Page 6

“All right, stay just like that.” Jynquil fluttered around them, and prickly magic followed, but Maewyn was terribly distracted by the hands on her waist and the thumping under her palm. She’d only been intimate like this with Dominick, and that had not turned out well at all.

She chanced a glance into Roan’s face as the tickle of something unearthly prodded at her limbs.

His jaw was even harder, his fiery brow narrowed, staring downward and past her countenance to the earth.

Well, if she was just that terrible to be near, then thank all the gods they were about to be done with each other.

A shimmer caught Maewyn’s gaze as a cord appeared betwixt the two, drawn from heart to heart.

If Maewyn moved her hand just slightly, she could pass through it but knew it would be solid despite its translucence.

That feeling came upon her again, the one that was like stifled mourning she’d first been subjected to out in the wood, yet Maewyn thought if she allowed the feeling to surface now, it wouldn’t be like mourning at all.

Jynquil’s blade thrust between them then, a scream catching at the top of Maewyn’s throat, but if it were because she was frightened of being stabbed or frightened to lose the cord, she didn’t know.

The iridescent blade caught the light, green one moment, yellow the next, and finally blue as it fought the tether.

Distinct pain tugged at her chest, but she held her ground against it, unmoving.

Roan was not so stalwart.

Wings burst from the male fae’s back. Maewyn faltered as she gaped at the sight, the brilliant colors of the garden eclipsed by black feathers.

Roan’s face was drawn into agony, terrifying to see on a fae, a creature Maewyn had always imagined beyond pain, especially when her own had been so slight.

Briefly she thought, How weak is this man? But the enormity of his wings coming around and enveloping them both struck her still. She couldn’t back away, nor could she press into the source of the magic, but her hands flattened against his chest on either side of the tether.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, the words and comfort pulled from her as she curled fingers into his tunic. Why she felt she should offer him anything, she didn’t know, but it happened all the same.

Roan exhaled, eyes flying open, green like gemstones and just as hard.

Bewilderment at the darkness around him lasted only as long as his wings, and then it was all gone.

The brightness of the sun blinded Maewyn, the smell of roses and grass replacing the earthiness that had arrived with his transformation, a fleeting hint of his court come and gone in a blink.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Jynquil quipped as if a grand show of magic had not just blown up in her face and knocked her to her backside. She still held the blade from her spot on the ground, but their cord remained unsevered.

“Obviously,” snapped Roan with a haughtiness that ignored the outburst as well, and he let Maewyn go, the magic between them fading into nothing.

Maewyn rubbed at her hips and backed over the now-dead ring of foxgloves. His grip had turned painful, but Maewyn hadn’t really felt it until it was gone.

“We’re not truly wed, there was no ceremonial binding, only an accident born of blood and this one’s violence,” Roan went on, crossing arms over his chest. “An avewil dagger is meant for breaking lawful pacts. This was a mistake .”

Maewyn was annoyed at that, but Jynquil was worse as she got to her feet and huffed. “At least I’m trying to fix things! I’m not the one who fouled up our plan.” Above them, clouds moved in, dimming the sunlight.

Roan straightened his coat and swept down his front. “At least she doesn’t want to be here.”

“That still upsets things! She was supposed to be totally enamored with you. How in the realm did you botch that up?”

“Well, now we do not need to trick her into wanting to leave, do we?”

The two glared at each other as thunder crashed in the newly stormy sky, but then Jynquil brightened, and the clouds were immediately broken as she turned to Maewyn. “I suppose not. So, are you going to help then?”

Maewyn rubbed a temple. “I don’t even know what you’re trying to do.”

“We had a plan,” she said, twirling the dagger around her fingers as it transformed back into a rose. “You were supposed to come here and fall instantly in love with Roan, fawning all over him and so on, as a human does, but then we would trick you into thinking you hate this place and him—”

“Oh, a nigh impossible task,” Maewyn hissed through grit teeth at a smirking Roan.

