C2

Though I don’t care much for balls and parties, and as for children…

Could I imagine myself having Prince Iason’s children? The thought creeps me out a little. I mean, he’s… all right. Handsome, I suppose, with his blond hair and tall figure. Quiet. He seems quiet.

I can’t think of child-making with him and not feel a little sick.

Just nerves, I tell myself. All women probably feel the same at first, when they think of lying with a man.

Now, where are those brambles where I’d bent to pick the blue flower? Best to move and get this over with. I walk along the lakeshore, a hand pressed to my chest, trying to calm my thumping heart. The iron bracelet is heavy on my wrist, the weight reassuring, as if indicating it’s working hard to protect me. If it’s all in my mind, I’ll still take it, draw courage from it.

Who knows how charms work anyway? I only know that the Fae abhor iron. That has to be good enough. It has to—

Someone is there, on the shore. A man. He’s sitting on a fallen trunk that’s half-submerged in the water, and I stare at his bare, muscular back and arms. As I watch, too stunned to take another step, he lifts a hand to brush his fingers through his hair—hair that is the lightest blue, I realize. Blue like the summer sky when the sun shines bright at high noon. Blue like a robin’s egg. Blue like the pale sapphires in my favorite tiara.

Blue.

Surely, it’s a trick of the light slanting through the trees, reflecting off the water. Nobody has blue hair, surely. Most importantly, what is he doing here, and why is he bare-chested? In my experience, the only men going about without their shirts are workers in the fields in the heat of summer. I’d also seen my cousins splashing around in lakes when we were younger, their white shirts gone transparent, but I’d never seen a man, a grown man without his shirt on from up close.

Never been with a man alone in the woods.

This is so wrong on every level. If anyone finds out, I’ll be disgraced. Without a chaperone, my honor would be tarnished irreversibly. The best course of action is to walk away.

Only I need that damn pendant.

And the brambles are right there. I can see them, beyond the trunk where he’s seated. I’m pretty sure that’s the spot.

All I have to do is ignore the half-naked man on the log and creep quietly behind the trees to reach the brambles. Grab the pendant—if it’s really there—and run back home.

That simple.

So do it, Selina, I tell myself and take a deep breath, stepping toward the brambles, keeping an eye on the man, my bottines whispering over moss and mud. I’m quiet as a mouse, making no sound, so close now, so close…

“Going somewhere?” a deep voice says, startling me so badly I yelp, and when I look back at him, he’s grinning.

A few things strike me instantly.

He’s devastatingly handsome, eyes bright, jaw square, a light blue braid draped over one shoulder, hanging against a muscular chest.

But from the waist down, his body tapers into a long, powerful blue fishtail.

And from the fingers of one hand swings my pendant, glittering in the light.

SELINA

My pendant. He has my pendant.

And my Gods, he’s beautiful. I’ve never seen a man like him—the wild blue hair and that long braid, those bright blue eyes and wide smile, that chiseled jaw, the strength in his torso and his muscled arms.

But there is the fishtail—and when he tilts his head to the side, gazing at me, I see his pointed ears.

Fae.

Of course he’s Fae. Greater Fae.

My feet step back of their own volition, my body shaking, a little voice in my head screaming for me to leave, to run. All Fae are dangerous, but the Greater Fae even more so. We rarely see them in the human world and I’m unused to thinking of a creature that looks so much like us—with our body and traits—as one of the Cunning Folk, but there he is, in all his naked glory.

At least the tail seems to be hiding whatever is going on down there… though there is a kind of… rod there? At his crotch?

His gaze moves from my face down to where I’m staring, and his smile shifts, turning into a grin. Dimples appear in his cheeks. His eyes darken, and he lowers my pendant, shifting on the log. His tail splashes in the water.

The sound breaks the spell and I gasp. I have to go, yeah, and I take a few more steps back, but…my pendant.

“Human,” he says, and his deep voice seems to echo in my bones, sending shivers all over my skin. “Haven’t seen one from up close in a while.”

“Well, I haven’t seen a Fae in a while, either,” I say, swallowing down my fear and planting my feet in the soil.

“Or never,” he muses, tilting his head to the other side. “Maybe you’ve never seen aman, either, from the way you’re staring.”

“I’ve seen men,” I mutter stubbornly, and it’s true. I’ve seen men.

Only none like him.

He’s so handsome it hurts my eyes, hurts my mind.

