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There was a trace of a frown on his brow, as if he could tell she was hiding something but wasn’t sure exactly what.

“Inglebert,” she pulled desperately from thin air, to get them away from the subject.

He recoiled. “ No .”

“What are the chances you have a normal human name?”

“Unlikely. And thank goodness for that, if these are the sorts of names you think to assign me.”

“I know an Inglebert. He’s very nice.” Or rather, the old gardener did his best to hide his discomfort around her, which certainly qualified as much nicer than most.

“I’m sure he is. But it’s hardly a name to call in the throes of passion, is it? ‘ Oh, Inglebert! ’” he cried with exaggerated affect. She stared at him. A flush crept over his cheeks. “Ah. Perhaps that was not?—”

Her laugh this time was much less complicated. “ That’s your chief concern regarding your name? Should I be checking your library for the names of romantic heroes?”

His flush deepened. “I apologise. Again. I’ve grown too used to speaking without consideration for my audience.

The house doesn’t understand most of what I say to it.

” Stiffly, he went back to the window and smoothed the last knot out of the ward.

“This ward is fixed now. I need to check the others.”

His posture remained correct as she followed him out of the library, but once again his lashing tail gave him away. To think she’d wasted all those years fearing a man who got this easily flustered. How embarrassing.

The hallway outside the library was the same one they’d come in by, which relieved her. “How do you find your way when the rooms shift?”

“They don’t shift all that often. Skymallow only moved the kitchen earlier because it was worried about my injury. But you can always ask the house, if you get lost. It generally wants to be helpful to its inhabitants.”

“Even though I’m the one who injured you?”

He shot her a quick, unreadable glance and then drew to a halt. “Yes. Put your hand here.” He laid his palm flat against the wood panelling.

She didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because I am trying to explain a bit of fae magic to you,” he said, exasperated.

Warily, she placed her hand beside his.

“We are part of the world, and the world is part of us. Our magic flows through our veins, through our breath, as intrinsic to our nature as flesh and bone. We are made of magic, and so is everything else.” The words were smooth, with a reassuring rhythm to them, as if he were repeating phrases he knew by rote.

“Feel your magic in your palm where it presses against the house. Feel the swirl of the house’s magic pressing back against you. ”

With a yelp, she startled backwards. “It— The house,” she said, staring at him with wide eyes. “I felt it.”

“It’s saying hello.”

She put her hand back on the wall. The feeling wasn’t physical; the wood wasn’t moving. And yet, it was as if a heartbeat pulsed against her palm, bringing with it a sense of warmth and welcome.

“It likes you,” he summarised. “Pagefires know why, but it does. Therefore, it will probably help you if you get lost. Now come; I’ll never straighten the wards out at this rate.” He began to stride away as if nothing especially noteworthy had occurred.

“Hello, Skymallow,” she said softly to the house, keeping her hand in place. There was another pulse of warmth. Slowly, she withdrew her palm.

Shaken, she followed the house’s master.

The way Malediction had described magic was nothing like how it was described in books aimed at temple clerics or even at wild mages.

Fae magic . Her curiosity burned even as she wanted to reach into her own chest and rip the invading magic out.

Straw, twisting out of shape … She shoved the memory away.

“Dominic Heart,” she said as they entered a small courtyard thick with overgrown lavender. The rain had stopped, and the air smelled of hot, wet stone mixed with the herb. “Tristan Storm.”

He threw a scowl her way. “Absolutely not.”

“You wanted a more romantic name,” she pointed out.

Reaching a stone archway—also inlaid with gold; this was ridiculous—he began his air-gesturing, picking out those spiderwebs of light once more. “Those books were terrible .”

She broke into a delighted smile. “And yet you clearly read them all. Tristan Storm doesn’t appear until the third book.”

He huffed without pausing in his ward-tending. “I purchased a bulk lot of popular human literature when I first travelled to Mortal. For research purposes.”

A disbelieving laugh broke free of her throat. “You thought that series had anything to say about how real people behave? Dominic kills a dragon with a stuffed swordfish!”

His chin lifted. “I had not seen a swordfish, stuffed or otherwise, at that point in my life,” he said primly. “How was I to know that wasn’t realistic?”

“Because of the common sense the gods gave little green apples?” She smacked her forehead. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. No wonder you assumed giving your name to a tree as part of a convoluted firstborn bargain was a perfectly reasonable plan!”

The fur on his ears was bristling, despite his expression remaining perfectly composed.

The effect was unreasonably endearing, making his ears fluffier and larger.

The only solace for thinking the word ‘endearing’ in relation to him was the fact that he would no doubt be outraged by the label.

This thought cheered her enough to make a peace offering.

“There’s a sequel series published now, written by a new author. A sort of reimagining of the old classics. Though I suppose you wouldn’t know about that, since it was only published in the last few years.”

