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"I wasn't planning on it. I have found love in the bed of a human male." He paused, a frown playing on his lips. He hadn't thought about love before, not once in all the centuries he'd been alive. But it had just slipped out and somehow it felt just right.
    There was a gasp from those closest to him. They weren't shocked at the idea of him bedding a human; they were often the creatures of choice for many Fae when it came to sexual partners. But loving one was a completely different idea altogether.
    "This cannot be," she hissed, the shadow of her dangerous beauty cracking for just a moment before she smoothed the mask back together. "You must make a decision. Stay here and never go to earth again or be banished from us for eternity."
    Murmurs rose up around him. There had been rumors that he'd been getting preferential treatment for years and as the queen's son, he couldn't really deny those tales. But now it seemed his relation to the woman was going to cost him dearly. He took a deep breath as he considered his mother's words.
    "You could still use the scrying pools to see this human lover of yours," his mother reminded him. The way she said what Luke was, made his lips curl back from his teeth. She spoke of humans as if they were so far below something like her. And he supposed that they were when someone had seen as many creatures come and go as his mother had.
    "It wouldn't be the same, mother," he said quietly. "I've lived enough of my immortality without love and I choose to live that way no more."
    "The love you speak of is a delusional, misguided, ignorant—"
    Arn growled, instantly stopping his mother's tirade. He wasn't sure what love was at that moment either, but he wasn't about to deny what he was feeling for Luke. He knew that it was far more than lust and he'd spent enough time watching humans to know how they described love. It wasn't delusional or anything else that his mother wanted to call it.
    "Mother, I am sorry but I cannot be as I was," Arn whispered, his voice nearly breaking as tears gathered in his eyes.
    The queen nodded, her dew drop veil sparkling as she ducked her head to hide her own tears. "If you truly cannot, then I shall remake you as another. You must make your own path in this new life. These humans, they are finite, fragile creatures. You must take care with them and with yourself. I fear that you'll not enjoy most of it. You're too old now to remember being a child. But though I loved to call you my son, those years were none too pleasant."
    "A child? You cannot mean—"
    His mother's small mouth turned up into a smile. "Oh yes. Your spirit will be put into the body of a child. There is much death in the world of humans, especially ones so small as newborn babes. I already have one selected and he is perfect—a loving family, a mother that won't have to mourn as she stands over the grave of her stillborn son. Her son has died but he can live on, through you."
    Arn shook his head. This wasn't right. "But I'll be a child while my lover grows old. And I'll never know him."
    His mother rose from her ivy throne and walked to him. "No Arn, you'll remember everything. And that will be your curse, I'm afraid. You'll be an adult inside the body of a toddler. At five you'll know more about the universe than any of your friends can comprehend. But, and here's the part you'll like, you'll find your human lover again in thirty years when he comes to the land they call Ireland. I'm sending you back in time to the exact moment of this newborn's death. And I think you'll have an entirely different take on the Seventies as a small child than you did as a leprechaun."
    "Can't you simply release me back on Earth? Just as I am?" Arn begged her. "He'll never know me as a human. He must know me or this will all be for nothing."
    His mother looked at him pityingly. "Humans in this century are particular about their pasts. Four hundred years ago I could have easily dropped you back into the human realm and