappropriate,” she said.
“Geeze,” I muttered. “You are from the Nevernever. You sound just like Mab when she’s pretending she has a moral compass.”
She tilted her head. “Who’s Mab?”
“Nope!” I said brightly. “Still not before coffee.”
My apartment isn’t exactly Buckingham Palace. It's more ‘shabby wizard chic’ - minus the chic. It’s the bottom room of the building, half-subterranean and all charm if your standards are low and your expectations lower, but it’s protected. Magically sound, and also, apparently, the new crash pad for a glitter-powered bombshell who might be, oh I don’t know, Fae royalty .
Seriously. There was a tiny, glinting crown nestled in her scorched red curls I didn’t immediately spot. Like her head came standard-issue with tiaras.
And I was definitely not freaking out.
Except I totally was.
Because if she was some high-ranking Summer princess or god-help-me Queen-in-training, then this wasn’t just a rescue mission. It was a diplomatic incident. One that could end in war, wildfires, or me waking up as a lawn ornament.
Bloom didn’t say much on the walk while I internally panicked. She limped, glowing faintly under my coat like a star, eyes wide and scanning everything like she’d never seen Chicago before.
…Probably hadn’t.
I opened the door and ushered her in with a muttered word to let the wards relax. They grumbled, but obeyed. Mostly.
Inside, it was the usual: books, candles, more books, magical debris, and enough lingering smells to offend several senses at once.
And then came the welcome committee.
Mouse trotted in from the kitchen, tail wagging like we hadn’t nearly died twelve times last month. Mister emerged from his perch, stretching and surly-eyed.
I held up a hand. “Careful. She might be radioactive.”
Didn’t matter. Mouse made a low, happy rumble and walked right up to her . Gave her one sniff, then pressed his head gently against her hip like they’d known each other for years.
Bloom blinked down at him, then crouched, winced, and murmured, “You’re beautiful,” as she scratched behind his ears. Mouse closed his eyes in bliss.
“Oh come on ,” I muttered.
Mister was next. He circled her once, gave a long, approving mrrrow , then climbed into the armchair nearest her and flopped down like she’d passed some ancient feline trial. He doesn’t even do that for me unless I bribe him.
“That’s great,” I muttered, heading for the kitchen to put the kettle on. Surely the girl wouldn’t kill me if I made her tea. “Typical. Betrayed by my own housemates.”
I glanced over my shoulder, downing a big mouthful of coffee. Bloom had sunk onto the couch like a wilting flower, Mouse resting beside her, Mister kneading the cushion.
She looked out of place. Too bright, too clean, even bloodied and singed, she seemed like something out of a dream that had taken a wrong turn into my waking life.
“Does this mean I’m safe here?” she asked softly, fingers curling in Mouse’s fur.
“No,” I said, setting the kettle on. “It means you’ve tricked my dog and cat into liking you, which is statistically how all my worst problems start.”
She gave me a tired little smile. Dammit. It was a nice smile.
I turned back to the stove and stared at the kettle.
Why the hell did the glowing fairy girl have to be likable ? Why did she have to crash-land into my neighborhood, of all places?
“Um,” she said suddenly, voice tight and just this side of panicked.
I spun around, heart immediately preparing for the next magical disaster. “What? What happened?”
She looked down at herself. Still radiant, still sparkling like a living rave poster, and frowned. “I can’t transform back.”
“Transform?” I repeated, brilliantly, because I’m a wordsmith under pressure.
“This is my fairy form ,” she said, slow and careful, like she thought I banged my head. “You said you’re a wizard.”
Ah. There it was. The look. The you’re too dumb to live look. I’ve gotten it from Mab, Molly, half the Council, and most waiters in downtown Chicago.
“I am a wizard,” I said, slightly defensive and very weirded out by the idea that she could apparently turn her glitter mode on and off like a damn light switch. Only now the switch was jammed. She was having, of all things, performance issues?
Typical.
Why wouldn’t a probably-Fae, definitely-high-powered, crown-wearing girl bomb into my alley, charm my dog, break physics in my living room, and malfunction in front of me?
Right. Because she was royalty. The big guns .
And I was in so much trouble.
I didn’t even know what kind of trouble yet. But I could feel it brewing like a thunderstorm creeping over the Western horizon with my name etched into the lightning.
“Look,” she sighed. “Could you get me back to Alfea?”
That… sounded Fae-ish. One of those places that ends in a vowel and ruins your life if you pronounce it wrong.
