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The fae stood under a massive tree, every bit of him exuding ire from his disheveled hair to his polished boots.

He was dressed like the utter essence of royalty, a scarlet coat over a richly decorated vest and crisp white tunic beneath.

He poked at the metal protruding from his chest, gave a disgusted sigh, and plucked it out with only half a wince.

The leaves above brightened into the glittering orange they had been before her murderous attempt at freedom, and the color, the life, the magic, was all too much.

Maewyn touched her own chest, blinking into the surrounding wilds, the unfamiliarity of so many wonders waiting—begging—to be discovered.

“Needless to say, this was not what I was expecting out of my bride.” The fae flicked away Maewyn’s weapon, and it disappeared into a heap of golden leaves beside the fruit he’d dropped. His green eyes caught her again. She could run, they said, but she would not get far.

“I don’t intend to be your bride,” she spat, taking another step back.

“Well, what a relief that is for the both of us.”

Her breath caught on her next words of refusal, unneeded. “Really?” Her shoulders unpinched. “I can just go home?”

The fae snorted. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you do.”

A mass of black feathers burst before her, and then he was gone.

Becoming a bird presented only one problem: the becoming part. Specifically, becoming when Roan was angry.

Blinded by his own showy burst of ebony feathers and misplaced frustration, Roan plummeted from where he had transformed and landed in a mound of leaves much too deep for a creature of his new size.

I don’t need to practice , he always insisted, but elegance and forethought took skill that required cultivation.

Giving his wings a first flap was fruitless, unless the orange was to be counted—he knocked right into the cursed fruit and buried it deeper. He managed to free his beak from the golden hoard of leaves, and another frantic flap freed him as he tumbled out onto flatter earth.

“My goodness,” the human breathed. “You turned into a raven.”

At least she could properly identify her birds. Her foxlike eyes were wide as they took him in. She was also apparently smitten by magic which helped to quell his annoyance.

“Not a very good raven,” she mumbled. “But still.”

Without eyebrows, it would be difficult to express his irritation, but Roan certainly tried, calling on a spell he learned from a shadow fae as he glared upward. Darkness crawled away from his wings as he spread them there on the ground, and the shadows blanketed down the path in either direction.

She continued to stare, and perhaps a raven wasn’t terribly menacing all on its own when it only dusted the earth with a gloomy haze, but the lack of alarm on her face was altogether offensive. Almost as offensive as not wanting him for a husband.

Never mind that he wanted to be no one’s husband to begin with.

Roan gave one brazen flap and lifted himself from the forest floor on a flourish of fiery leaves. Wings outstretched, he sailed upward on enchantments alone and broke through the canopy of the ignus ash.

“Wait!” The human’s voice crashed into the messiness of his vexed thoughts.

She was fast, he would give her that, a shock of white linen tearing through the blazing colors below.

But Roan would not wait. This wasn’t at all what he was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t what his father wanted nor fell in with his own plans. But he had tried, and by all the gods, wasn’t that enough?

“What am I to do?” she shouted as she streaked around a bend in the trees he too found himself following.

“I don’t care,” Roan called back through the magic of being a raven only in appearance. He dipped lower, gliding between the treetops. “Perhaps find another fae and try to not stab that one.”

“But I don’t want another fae! I want to—”

Just as quickly as she’d chased after him, the woman came to an abrupt halt.

Roan soared on, abandoning the crunching leaves and human huffing.

He should have been pleased to lose her, but there was a pull at his wings—curiosity, most likely.

Roan found himself pitching hard to one side and swooped back over where he had lost her.

The human stood in the middle of the path, face no longer turned up. She was still and unhidden in the broad break in the trees. If he were a predator, she would be an easy catch, but as meals went, she wasn’t very appetizing.

Interesting, perhaps, but a human would never satisfy.

Roan touched down on a high branch, silencing the leaves so his landing would remain hidden, and watched.

“He doesn’t want me,” she said, and the words cut into Roan’s chest deeper than the iron.

Panic and wonder flooded his veins, magic he was not expecting twisting into his core, and he would have fled from it if her voice hadn’t cut through the enchanted scratching beneath his skin.

“Why am I here if he doesn’t even want me? ”

She spoke into the empty wood, a question meant for no one, but the wood was never empty, and there was never no one listening.