Page 2 of How To Please A Princely Fae (Wild Oak Woods #3)

KIERAN

I storm into the apothecary, ready to tear the store apart and make that absolute minx of a little witch listen to reason. How dare she offer to take some washed-up ancient god’s hand in marriage? How dare she be so careless with herself?

Doesn’t she know she is everything ?

My fangs pierce my bottom lip as I grind my teeth. My nostrils flare, and my heart pounds so hard it fairly tries to escape the cage of my ribs.

How dare Willow even think about endangering herself? Of giving up everything it’s so clear she loves in order to meet the extremely cliché demands of some ancient magic being?

Absolutely not .

I am a prince of the Unseelie Underhill, and I will not allow it.

My nose scrunches and my grimace deepens because that title is a double-edged sword, primed to cut both ways.

I am a prince of the Unseelie Underhill, and Willow deserves so much more than I can give her. I am a creature of darkness, spawn of an Unseelie queen who would kill me if I so much as deigned to breathe the air of the Underhill again.

Willow does not deserve to be yoked to me.

I should have walked away from this job and her the moment I realized what a treasure of a witch she was, but all the reasons that keep me away from her are the same reasons that I haven’t left.

I am selfish and callous, through and through.

Somewhere in the dark, a cricket chirps, singing a song to itself and jolting me from my thoughts. I see well in the dark, as do all things raised in the Underhill, and it takes me no time at all to deduce the cricket and I are alone.

“Willow?” I call out, just in case.

She’s not here, not in the store itself, though I hardly expected her to be here. The floorboards creak under my feet as I walk through the winding shelves and displays that I now know by heart.

There is the feverfew potion she brewed only yesterday, bottled in tiny glass jars and sealed with magic and tied with a velvet ribbon. A hand-lettered tag swings gently as I walk by.

For fevers and headaches, it reads.

It won’t work on the headache I have.

My hands ball into fists, feckless and incapable as always, because those… beings that appeared tonight won’t be beaten by measly physical violence.

Though I would do my best if I had the chance to try.

Ga’Rek would laugh at the thought, were he here to hear it. The huge orc’s spent most of my life trying and failing to teach me to fight, to stand up for myself.

Of course, the one time I took a lesson of self-defense and applied it, I was banished from the Underhill along with my two companions. My only two friends, though I’m not sure they feel the same about me or if I’m just some unfortunate responsibility they’ve been saddled with since I was born.

I know everyone else feels that way about me. My mother, the Dark Queen, certainly did. I’m sure she was thrilled to wash her elegant hands of me the moment I protected myself and gave her an excuse to. I was never the heir. I wasn’t even the spare.

No one’s ever wanted me.

My mood is positively foul as I round the corner into what Willow calls her laboratory. The room reeks of magic, so many powerful incantations and charms worked here over the years that their imprint might never be truly washed away.

It smells of Willow, too.

She’s not here, and that bothers me.

The longer I spend time with her, the more used to her moods I grow. When she’s thoughtful or bothered by a problem a customer brings her, she’s in here, in her green-lit laboratory, surrounded by her potion-making ingredients, her beautiful scarlet-red hair curling in the heat and humidity over her cast-iron cauldron.

A cauldron she named Fred, because of course she did.

A small smile lifts the corner of one lip, but the fire beneath Fred remains dark.

There is no Willow here, and the magical signature of her laboratory seems even more profound without the curvy beauty.

She is small and soft, but her magic packs as much of a punch as anyone I’ve ever met.

A surprising sense of pride wells in me for the witch.

Pride I have no place to feel, seeing as how I have nothing to do with it.

The only thing I will cause the witch is trouble, just as I have always done. Shame and anger curdle under my skin, the familiar feeling of revulsion making my wings twitch as I walk towards the greenhouse.

It’s Willow’s favorite place, everything about her softening further the longer she spends in here.

Often, I find myself drawn to her and her magic as she works in the greenhouse, the scent of the green witch’s charms somehow triggering a deep response within me.

I pause in the doorway, the heat and humidity of the room seeping into my skin, expecting to find the lush-bodied witch within.

I can almost envision her just there, behind a massive cream-colored bloom with her eyes nearly closed. Her curly red hair drifting over her shoulders, one of her sleeves almost always falling down her arm, her skin as creamy as the bloom itself—a flower I've never noticed before tonight.

My feet take another step into the greenhouse, almost moving of their own accord. “Willow,” I call but there's no answer. It's clear she's not here but that's not the only thing that's different. A humid air is moist, heavy almost, and there's a scent of magic hanging on it.

There's a spicy tang to it, and it's like nothing I recognize.

It's closer to my mother's magic the Dark Queen of the Unseelie fae than to anything I've become accustomed to Willow using. Still, it doesn't have the slippery feel of my mother's magic, and though it's not hers, it leaves me wary of it all the same.

Some kind of spell work has happened here.

I don't know what kind. I was never taught enough about magic to be able to discern between the spell work, only I was raised around enough of it to know that something has been cast.

