Page 5

False Spring

F inding the eingress proved quite annoying.

Enchanted doorways tended to move around, and also the human Roan needed to take to said doorway wasn’t allowing him to lead her there.

She was, however, speaking nonstop, mostly to herself about how irresponsible he was.

She wouldn’t be the first to say such things, nor would she be the last, he reckoned, but soon enough her specific complaints would be silenced with her departure.

And that was good. Definitely good.

“Here,” Roan snapped, and the human scowled, but she did stop her incorrectly directioned march into the dark.

“What? A doorway back?”

“A doorway, yes, but not yet back.” When he had been a raven perched in the trees to watch her, it had become clear that things would not be so simple.

Roan ran fingers up the eingress that disguised itself as a tree.

The bark got up and moved around, cracks and crags rearranging themselves into the old symbols.

He traced over the ones that correlated with the garden’s location he’d been given in confidence, and the moment his finger left the trunk, a gale of magic swept around them.

The human stepped nearer, scowling at the ground instead of at him for once. She could sense magic, he’d noted, but she was picky about what she decided she enjoyed. As the fallen leaves lifted into the air and encircled them, her eyes darted about with deep suspicion. “What is this?”

Roan didn’t answer. She would see soon enough, and he took a certain delight in her apprehension.

As the warm colors about them shifted to a garish green, her wariness too shifted.

He watched how the glow of the magic dappled over her bronzy skin as she took a measured step closer, calculations no doubt racing in her mind.

The human reached out hesitantly, but before she could touch the nearest leaf, the whole of them halted in their spinning and then fell, leaving the two to stand in Jynquil’s private garden.

“Gods,” she breathed beside him, and Roan frowned at the wonder she cast out on the pinks and purples and greens that had replaced his realm.

Not the rich green of the spongy mosses that carpeted his forest floors or the hearty green of the unripened gourds that would eventually feed the great antlered beasts of his court, but a pale, dewy, fresh green that smelt too sweet to be real.

She wasted no time in barreling forward again, and Roan thought to snatch her back to his side, but if she wanted to inspect the pair of rabbits hopping by or follow after some garish butterfly, then fine, she was free to do as she pleased.

“You’re early.” Jynquil’s preening lilt came from behind him. The fae woman sat on a swing of vines, a gauzy pastel dress trailing the delicate grasses beneath her.

The human was quick to find the voice’s owner as well, caught in Jynquil’s green gaze when she spun away from the ridiculous spray of flowers she’d been sniffing.

“Princess Jynquil.” Roan briefly acknowledged her in the respectable way with a curt bow. “This is—”

“I know who she is. Or who she’s supposed to be.” She planted bare feet on the earth and strolled toward the human, flowers blooming in the wake of her steps.

Roan rolled his eyes. Show off.

The women met, Jynquil’s fae form shorter than the human’s. She raised a dainty wisp of a finger to pink lips and set to circling the stranger like a chipmunk. “Well, if you brought her here, something must’ve gone wrong already.”

“Something… may have happened.” Roan poked at his chest again.

Jynquil picked at the human’s plain dress, startling her. “In less than an evening?”

He huffed out a long breath and with it mumbled, “We may have already been tethered.”

The length of Jynquil’s long braid snapped at her side as she straightened, voice going taut, “I thought you weren’t going to—”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, Jaspyr’s human didn’t bond to him until they consummated—”

“Sometimes it just happens, Jyny,” he hissed, and Jynquil glared at him until he relented. “Well, she did stab me. But only a little.”

“Oh, Roan, we had a plan !” Jynquil stomped in that way she always did that made Roan want to stomp right back and start the kind of shouting match they’d been getting into since childhood, but just as quickly her mood changed, eyes flashing.

“Good thing one of us was competent enough to prepare for something like this.” She plucked a pink rose from her braid, and with a flourish, the illusion on its stem fell away to reveal a blade.

Maewyn darted behind Roan, heart beating too madly to think straight.

The radiance from a sun that hadn’t existed in the autumnal forest caught on the fae woman’s dagger, frightening enough to keep Maewyn half hidden behind the prince’s shoulder, as if she should expect protection from him.

Gods, if only she still had her bit of iron—as useless as he’d said it was, it made her feel the least bit powerful when it drew blood.