“Sure. Alfea. Totally. Right around the corner, lemme just go see about that,” I said, nodding with all the confidence of a man about to consult a perverted talking skull and possibly summon a pizza-loving pixie for cross-reference.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and leaned back into the couch like she’d just secured royal transport. “Everyone must be so worried…”
She closed her eyes, visibly relaxing as Mouse curled up beside her and Mister stretched across her lap.
And once again, I had to ask myself: was she just that naively trusting… or did she know exactly how little I could do to her without immediately exploding?
Was I a hostage?
…Or was I her temporary butler?
Neither option felt great, but I preferred the latter.
I made my way down the narrow staircase into my basement lab-slash-apocalypse-prep-room and pulled the cloth off Bob’s skull.
“Rise and shine, sunshine,” I said. “I need your brain.”
There was a moment of silence. Then orange lights flickered in his eye sockets and Bob the Skull yawned.
“You know, there are less aggressive ways to start a conversation. Maybe a ‘hello, Bob, how are you?’, or - oh sweet merciful Mab , what is that ?”
I blinked. “What?”
Bob shivered inside his skull. “Something just brushed the edge of my awareness and it felt like someone licked a live wire and then exploded into flower petals. What did you bring home , Harry?”
“She says her name is Bloom.”
“Of course it is.”
“She has wings. Literal wings. A glitter outfit. She glows. Sparkles blue , Bob. I found her bleeding in the alley.”
Bob went very still.
“Wings?”
“Yep.”
“Crowns?”
“Tiny one. Hair accessory, maybe. Maybe not.”
“Oh no.” His voice dropped an octave into what I liked to call Doom Scholar Mode™ . “That sounds like high-caste Fae. Possibly independent court. Possibly a court we’ve never even heard of.”
“That was my thought too,” I muttered, dropping onto a chair. “She said she’s trying to get back to a place called Alfea where others are waiting for her.”
Bob’s lights flared and dimmed like he was buffering fear. “Alfea? That doesn’t sound Winter. Doesn’t sound Summer either. Or Wyld. Or anything else in the known structure. Oh, this is new .”
“Yeah, I hate new.”
“I know,” Bob said solemnly. “You’re emotionally allergic to it.”
“She also said she’s stuck in her fairy form.”
“Oh, lovely,” Bob muttered. “That’s like saying she’s stuck in god-mode.”
“Exactly. And now she’s resting in my living room like she owns the place, Mouse and Mister have defected to her side like she’s the Queen of Magical Animals and expects me to transport her back to Alfea within the next ten minutes.”
Bob paused. “So what I’m hearing is... you just lied to a God-mode Fae”
“Yes,” I sighed.
He made a pleased hum. “Well. I hope she’s hot.”
“I swear to Stars , Bob—”
“Hey, I’m just saying, if you’re gonna get vaporized by accidental court intrigue, it might as well be by someone with great legs.”
The Council will never believe I didn’t do this on purpose.”
Bob’s eye lights flickered again. “So what’s the plan?”
“Plan?” I echoed. “Right now, the plan is not to piss her off, not to make any deals, and to figure out where the hell this Alfea is without accidentally summoning a new Fae war.”
Bob gave a thoughtful pause. “...So panic?”
“Exactly,” I said, “Plan B it is.”
Bob blinked. “You’re not thinking of calling - oh no. You are .”
I walked to the chalk circle in the corner of the lab, lit the candle stubs, muttered the summoning incantation, and dropped a single slice of three-day-old pepperoni pizza that was on my desk into the circle like a sacrifice to the gods of terrible decisions.
There was a spark of light. A sharp crackle of displaced air.
And then: Toot-toot Minimus, Major-General of the Za-Lord’s Guard , puffed into existence, sword at his hip, chest puffed out proudly, hair spiked and glinting with actual glitter. About the height of a Barbie Doll.
“Za-Lord!” he bellowed, wings flaring dramatically. “You summoned me to battle!”
I nodded. “Something like that. I need information, Toot.”
His eyes sparkled with excitement. “Is it another mission? Another pizza raid? Does it involve hot sauce? Because I still have some unfinished business with that Domino’s on Halsted -”
“No raids. Not yet, anyway.” I crouched down to his level. “I need to know if you’ve heard of a place called Alfea.”
He blinked. “Al-whata?”
“Alfea. A realm, maybe? Magical? Possibly a fae court, school, spa, parallel dimension with an absurd dress code - I don’t know.”
Toot-toot scratched his head. “Never heard of it. Not in the Wyld, not in the Winter zones, not even in the weird corner where they wear moss as pants. Not to judge.”
“Well, that’s disappointing,” I muttered.
