Page 20

Truth and Trust and Other Terrifying Things

R oan was complaining, likely because Maewyn had roused him so bright and early to take her out into the woods, but her mind had barely let her sleep. Even wrapped in the fae prince’s arms and drowsy with satisfaction, her worry had only increased for this world, for her role in it, and for him .

So, of course, she was rather cranky as well.

Maewyn refused to acknowledge Roan’s nakedness that morning or the pressing demand in her nethers. They hadn’t actually consummated anything, she had convinced herself, and that was just how things would stay despite the longing between her legs that begged to be filled.

“There’s something I need,” she had told him instead, “and you’re taking me into the woods to get it.” The scowl she gave him doused the carnal fire in his eyes—no, not that , though she would have traded almost anything to be bent over one of the mossy boulders they passed.

So Roan complained even though it was his forest they were traipsing through. “What are you looking for?” he finally asked as he lazily overturned a stone with his boot.

“Help,” she said, poking her head into a felled log.

“That’s what I’m trying to do! But you won’t give me anything to work with.”

“Oh.” Maewyn blinked up at him, not really expecting him to be so eager. “I’m looking for the mushroom faelings.”

Roan screwed up his face. “What could you want with the mykiis?”

“You see”—she flung her arm out at him—“not being helpful, just judgmental.”

Roan groaned but took her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet.

“Apologies,” he gritted out, then sighed.

“If you wish to go to the mykiis, then to the mykiis we shall go.” But he didn’t move to take her, only delicately wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and stood there close enough to kiss.

That was what he was hoping for, she was sure of it, and even though she craved the spiced cider of his lips, it was the last thing she would give him. “Lead on, Prince.”

He sneered but indeed led, and she followed behind, arms crossed and feeling so tightly wound she thought she might snap.

It had been such a mistake taking pleasure from each other.

In the moment, it was wonderful—wonderful to feel as though someone cared even though he knew all of her awful truths—but now she would have to live with their time together as a memory.

He wasn’t going to keep her. That was really what he meant when he’d said she couldn’t be tamed.

She wouldn’t be Roan’s wife; she wouldn’t be the Crowned Prince of the Autumn Court’s anything except a conquest forgotten in his past.

But she would not find herself bleeding out in the bailey for having lost something she never really had to begin with.

“Knock knock!” Roan gave the stump a kick, and a whole host of mykiis trailed out, bleary-eyed and mushroom-headed.

“Oh, that could have been done much more politely,” Maewyn slapped his arm, and he got a shiver just from that small, unkind touch. Gods, everything was well and truly fucked if he even craved her abuse.

The human squatted down and spoke with the faelings in a honeyed tone, one much sweeter than she had used with him that morning.

He only half listened, annoyed by the false timbre but also with himself for feeling so sorry and miserable and frankly more than a little embarrassed.

He had been enthusiastic with her the night before, yes, but he had not worried about withholding anything either, not like when he dallied with fae.

Roan might have been a prince, and he might have been male, but with Maewyn, he had simply been , and in the moment, she had made him think that was enough.

But she had turned cold again, and not in that way he liked. This coldness bit into him like the winter realm and left him feeling utterly rejected. Hadn’t Maewyn said she was worried about him the night before? Where in the world had that worry gone?

A single stream of golden sunlight broke through the orange leaves above and played across her bronzy skin, and he craved the heat that came with her antagonism.

But then he heard a word, elylae , that pricked his curiosity, and another, umbrabrute , as the mykiis told Maewyn the beings were one and the same. Well, he could have told her that too.

“But you said the umbrabrutes devoured everything and that led to the elylae disappearing.” Maewyn worried her skirt as she knelt before the faelings.

“Yes, that is true. The creatures of old consumed everything until there was almost nothing left, but they did it to themselves.”

Roan sighed loud enough for Maewyn to look at him, her eyebrow cocked.

“Before the fae ruled this realm, the elylae indeed ruined it and most died off,” he told her, bored with the legends himself.

“You remember the elonhyea ? The ritual is meant to be a reminder to not overindulge and turn the four corners back into barren wastes. Every court has their own ceremony to keep with the seasons.”