The shoulder Maewyn sheltered behind lifted coolly. “I don’t think we should, Jyny. Killing her would probably mean violating yet some other law.”

Oh, my hero .

The woman he’d called Princess Jynquil, yet another fae royal now entangled in her fate, flopped the blade around in hand, barely missing one of the butterflies that continuously fluttered around her head. “You know I’m not going to kill her, and especially not with an avewil dagger.”

“You’re just stashing a ceremonial blade in your hair?”

Maewyn straightened, noting the iridescence of the blade. It was beautiful when she didn’t feel so threatened by it.

“Stole it off Father, the idiot.” She held the blade up, pressing the tip into her finger but drawing no blood.

When she smiled, her pointed teeth glinted in the sunshine until she just as quickly twisted her lips into a pout.

“Now, listen, I’m only proposing a severing ceremony, of course , and then we can salvage the rest of our plan. ”

Roan’s posture straightened, fists clenching at his sides. Maewyn felt him go tense as if he were truly being protective. Where had all that been moments before?

“Someone tell me what’s going on,” she finally demanded.

Roan groaned as he swept a hand through his ruddy hair.

“You and I have been connected thanks to your aggressive introduction, so even if you do find a way back to whatever nasty little village you came from, it won’t mean much—the Limindhwer will keep placing itself at your feet, and you’ll end up back here over and over. ”

“With you?” She wrinkled her nose and gagged.

Jynquil sputtered out a high-pitched giggle. “I suppose that settles it. I’ll prepare a spot.” She turned from them and flounced deeper into the garden where a patch of grass began to sparkle under the movement of her hands.

Maewyn rubbed her teeth with her tongue, nerves buzzing. “What is a severing ceremony?”

Roan was staring out at the garden, but not at the fae, those green eyes of his no longer so much like venom as they watched something she couldn’t see.

“When two fae no longer wish to be wed, they sever their bonded connection to each other. We often call it a tether—a magical link that ties two together.” He heaved a sigh as if the burden of explaining was so great he might just up and die, not that Maewyn could get so lucky. “Do humans not have this?”

“Magical marriage tethers? No, but divorce?” She clicked her tongue. “Yes, in most places. It’s not terribly common though.”

“Nor is it here.” His jaw hardened, annoyance flaring, but she had no idea why—she’d done nothing but essentially agree with him. More proof he could never be pleased .

“Come, stand here.” Jynquil waved them over to a ring of foxgloves that hadn’t been there moments before.

The pink cones danced in the breeze, and one of her butterflies drifted over to land on the open mouth of a flower.

Its wings came together, spasmed, and then it fluttered lifelessly to the ground.

“Poison,” Maewyn breathed.

“But very little.”

A shove at Maewyn’s back thrust her inside the circle. Pollen fluffed up from the flowers and filled her nostrils with an intense itch. Her throat was squeezed, her breath stolen, and just when she thought she would pass out, she sneezed.

Roan stood before her, more than a little disgusted. “May Aysclewin bless you,” he mumbled, the god of health’s name bereft of sincerity on his tongue.

Still, he had come very close, the circle of flowers quite small, and Maewyn found there was nowhere to go with the foxgloves leaving trails of pink all over the back of her skirt.

She became suddenly aware of how warm the sun was—such a strange thing, a sun, when it had just been night, but there might as well be daylight along with the blooming crocuses and the chirping birds and a fae prince standing just inches away from her.

“Now,” said the fae woman, “you must recreate the first time you touched.”

Maewyn perked up at that. “I get to stab him again?”

“Oh, I like her.” Jynquil laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep her, Roan?”

“No,” they answered in unison.

“Well, you have to touch regardless. Avewil daggers work best with the magic of repetition, and since I’m not officially a priestess and I’ve only read about this kind of ceremony, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

Maewyn slowly closed her fingers into a fist around nothing, imagining the iron there, and then jolted when hands fell on her hips. But Roan didn’t squeeze her like he had before, nor did he fling her away.

Carefully, Maewyn raised both hands and placed them on Roan’s chest where she had tried to get leverage while stabbing him. Beneath her palm and the layers he wore, he was even warmer than the sun and notably still alive.