My boots tap against the floor, a low thrum of power washing over me. It's pulling me forward, further into the greenhouse, distracting me from my task of finding Willow.

“Willow,” I breathe.

I should be looking for Willow; I need to know if she is okay. I need to know if she's truly thinking of going off with some foul creature that just happened to appear at the fall festival. It seems quite a sudden decision to make this evening.

I need to know if she is leaving.

Magic is whispering to me. I don't know what it's saying, but it's asking a question. A question I feel the need to answer.

"I shouldn't want her," I state out loud, almost startling at the sound of my own voice. "She deserves more than what I can give her, she deserves to be safe."

A humorless laugh escapes my lips. "I don't even know who I am." I pause, sadness threatening to swallow me up.

I never got a chance to figure out who I was , much less who I am now without the Underhill. Without the pressures of being even a spare to the throne, without the malicious gaze of my mother, always expecting me to do something I was never quite sure of for reasons I never understood.

For reasons that now, without her, without all the pressure of the Underhill, weigh on my shoulders—and start to unravel.

In more ways than one.

"I don't deserve someone who is kind, who doesn't have a past that threatens to stab them in the back when they least expect it. She deserves someone without an agenda who can love her in all the ways that she deserves to be loved and in all the ways that I don't know how."

I purse my lips.

The spicy scent of magic increases exponentially and I inhale, wanting to find her and failing at even that small task.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be anything but an unwanted spare, a prince that’s a problem to be solved, by violence or neglect.

I sink back onto my heels, cradling my head as my thoughts spin like weapons.

Eventually, all I feel is numb, tired, and all too aware of the transparent glass overhead. The stars configured in constellations I'd never seen before I left the Underhill twinkling overhead in the black night sky.

Even the plants seem greener here, which is no surprise considering all the care and attention Willow gives them. She's more of a mother to every living thing in this greenhouse than my own mother ever was to me.

I can practically hear Caelan’s laugh echoing in my ear.

"Poor little prince," he would coo.

There would be no shortage of derision in his words, no matter the truth in mine.

"Sometimes I wish I could forget," I say out loud. "I wish I could start fresh." My fingers reach for the creamy bloom in front of me, and I luxuriate in the velvet feel of the petals. "Sometimes I wish I could be who I want to be instead of who I've been made to be."

A bolt of energy courses through my fingertips, I drop the petal as though it is at fault. It is ridiculous, of course, no flower is capable of that type of magical charge.

My lips curl in a half smile, and I force a reluctant laugh at my own wild imagination. Alas, it’s quickly cut off by the reminder that I need to find Willow and make sure she's not about to walk into the forest to do something we will both regret for the rest of our lives.

I clench my teeth. I know a thing or two about regret.

Exhaustion slips over me, replacing some of the chaotic worry that has had me in its grip since the beings first arrived at the autumn festival. Certainly, even the sometimes tempestuous Willow has not decided to do something so foolhardy as to take them up on their offer.

Sure, she loses her temper when her potions don't go the way she's planned, or when an experiment doesn't pan out the way she wishes, but I have never once seen her lose her patience with anything or anyone else in the store or in the entire town of Wild Oak Woods. It's more than I can say for myself, or Caelan, and probably even Ga’Rek.

She's a good woman. Powerful, beautiful, full-bodied. There's a simple shyness about her in spite of all of this, but it only adds to the air of mystery around her. I glide from the greenhouse, my footfalls now near silent on the flooring. Whatever's hung heavy in the air has at least done the job setting someone at ease. I pass by the large wooden desk were Willow's taught me to wrap up her potions and unguents, to inventory the plants and herbs and tools that she uses in her apothecary. I open the door hidden by a bookcase behind the desk and enter into Willow's private residence.

I pause, nearly overwhelmed with dizziness at the strength of her scent lingering in these halls. The halls, like the rest of her home and shop, are alive with color. Sweeping greens the likes of which I'd never seen in the Underhill threaten to overtake every other shade in the rainbow here. I follow the herbal scent I've grown so accustomed to associating with her I doubt I can ever smell it without envisioning her.

I find myself in front of a slightly ajar door I shouldn’t go through. She has sought privacy, I should be willing to give it to her. Then I remember the way the gods of the Elder Forest descended upon the quaint festival and laid claim to three witches from Wild Oak Woods. I decide that it's more important to respect her safety and ensure she's not giving herself up to them than it is to abide by a rule of privacy that wouldn’t even apply to a door already open.

Probably.

I step over the threshold, and there she is: her mouth slightly open. Lips full and slow, asleep, her eyes red-tinged as though she's been crying. Indeed, a shining rivulet winds from the the corner of nose, one last drop quivering and falling to the ivory pillow.

It's an ivory that doesn't even begin to compare to the pale luster of her alabaster skin and the delicious autumnal red of her hair falling in curls over her cheek. They tumble over the smooth column of her neck and her lush round breasts, which have driven me to distraction over the past weeks.

I hardly know what I'm doing. My feet and body move of their own accord. All I know is that I need to be near her and that she has overpowered all of my good sense.