“You did say something like that.” Maewyn tapped fingers on her lips. “But there are still some elylae around—they’re just these umbrabrute monsters?”

“The faelings often call them umbrabrutes because they stalk the wood in one of their eerier forms. When they interact with us, they typically just look like fae.”

“So they can look like whatever they want? Like fae or humans or animals? Which is their true form and which is a lie?”

“Elylae cannot lie,” a purple-headed mushroom spoke up, using its little arms to make the fact seem much bigger than it was.

“That’s awfully inconvenient for them”—she bit her lip—“but very convenient for me.”

“That’s only half the myth.” Roan dropped himself down on a stump as the conversation didn’t seem to be ending. “The old ones cannot lie, but they’re very good at telling untruths.”

“Isn’t that just lying?”

“No, it’s the truth, just un . You know, like, I am not a prince of the Autumn Court.”

“That is a lie,” she huffed.

“But I’m not a prince, I’m the prince.” He pointed to himself and waggled a brow. “Articles are very important, don’t you agree?”

The mykiis all nodded their great bulbous heads, and Maewyn just scowled at him deliciously—there it was, that heated ire! He grinned, and he watched the corner of her mouth twitch in response. Oh, to lick that corner, to coax her open, to devour her…

“That’s only two-thirds of the myth, actually.”

Maewyn’s attention was stolen from him then, handed off to a little bastard of a green mushroom sitting on an acorn.

“You can be the cleverest question asker that’s ever been,” the mykiis said, voice low and intriguing, “but the most cleverest know that there is a danger in asking anything at all because if an elylae is forced to tell a truth they want to keep secret, then they are forced to reveal their most powerful form. No one wants to see an umbrabrute’s true form, especially not a human. ”

Roan grunted. “Well, yes, that too, so it is said.”

“How do you do that? How do you force them to tell the truth?”

“How does one force an old one into doing something?” Roan scoffed. “By threat of death, I imagine.”

“You’ve seen this happen?” Maewyn was full of questions again, just like when they first met in the wood, and the tether pulled itself taut in Roan’s chest.

The prince wished he had something better to say but could only shrug. “No. Elylae are so few. I don’t even know any.”

“You’re certain you don’t?”

He smirked at her. “Unless you have been deceiving me all along.”

Maewyn clicked her tongue and sighed, thanking the mykiis for their time. She stood and wandered off, deep in thought and muttering to herself. She paced through the burnt colors of autumn, stopping only once to retrieve something from the fallen leaves and tuck it into a pocket.

Roan followed as if on a leash—and wasn’t he?

He rubbed his chest, the thrumming there so familiar now that he no longer regarded it as a bother, the thought of silence there much more alarming.

As he walked through the leaves, something hard thumped against his boot, and he looked down to see an orange.

That would have been a nasty trick to play when they first met, making her taste something he’d magicked to be utterly disgusting and insisting she tell him how much she enjoyed it, but that had been the plan then—slowly lure the stupid human into believing she wanted to flee.

But she was not stupid, and the thought of her fleeing was…

“Have you come up with a solution to all of this?” Roan caught up to her, heart racing.

“If I would have known the mykiis were better than the library, I would have…” He scrubbed a hand over his face.

Would he have actually brought her to them if he thought the mykiis held the key to the door she would flee through?

“Please, tell me what you’re thinking, Maewyn. ”

She upturned worried eyes to him. “You won’t like it.”

“I’ve already been proven wrong about a thing I thought I wouldn’t like—I’m more than prepared for another.”

Her cheeks flushed, but she frowned. Surely the night before hadn’t been that bad.

“Wouldn’t you agree that you enjoyed our…tryst?” If she still intended to desert him, fine, but at least she could admit to appreciating their time together and not leave him thinking it meant nothing.

She coughed, refusing to look at him again.

Roan caught her chin. “Come now. You certainly did last night.”

Maewyn’s face reddened but this time with anger. Her brows drew together, and her nostrils flared, and he worried for the briefest moment she would stab him again. “I loathed it.” And just like that, she did.

Roan stepped back, hand falling away from the softness of her face, her words worse than any bit of metal to his chest.