“But!” Toot added, striking a thoughtful pose. “It sounds fancy. Probably has a feast hall. Maybe velvet walls. Very suspicious.”
I blinked. “Velvet walls?”
“ Very suspicious,” he said solemnly. “That’s how they trap you in contracts. Velvet and finger food. Boom. You’re someone’s valet for eternity.”
That actually… wasn’t the worst leading theory since he was told to arrange transportation.
Toot buzzed a little closer, narrowing his eyes. “Why do you ask, Za-Lord?”
I hesitated. “There’s a new fae in town. High-powered. Calls herself Bloom, she’s from Alfea and wants to go back.”
Toot froze in mid-air. “Is she beautiful?”
“Worryingly.”
“Sparkly?”
“Extremely,” I say and notice Toot’s sudden severe look. “Toot, don’t .”
“I must see her!”
“No, you mustn’t.”
For all he knows she might smack him like a mosquito!
“She might be a Princess Commander ! Or a Duchess of Dessert ! What if she’s assembling an elite magical girl battalion?”
“She’s napping on my couch.”
Toot gasped, scandalised. “You let an unknown fae royalty sleep unguarded on sacred territory?!”
“She’s guarded. By Mouse and Mister.”
Toot’s expression became reverent. “A worthy duo. Still. I will send scouts.”
“Don’t - ”
“They will be discreet,” he said, already vanishing with a flash of light. “ For the honor of the Za-Lord! ”
I stood there for a moment in the silence that followed, staring at the empty circle.
Bob finally spoke up. “You know, if this ends with you becoming the unwilling consort of some extra-dimensional sparkle queen, I want a front-row seat.”
I rubbed my face. “I should’ve let the pizza go mouldy.”
Bloom came to slowly. Her body ached. Shoulders stiff, ribs sore, and wings twitching restlessly against her back. She was warm, though. Too warm. Something soft and enormous was curled against her side, radiating calm.
Mouse.
She’d never seen a breed like him. So big, and yet so gentle. The other one, the cat, Mister, was sprawled across her lap, dead weight and clearly claiming her as his new pillow.
She shifted slightly and winced.
Her skin was still smeared with blood. Some of it hers, some probably Icy’s, if the blast at the end had landed like she hoped. Her hair felt crispy with ash, her clothes reeked of scorched magic, and her wings -
Ugh. Her wings were sticky .
She grimaced. Dried blood was not a look she enjoyed, even if the sparkle of her magic made it deceptively hard to tell how wrecked she really was. She wanted to feel clean again, even if she couldn’t shift back to her normal form, she needed to shower.
Bloom sat up gingerly, dislodging the cat (who gave her a disgusted mrrrp! and relocated two inches away in protest). Mouse didn’t move, but his eyes opened slightly to watch her.
The apartment was quiet. Dim lighting, stone and wood everywhere. Primitive, barren of anything resembling an electronic, so entirely of the human-realm, but magical and cozy in a strange way. ‘Wizard-core’ , Stella would say.
‘Psychotic! ’ Techna would cry.
She spotted a half-open door tucked around the corner of the bookshelves, next to a leaning stack of empty noodle cups.
Bathroom . Score!
She hesitated. She was in someone else’s space. A wizard’s space. A male wizard’s space. And yet…her skin was itching from old blood and sweat and ash and she couldn’t take it anymore.
And, somehow, she knew she could trust him.
She slipped off the heavy leather coat he’d given her (it smelled like smoke, fire magic, and faintly, comfortingly , of him) and left it folded neatly on the arm of the couch next to Mouse. Then she padded carefully toward the bathroom, heels faintly clinking, trying not to knock anything over with her wings.
Inside, it was small but functional. A standing shower, mercifully clean, with a bar of soap that looked... concerningly underused. She wrinkled her nose. Typical boy.
She eyed the mirror. Her reflection stared back. Smudged with soot, eyes duller than they should be, hair a total and complete mess.
“I look dreadful,” she whispered.
She turned on the water, tested it - spilling her magic into it to a perfect temperature - and began to tentatively strip. In the worst case, she’d resign herself to just standing in the water fully clothed.
But when she sat on the closed toilet seat and tugged off one of her heels, she laughed.
It worked .
Gingerly, she peeled off her thin layers, setting them in a folded pile atop the sink basin - carefully removing the little crown from her hair last, like it might shatter if dropped and set it atop the pile.
Then she stepped under the spray of water.
It hit her in a warm, steady stream. Steam curled around her, softening the ache in her limbs. Blood and dirt swirled down the drain in glittering rivulets. Her wings twitched, then slowly relaxed.
