Page 8

An Excellent Library and Still Miserable

M orning in Tenhaef was not quite like in Maewyn’s own realm. The world brightened with a hazy fog, painted drab at first with drizzling rain, but then golden shafts broke through the clouds and soon the warmest colors took their turns pulsing from the forest’s heart.

Maewyn watched morning break from the plump comfort of Roan’s bed as the fae breathed heavily an arm’s length away.

It couldn’t be called snoring, what he did, but she desperately wanted to whack him in the chest to wake him with the accusation anyway.

The only problem was that she didn’t find it annoying at all, probably because his sleepy breathing was the first thing he’d done that was not entirely calculated and self-centered.

Roan had pushed back the mounds of blankets in the night as if he’d dreamed fitfully, full lips open, chest rising under a tunic that could use a lace to keep it closed, a few warm-colored freckles on his chest exposed.

Maewyn couldn’t remember feeling him toss or turn, though, nothing but solid slumber after a brief contemplation of how she could…

well, not kill him, she supposed—he really hadn’t done anything worth being slaughtered over yet.

And where else was she to go anyway?

She sighed, gaze drifting to the ceiling and the copper tiles there that caught and reflected the fiery oranges of the forest.

“Good morning, Pumpkin.”

All right, maybe he had earned being slaughtered after all.

Roan was every kind of slow—slow to get out of bed, slow to dress, slow to tell her what they would do—until it came to actually getting rid of her.

“You can have breakfast when you solve this severing problem,” he whispered while ushering her out of his private wing of the palace.

He squeezed her middle in a false show of affection to the fae guards who stood in gleaming armor at the long hall’s end.

“How sweet of you,” she said loud enough to keep up the ruse, then when they’d passed, grit her teeth. “If you plan to get out of this wedding by starving me to death, you’ll be dealing with an incredibly cranky betrothed until I wither away.”

“Crankier than this? If you get any worse, surely I will perish first.” He grinned with all the malice in every realm, then shifted her hips under firm hands to turn her down a new corridor before she could gasp out any real offense.

Through a maze of white marble and gilded archways, they came to the place Roan insisted they would be late to despite his own dallying all morning. She assumed it was an appointment with some wedding official, but when he opened the door, her heart nearly stopped.

The library wrapped around Maewyn like a great hug, towering in its height, walls curving inward and filled with the warmth of unread words.

Of course, she’d crossed a threshold, so magic was bound to take hold, but Maewyn’s mind pushed out the sparks of pretension and wisdom and instead substituted in her own awe.

On closer inspection, the chamber revealed itself to be a hollowed-out tree with roots and bark that clung onto a corner of the palace, seamlessly weaving themselves into the marble wall at her back and jutting up like a tower.

The shelves had formed from branches growing off its excavated innards, spiraling steps from level to level more of the same, and deep maroon leaves filled in the ceiling many stories above.

Maewyn swept away from Roan to the nearest shelf and plucked off a book.

Words in a beautiful but illegible script met her hungry eyes.

She flipped through the pages to discover not a single symbol she could understand.

When she traded the book for another, her disappointment morphed into anger, and she huffed at Roan. “What are these scribbles?”

“The language of my people, you uncouth cretin. Every corner of the realm has its own sacred syllabary, and this is Tenhaef’s.

” He snatched the tome from her hands and strode across the round chamber to where a bundle of roots rose from the mossy floor.

Roan offered the book, and the roots slithered upward and accepted it.

“Fortunately for your ignorant mind, we are prepared.”

Maewyn crowded in at his side, ignoring his barbs for the wonder of the book being held by the tree itself.

He nudged her toward another bundle of roots as they twisted into a seat, and when she took it, the book was brought right before her.

The ink on the pages melted away as sap drew itself across the parchment, new words forming in a language that Maewyn could read.

“They’ll all do this?” she whispered, leaning close as a page was flipped for her by the root.

“All nine hundred and seventy-six thousand of them,” Roan lilted and gave her head a pat. “Be studious, Pumpkin.”