It was fascinating, really, how much his animalistic aspects betrayed his emotions even while the rest of him attempted to give an impression of icy composure. Or at least, it would have been more fascinating if not for the anger that flooded her at his poorly concealed reaction.

“You’ve read it, haven’t you?” she accused. “Which means you went back to Mortal recently! Without bothering to check how much time had passed!”

He held up his hands. “I didn’t. I bought them as another bulk lot from a fae seller, by mail order. I do business with them for books; they thought I might be interested in further human literature.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t quite so bad, though her mood remained sour at the reminder that he could have visited Mortal at any point. If she hadn’t come to find him, he’d no doubt have left her living in an ever more isolated cage until the day she died.

Malediction was quiet, working through his wards. The silence made her uncomfortably aware of the bond between them, a humming intensity that increased when he drew closer and ebbed whenever he moved away.

Neither of them spoke as he headed to the next location, atop the squat round tower covered with old-fashioned roses.

It was impossible to avoid brushing against him in the cramped space, and each time resulted in that same confused jumble of sensations and feelings.

He smelled like paper with an edge of hot metal, which didn’t seem at all a thing a person should smell like, but it was nonetheless strangely appealing.

I am not finding the Malediction appealing . It was just the magic between them, doing something odd.

You should ask him more about the magic , her most sensible self prompted as they wound their way back into the house and its increasingly impossible dimensions and, more importantly, its truly outrageous amounts of ornate goldwork.

She kept skirting the latter. The problem was that asking would mean revealing one of the worst days of her life to the man who was the root cause of it.

Nothing’s happened here yet, though, despite all the gold.

Maybe meeting him has undone that part of the curse already.

And there’s a library here , she argued with her conscience.

Maybe the answer is in there . A much happier thought, finding information without having to involve him .

There were other questions that she could ask, though. “How did you make the house come alive? You said you woke Skymallow.”

His hands were once again spinning those webs of flickering light above his damn goldwork, but he answered readily.

“People affect places. Places affect people. When one makes a home in a place, that relationship strengthens over time. A home takes on something of the personality of its people, its family. Their love and sweat and tears, the building of hearth and home—it all soaks into the earth, puts down roots. This is true of any home, even in Mortal. But in Faerie, the land is even more susceptible to that influence. Houses in Faerie tend to become more alive over time. Siden, sur-houses, fairy mounds, domen—there are many words for the same phenomenon.”

He finished his ward-fixing and kept walking, pausing at a blank door to lay a fond hand against the timber frame.

“I could tell Skymallow wanted to be such a place, even from the beginning. There was something here already. I think perhaps someone lived here, long ago, though the structure had long since returned to the earth by the time I arrived. It was only a few old bits of timber and some flagstones when I first came here.”

“What’s this one?” she asked, frowning at the door he was petting. It had no door handle and an incongruously blank appearance in comparison to its peers, which were all highly decorated. Standing next to it felt like standing next to a muffled beehive, a soundless low buzz of industry.

“I don’t know yet,” Malediction said. “Siden of sufficient age and power can sometimes decide to build new rooms by themselves. Skymallow is young for that, but it’s always displayed far more sentience for its age than expected.

This is the first time it’s done this.” He sounded proud once again, like a parent relating his offspring’s latest achievement.

“I don’t suppose you want to show us what you’re up to?

” He addressed the question to the hallway at large.

The door remained shut, but Malediction wasn’t worried.

“The house will let me in when it’s ready. ”

“So it could be anything?” she asked, fascinated by the idea of new rooms sprouting from nothing. “From a pantry to an orangery?”

“I believe it will be something more than a pantry.” His lips quirked. “An orangery! There’s an idea. But I’m sure whatever Skymallow comes up with will be perfectly lovely and useful.” He gave the wall panelling another pat.

His love for his house was a palpable thing, though there was also an undercurrent of that same uncertainty he’d shown in the library, as if he was both desperate for someone else to admire it and anxious that they might not.

A natural outcome of spending several decades on a project without anybody else to show it off to, but the insight into his emotions unsettled her nonetheless.

She didn’t want to be attuned to his feelings, and she didn’t want to feel any sympathy for him or his house.

There was another reason for her growing discomfort as they traversed the house, quite aside from the bond and the criminal amounts of goldwork, both of which were excellent reasons for discomfort all by themselves.

But this additional discomfort was caused by her own lack of discomfort as he showed her around his house, explaining bits of fae magic and emoting relatable emotions as he went, acting as if they were friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, as if Gisele was a normal person who had normal societal interactions and conversations.

As if he was either. It was all a terrible lie that she couldn’t afford to relax into.

She crossed her arms. “Where is the room that the house assigned me? The tour is all very well, but I’d like my things back now.”

Some of his warmth dimmed, and they were once again uncertain strangers. “Of course,” he said politely. “This way.”