Page 18

E ven when she was sniffling and pouting, the Princess of the Spring Court was beautiful.

She had crafted herself a seat out of a stump at the edge of the harvested gourd garden, turning the bark of the fallen maple pink and blooming white petals around its base for no reason other than that was the way she liked things. So frivolous, so playful, so wonderful.

All things Aunyx was not.

He lurked between the hedges as a shadow and watched her like some deviant fae overtaken by his most vulgar desires.

That was what many of the others already thought about shadow fae anyway, and perhaps it was fair—he was lurking after all, and his desires were often completely vulgar.

But licentiousness wasn’t his intention just then, it was only that he had to work up the courage to speak with her.

Which was pathetic, and that was nearly as bad.

But then Princess Jynquil heaved a sigh so great it scattered her ever-present butterflies, and the knowledge that she was in even a modicum of distress was too much to bear.

Chivalry struck down his apprehension, and he pieced himself together out of the shadows, but as soon as his boot fell into a pile of dead leaves, Jynquil whipped around.

Even in the dim light of early evening, green eyes pierced right through Aunyx’s chest. Their jade-like shimmer was always teasing the edges of his mind, but to really see them, to have them on him, was almost enough to break him entirely.

“Aunyx,” she said on an inhale as she straightened.

Instead of looking terrified to see the shadows coming to life and stalking toward her, a bright smile spread over her face.

Jynquil’s ability to hide the fear that so many others couldn’t or wouldn’t was unmatched and frankly more than he deserved.

“Princess.” Aunyx bowed as he stopped four paces away from her makeshift seat. It was a respectable distance, and when she turned fully to reveal her dress, it was probably a necessary distance too.

She was trussed up in pink lace, just a shade lighter than the blush on her cheeks.

The dress hugged her middle and chest creating the illusion of a second skin, and her crossed legs peeked out through the generous slit in her skirt.

Gods, it was all so unfair, but perhaps the worst of it was how she bounced her bare foot so casually as she grinned up at him.

Don’t look at that , he chastised himself, but then his eyes darted to the lacy, revealing patterns over her breasts and that was surely worse. Thankfully, she was holding a crimson rose in her cupped hands, and that’s where his gaze finally landed.

“You disappeared as soon as you arrived this afternoon,” she lilted, and his guts twisted that she noticed at all.

He had noticed her, of course, before the carriages even passed through the gates. Honeysuckle, distant thunder, a warm breeze through a willow tree, none of it belonging in Tenhaef but all of it her .

“The prince assigned me many tasks,” he lied through his teeth, but he could pretend that discussing the court’s safety with the Lady of the Harvest Way was indeed part of his job even if it hadn’t turned out to be the distraction he’d hoped for.

“Well, you’re wandering out here all alone now,” she said in her most impish voice. “Unless you came to the empty gardens just to find me?”

Shit. Fuck. Gods damn it.

“I heard you,” he lied again, biting his cheek, but he couldn’t very well say it was something unidentifiable deep in his chest that always told him exactly where she was. “You sounded…upset?”

Jynquil’s shoulders sagged, and her lips lost their curl, all he needed to know the truth.

“Point me in their direction, and I will have the perpetrator apologizing on their knees at your feet.” The words came out stiffly, but at least the real threat, the one that was slow and bloody and painful, hadn’t escaped his mouth.

The princess’s eyes lit up like new sprouts catching the spring sun, another tactic of hers he admired, smiling to cover up her horror.

She bit down on her lip and wrinkled up her nose, and he held his breath so that he wouldn’t match her perfect grin.

“There isn’t anyone for you to drag before me and make beg for their life.

Unfortunately.” She sighed again as if she really meant the disappointment.

“Unless you want to rip the petals off this flower.”

Aunyx tipped his head. The rose held all the markers of Jynquil’s exquisite magic.

“Didn’t think so. I can’t let you anyway,” she said, lifting it to her face and peering downward with crossed eyes. “It’s too good. Not perfect, but good. Maybe even great. It’s just that I made it to do awful things, but I don’t need it anymore, and now it’s making me sad.”

The shaft of his scythe tickled at his hand, ready to cut the bloom in two for its offense, but he didn’t conjure the weapon.

“Stupid, huh?”

“No, not at all,” he breathed. If he could strike that word out of her vocabulary, he would.

“Well, they’re going to be disappointed in me for wasting my new skills,” she said quietly, tucking the flower into a pouch beside her.

“The priestesses?”

She nodded. “I feel a little bad for lying to them, but at least I don’t have to go on that awful pilgrimage to Nagneara. I was not looking forward to that!”

Aunyx swallowed, the thought of Jynquil traveling so far on her own striking fear deep within.

Of course, most priestesses in training were assigned at least one escort, but the thought of someone traveling with her all that way, spending all that time together, basking in all her glory, struck and even deeper jealousy than the fear.

But it was the somber tinge to her face as her eyes searched the ground that made Aunyx take a step closer. She looked up, and he abruptly stopped.

Do you really want to do this? He wanted so desperately to ask, and even more desperately, Please, don’t do this, Jyny. Please.

But she would ask him why, and it wouldn’t be like with Roan who could see into Aunyx’s soul and know what was there despite what he said. He would have to lie to her, and whatever he came up with would sound like an insult to her intelligence, her power, her choices.

But Lady Maewyn had bolstered him, and he had to say something.

“If the flower offends you so, but you don’t wish to destroy it, perhaps it belongs with someone else?”

Her lips curled up again then, faster than he expected, and she clasped her hands in her lap. “All you had to do was ask.”

“Not me,” he cut through her giddiness like he’d indeed conjured his scythe, and she pouted those too-pretty lips of hers.

“That is, I would be a terrible caretaker of something so…” Aunyx swallowed.

It was cowardly, but if he could not do what was needed of him, Lady Maewyn could.

“Surely there is someone better suited. Someone who, perhaps, would appreciate a gift so close to a celebration of their own.”

“The human!” Her eyes lit up again, forgetting his accidental rejection as fast as she’d pretended it wounded her, and her butterflies panicked. “Oh, but I have to wrap it up, make it really special.”

“Splendid idea.” He nodded and took two steps back. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Princess Jynquil’s brows pinched together over jade eyes, but she nodded and let him go just as he too would have to let her go, as impossible as it would be.