She swiped at his hand but missed, the fae already flouncing away and looking terribly delighted at her annoyance.

Maewyn almost forgot the prince’s threat of withholding food until she was shaken from her reading by a pretty fae woman presenting her with a tray of dark toast, sweet jams, and hot cider.

When she was alone again and had stuffed herself, she realized that, for all the joy she was getting from the stories at her fingertips, the library was massive, and she only had thirteen days to find the answers demanded of her—answers that the prince himself had yet to find.

“I wish there were some appendix to this damn place,” she mumbled.

Much like in the banquet hall the night before, a sprinkling of lights fluttered down from the leaves above and then hovered, as if waiting.

“If I did have something like that,” she said as she watched them, voice low, “I would search for stories of how humans escaped the fae realm.”

The lights darted about and landed on specific books where they remained and pulsed. With a deep breath and an unwillingness to count just how many there were, Maewyn fetched the closest tome and began to read.

Roan rubbed at the spot where he had seen that fucking tether.

He could still feel it, as if it pulled taut the farther away he got from her.

He was glad to leave the human in the library, pain be damned, but he’d brought his hastened steps through the palace to a stop in an alcove for a quick brood anyway.

Perhaps she could figure it out after all—well, she would , she had to. He’d been tentative but hopeful at Jyny’s plan to heft the drudgery of escaping his lax clutches onto his future bride, but that was before Maewyn and before the bond.

Gods, why were fae like this? Always yearning for something as pointless and fleeting as love was pathetic.

It was perhaps the only enviable thing about humans, that they did not have to suffer such magic.

At least, he could only assume they did not suffer it as his tethered mate was so damned dismissive and unhurt and—

“Your Highness?” A breathy voice called Roan’s eyes into focus on a fae woman, thin brows knit in concern. “You seem terribly upset.”

“Ah, no, no”—he scrubbed a hand over his face and forced out a laugh—“only pondering my impending wedding and the work to be done.” There, that was…appropriate? Surely he should be consumed by plans and a future with his supposed spouse.

A grin crawled up the woman’s face as one of those concerned brows arched. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Uh oh . Roan knew that look—in fact, he knew it intimately.

His eyes flicked down her body, and then he recalled her name, Breena, and her taste, pecan pie.

“You can bring my future wife some breakfast in the library where she is teaching herself our written language to compose our vows,” he said with a bite even he was surprised by and then strode away.

He was supposed to be utterly smitten, after all, so long looks at other fae would be dangerous at best. It helped that an actual dalliance with even the most beautiful fae in the palace sounded like torture at the moment.

“Impressive salvage, Your Highness.”

Roan clicked his tongue as Aunyx materialized out of the shadows and fell in step with him. “I am engaged, for fuck’s sake. What was she thinking?”

“That you’re excellent in bed,” Aunyx mumbled, not a shred of mirth on his stony, pale face.

Roan broke into laughter and clapped his friend on the back. “Of course! You’re brilliant as ever.”

“I can only make assumptions based on what you insist, though there is no evidence to support it.” Aunyx shrugged a shoulder almost imperceptibly.

Others found shadow fae tedious and draining, sometimes even unnerving, but Roan couldn’t help but be amused by Aunyx’s constant melancholy.

It was only coincidentally useful that his father considered the fae a good influence.

“It’s either that, or she wants to take you somewhere private to cut out your heart. ”

“Because I’m engaged?”

“Because you’re you.” A dark brow rose, an even darker pupil darting toward Roan and piercing him. There was no argument to be had with that. “I assume you’ve assigned a guard for your other half?”

Roan snorted, the shadow fae unaware of how heavy those words were. “Always on the lookout for assassins, aren’t you? Altair and Kree are stationed just outside the library door to protect her, not that she needs it. Too bad you weren’t there when my betrothed attempted to slay me.”

At this, Aunyx actually did look him up and down, slowing his steps for a brief moment and losing that bloodless glare he always wore. “You appear unscathed.”

