Page 55 of Fey Empire

“No, not yet,” Selwyn answers.

“Is he happy?”

Selwyn shrugs. “Who can say? Dyfri is Dyfri. It was Mabon who pestered me to check on you. Shall I tell him you are happy?”

Llywelyn shares another look with his human. This time his face softens. His eyes glow, and a smile lights up his face.

“Yes,” he breathes without looking away from his man.

My heart flutters. How lovely. I’d give anything to have someone look at me that way. Like I’m everything precious and wonderful.

The sound of a chair scraping across flagstones makes me wince. Selwyn has abruptly got to his feet.

“Well, we must be off!” he declares.

I scramble to my feet. As do Llywelyn and his human.

“Farewell, Brother,” says Selwyn, and then he is turning and striding out of the door. He is halfway down the garden path before my feet think to move. He said, ‘We’.‘We must be off.’I guess that means he is not leaving me here after all.

I catch up with him breathlessly at the edge of the woods. “I thought you were going to ask if I could stay?” I gasp.

Selwyn doesn’t slow. He doesn’t look back at me.

“They will not risk their secret to grant me a favour,” he growls.

Secret? Oh the baby. Which, now I’ve had a chance to think about, it’s clear they must have stolen. Just like all the old tales of the fey. Stealing babies isn’t very nice, but if it is a fey custom, why the secrecy? Unless it is someone important’s baby?

Sweet goddess. I really do not have a head for plots. I cannot make head nor tail of this. But that’s fine. I’m only a consort and a vessel. I don’t need to know much. And right now the wonderful facts of the matter are, Selwyn is not dumping me in the fey lands. He is taking me back to Buckingham Palace, where I will have more opportunities to win him over and get him to like me.

And then I can prove to everyone that I am happy and that I can do this, and that they don’t need to intervene and whisk me away and cause all sorts of trouble.

Selwyn strides into the stone circle. He stops so suddenly, I nearly crash into his back. He whirls and stares down at me. His eyes are wide and frantic.

“I didn’t see this,” he says. “I didn’t see the child.”

I stare wordlessly at him.

“My sight is failing. Twisting.”

He grabs my biceps, and a small squeak escapes me. “What if it is also false? What if in this reality I never earn your love?”

His pupils are dilated. Wide and dark. Round now and no longer slitted. The iris around them is swirling with browns, golds and ambers. I cannot name the emotions I am witnessing, but I can tell they are intense. Deep and all-consuming.

I do not know what is going on. I don’t understand what he is saying. Is he saying he wants me to love him?

His eyes close. He takes a deep breath.

A portal opens.

He holds onto me as we step through it, but as soon as gravity corrects itself and I can stand on my own two feet in his breakfast room, he lets go of me. His hands leave my arms, and he walks away. The door swings shut behind him.

I stare at it.

My insides are in knots. My mind is whirling. I thought I could do this. I thought I could be a good consort for a fey prince. But it is becoming so very clear that I’m vastly out of my depth.

I have no idea what to do. And no one to ask.

Chapter nineteen