“—and once you hated him, you would find yourself a door and flee before your wedding day. Then it wouldn’t seem like his fault or that he’d broken any of our laws. It would just be a human being… human .”

“Well, I don’t want to be here, so if you’ll just show me the exit—”

“You’re tethered, remember?” Jynquil huffed.

“And even if you weren’t, fae aren’t adept at finding doors to the human realm, not ones any of us can pass through anyway, but humans always seem to find a way to make them.

They’re quite skilled at it, in fact. Disappointingly so. ” She pouted, light eyes narrowing.

“And once you left,” Roan continued. “I would feign heartbreak, mourning your betrayal for a year in solitude. Jyny would leave the Spring Court as well, feigning that she was entering the priestesshood, and no one would know that we would actually be together, holed up in Ulric’s manor.”

“Stuck there for a whole year, and it was all Roan’s brilliant idea,” Jynquil repeated then rolled her eyes. “But no one else knows you’re tethered, do they? Nothing has to change if she can sever this and find her way back.”

“I’m not sure a human will be as skilled at breaking a tether as they would be at escaping the realm.”

“Well, you ought to begin now if you’re going to have it done before your wedding!

” The fae princess clapped her hands, and there was a swirling of green leaves that knocked Maewyn forward to bump against Roan’s chest. When she straightened again, there were mounds of golden leaves everywhere, sticky tree trunks, and not a flower in sight.

“We’re back?”

“How astute,” Roan grumbled and glared out at the woods as if he could still see and feel the other fae’s challenge. “She kicked us out without even a warning.”

A chill swept through the forest, night all around them once again.

“I am sorry that your…companion is upset with you.” Maewyn was, in fact, not sorry—they deserved each other—but she felt she should probably say so anyway now that she was well and truly stuck with him.

At least if the two fae were in love, she could understand why he was being such a brat.

“I’m sure she’ll come around once I’m gone. ”

“Jynquil?” Roan snorted. “There’s very little to come around to—she’s only agreed to marry me and bear my child to infuriate her father.”

Maewyn blinked up at his face in the darkness, no upset there. “But you… you love her , right?”

He shrugged. “Love? No, we simply tolerate each other—we have since childhood—but it is not as if I have much of a choice. There are very few fae with royal blood with whom I can conceive an archfae. Most are not willing to break our law, but Jyny is, and that’s good enough.”

Maewyn felt her face fall into a frown. “That’s quite sad.”

“Don’t look at me like that—it’s prudent!”

She would have said she was sure he didn’t even know the meaning of the word, but it felt a bit too cruel to say just then.

“You’re the one who’s being pitied now anyway,” he spat when she only pouted back at him. “Stuck here against your will because your people sent you away.”

“So, both of us are pathetic,” she grumbled, but before he could retort, a gust of magic blew into the forest, kicking up leaves and pulling even Roan’s attention.

In stark contrast to the fae she’d met thus far, the one who appeared from a door that carved itself out of one of the white-trunked trees was decidedly regal.

His coat of fine maroon brocade gave off a violet light in the darkness, and the burnished copper of his hair’s length was woven with threads of gold.

Maewyn would have dropped into a deep curtsy on instinct if she weren’t so suddenly taken by the age on his face—it seemed the faelings hadn’t lied and that fae were not interminably young —though this fae was still stunningly handsome despite his pinched brow and deep frown.

“Father!” Roan wrapped an arm around Maewyn’s waist and swept her up against him.

“I see you’ve met.” The man who could only be the Autumn Court’s king barely raised a brow. “What in the realm is taking so long?”

The prince laughed coolly. “Only dallying in our newfound affection.”

Maewyn would not have been able to stop the scoff that threatened in her throat if fingers hadn’t slipped under her chin.

Her head was tipped up so that Roan’s green gaze caught and held hers.

Her limbs went loose then, letting him maneuver her with an affection she thought he was completely incapable of, but his eyes burned with a warning: play along .

“Yes,” she breathed, unable to look away, “I—”

And then Roan’s lips were on hers.