“Appearances are deceiving.” Roan rubbed the spot on his chest again then snorted at the darkening look on his friend’s face. “Worry not, we have a sort of accord. She is, I am loath to say, perhaps an easier plight than anticipated.”

Roan explained the situation in low tones when they passed out into the gardens to take stock of the aster fields.

They avoided the other courtiers as best they could, though many were eager to congratulate him on his impending wedding.

There were those who were genuine, sniveling even, and then others who mocked him so covertly there was nothing to be said back but a begrudging thank you .

Eventually, they escaped the palace walls and found a secluded place to sit and watch the great elk graze.

Shadow fae were elusive, but Roan had come to know Aunyx well enough, and so he fell silent, waiting. Eventually, his friend spoke into the quiet. “You are still confident in all this?”

Roan hummed in the back of his throat with confirmation. If anyone could question him without irritation, it was Aunyx, though his friend’s opinion was clouded by an unfortunate aspiration.

“And Princess Jynquil feels…similarly?” The fae’s gaze was locked on a great antlered elk in the distance so fiercely that Roan worried it might explode into naught but shadows with an accidental spell.

“She is as hostile as always, so I believe so.”

Aunyx relaxed slightly at that, the corner of his mouth ticking up.

“And you know you can call her Jyny.”

His long nose crinkled, and he sucked in a breath. The shadow fae would never, of course, propriety and other unspoken things disallowing him.

Roan stood, a familiar discomfort making him fidgety. “Come, let’s count the forest motes, shall we? First to one hundred wins.”

“Daemonrhizus.” That was the rarest flower Maewyn could think of, and she held her breath.

“Wonderful choice,” said the fae who had come to find her in the library.

He was quite a bit older but still regal and tall with spindly limbs and fast-moving hands.

He’d been writing down her responses to questions about the wedding ceremony at a dizzying rate, but then he lifted his quill and drew it through the air.

To Maewyn’s dismay, a bouquet of daemonrhizus appeared and fell right into her open hands. “You don’t like them?”

“No—I mean, yes! I’m just…overcome!” Maewyn buried her face in the blue petals to cover her disappointment at how easy that had been.

If she wasn’t creative enough to stall the wedding, she’d have to be better at finding answers in the library, but that would require visitors to stop barging in on her, and he was the third of the day.

She’d been reading stories between interruptions—that was all the library was filled with, not a single reference book amongst the tales, but she had to assume the truth she sought was buried within those pages.

Humans were rarely spoken of well, but then it was often at great peril to the fae when they escaped.

She’d learned that opening a door back into the human realm required a tremendous power.

It could come in the form of a weapon or a potion, but there were also hints it could be somehow inborn.

Each example was story-specific, though, and there was nothing to suggest she could forge her own dagger of desertion or brew some door-transfiguration elixir.

Fae used the word door liberally, it seemed, and were quite fond of crafting hidden ways through their world. It was a great pastime to create places that weren’t meant to be seen or only available to a select few—she suspected that garden of the Spring Princess’s to be one such place.

These places were a necessity as some fae had much more to hide.

There had been a tale of an old fae, or an elylae as they were sometimes called, that had hidden her true form behind something called an eingress buried deep within a cupboard.

The story was accompanied with illustrated pages of bears and wolves and snakes.

To find a door created by one of those old fae was to find a much deeper truth.

I wonder if Roan has a door and what might be behind it…

“My Lady?”

Maewyn blinked, and there were suddenly seven different bouquets piled in her arms threatening to topple.

“Are any of these to your liking?”

Gods, the daemonrhizus of every color were beautiful.

“Ah, no,” she strained, and pushed the bunches off into the fae’s arms.

He floundered but took them, his list poofing into nonexistence so the bouquets could be saved. “Apologies. Tomorrow I will do much better,” he breathed, bowing, and then there they all went, daemonrhizus petals scattering all over the library floor.

Maewyn apologized, sure she wasn’t supposed to be sorry that she was being difficult but unable to help it—it wasn’t this fae’s fault that either was stuck in this ridiculous situation. No, it was all because of Prince Fucking Roan.