She tilted her face up into the stream and let the water wash over her.
was halfway through melting into my chair and swearing never to return from my dungeon when I felt it.
A pulse. Soft. Subtle. But definitely there—threading through the ambient magic of the apartment like a warm breeze rustling dry leaves.
Bloom.
More specifically: Bloom, using magic. In my apartment. On my pipes .
I sat bolt upright.
Now normally, that would be the kind of thing my wards would have opinions about. A foreign magical signature trying to coax heat from my very much not-standard plumbing? Alarm bells. Flashing lights. Maybe even a small, localized lightning strike for good measure.
But the wards didn’t so much as twitch .
They accepted it. Like her magic was familiar. Like it belonged .
And that sent a slow, cold ripple down my spine in a way no plumbing explosion ever could. Stars and stones—how powerful was this strange fairy girl?
I stood and crept up the stairs into the hallway.
The shower had stopped. I could hear the faint scuff of movement, the hiss of steam shutting off. My nerves were already half-raw when the bathroom door creaked open -
And she stepped out.
Wrapped in nothing but my towel .
Let me be clear: this towel was not designed for interdimensional fae princesses with legs that defied physics. It was designed for one overworked wizard and maybe a housecat. It covered the essentials. Barely.
Bloom didn’t seem to notice my immediate moral malfunction. She looked battle-dazed. Hair damp and curling around her shoulders, wings soft and translucent like gossamer mist. The towel clung precariously to her chest, one hand holding it in place while the other wrung out her hair.
She blinked up at me.
“Oh,” she said, mildly surprised. “Wizard Dresden.”
My brain attempted a hard reboot.
“Hi,” I croaked, already imagining the royal inquisition that would be waiting for me the second I returned her home. Execution? Imprisonment? Trial by fairy fire? All very plausible.
What did I ever do to you? I cried internally. Besides exist. And open my door. And offer you my coat. And now apparently my towel.
“Your shower is very nice,” she added, serene as a lake in a snowglobe. Like standing half-naked in a strange man’s hallway wrapped in a towel the size of a napkin was the most normal thing in the world.
“Thanks,” I squeaked and quickly turned on my heel, marching straight into the kitchen. “Right!” I called behind me, voice pitching up. “I’ll just, uh find you some spare clothes. You know. Things with more than one square foot of coverage.”
I heard her pad a few damp steps after me, her voice genuinely puzzled. “I don’t need to borrow your clothes, thank you?”
Stars help me. She was going to kill me.
“I was wondering if you’ve sorted out how I’m getting back to Alfea - ”
“Alfea!” I blurted, laughter just a shade too bright. The kind of laugh you make when pretending you haven’t lost complete control of your life. “Absolutely. Working on it. Very sorted. So sorted, it’s practically alphabetical.”
My back remained firmly turned. No force on earth, or Faerie, was going to make me risk a second glance at the towel situation. I busied myself with the junk pile that passed for my laundry corner, pretending like I was definitely looking for spare clothes and not just panicking in real time.
“Wonderful,” she said behind me, sounding genuinely relieved. “I was worried you might not know the way.”
No, see, that would be too easy. That would imply this was my first supernatural mess of the week.
“I know all sorts of ways,” I continued to lie cheerfully, elbow-deep in a drawer that held exactly one sock, a scarf I think used to be white, and a t-shirt that may or may not have belonged to a werewolf.
“I’m happy to wear my clothes,” Bloom offered politely, as if this was a normal conversation, “they’re back in the bathroom -”
“Then why did you walk out here in the towel?” I wheezed before I could stop myself, voice cracking like an old vinyl on fast-forward.
Silence.
Behind me, I could practically hear her blinking. “Oh,” she said thoughtfully. “I forgot to ask if I could borrow your shampoo and conditioner.”
“Of course you can!” I blurted, voice an octave too high. “Take the whole damn shelf, live your best magical life - just, for the love of Merlin, put on pants first.”
“Thank you, Wizard Dresden,” she giggled, light as air.
Then came the sound of her wet footsteps padding back toward the bathroom, the soft click of the door shutting behind her…
…and it echoed in my ears like the drop of a guillotine.
“Is she some kind of psychopath?” I muttered to myself, staring at the off-white scarf in my drawer that suspiciously resembled a noose.
“She is very beautiful,” Toot-toot piped up, zipping into view. Without thinking, I snatched him mid-air, pinching him around the middle. He let out a startled “Eep!”
I brought him nose-to-glowing-nose. “ Find. Me. Alfea. ”