Though it’s hard to focus on that when his great blue tail splashes in the water again, jolting me.

“Hm.” He regards me from under dark lashes, clenching the chain of my pendant in his big fist. Patches of blue gleam on the back of his arms and hands—scales. He has scales on his arms. “Are you sure about that? You look shocked.”

“You have a tail!” I stammer, annoyed and scared.

“Don’t men have tails where you live?” His grin turns lopsided. “The ones between their legs, the ones they use to please females?”

“What are you…? Oh.” My gaze is inadvertently drawn back to the rod between his legs which seems to have grown in size. “You’re trying to shock me. I know what a cock is.”

A rumbling sound reaches me and it takes me a moment to realize he’s laughing.

At me.

Heat suffuses my face. “Look, that pendant is mine. Give it to me.”

“Is it? I found it in the brambles.”

“It’s mine.”

“Finders keepers,” he says. “And while it’s been nice talking to you, you should go.” Slowly he slides down the log into the water. “You should be afraid of me, little human.”

“And you shouldn’t be here,” I say, taking a step forward. “This isn’t your world. The gate is closed.”

“Think I hadn’t noticed?” He’s sinking into the water, inch by inch, holding on to the trunk with one strong hand.

“Go back. Back to your world.”

“The gate,” he says slowly, as if talking to a dim-witted child, “isclosed.”

“Then find another gate. There are plenty scattered across the land.”

“How? Am I to swim across dry land? If it hasn’t escaped your attention, I have no legs.”

I swallow hard. “Why are you half-fish? Can’t you shift back?”

He stops his downward slide, up to his waist in the water. He could pass for a human man like this, a gorgeous man, if not for the pointed tips of his ears and the color of his hair, that inhuman, perfect symmetry of his face and the shiny scales on his arms and shoulders.

“It’s a curse,” he says. “One only a human princess can break. So you see, nothing you can do.”

“I wasn’t offering,” I scoff, biting the inside of my cheek, trying to think how to grab my pendant before he swims away. “Though I just happen to be a princess.”

He goes very still. His eyes narrow. “That’s a lie. You humans lie a lot.”

“I don’t lie!”

“Women have passed through here and they promised… they promised things.” He turns so he faces me fully and we gaze at each other—him half-submerged in the water, me on the shore. “They lied about everything.”

“Well, I am princess Selina Elizabeth Thornton. I live at the palace of Kyrene.”

“Are you now?”

“Yes. I swear it. You doubt my word?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“So impertinent and rude. What proof do you want?”

“Nothing you can show me will convince me,” he says, sinking lower into the water.

“Give me my pendant back!”

“Unless you help me break the curse,” he says. “If it works, I’ll know you’re telling the truth.”

“So, if I help you, will you give me my pendant back?”

“Depends…” His grin returns, dimples and all. “Will you kiss me?”

There are moments in life when things spin so badly out of control that it doesn’t feel like they’ll ever straighten out again.

Like now.

“What are you talking about?” I whisper. “Why would I kiss you?”

“Why not?” He gazes at me from under lowered lashes. “You’re still looking at me. You like what you see.”

“I don’t,” I lie. “And I’m not looking at you.”

“You’re not?”

“No! And I can’t touch you or kiss you. I’ll get stuck with Fae-shot and become sick.” I wipe my sweaty palms on my gown. “It happened to a friend of mine.”

“You and your friends go around kissing Fae men a lot?”

“No! That’s not what I meant. But my point stands.”

“You’ll get sick only if I send bad magic through you intentionally,” he says quietly. “I don’t have such an intention.”

“Oh.” I blink at him. “But still. I can’t… just kiss you.”

“What are you afraid of? That’ I’ll drag you into the lake and ravish you? Think that’s what I do with human women?”

“Don’t you? You spoke of other women who lied to you, and I don’t exactly see many mermaids in the lake. Am I to believe you don’t have urges?”

“Urges.” He laughs. “That’s a word for it. Well, the women who passed by were human, but it was long ago and didn’t even approach the water.”

“Right. I’m supposed to believe that.”

He frowns. “I’m not lying. But fine, don’t kiss me, then. Go.”

“And my pendant?”

“No kiss, no pendant. I’m holding onto it.”

“You can’t do that… I need it.”

“Then kiss me. Simple as that.”

“Are you saying that kissing you would help you? It sounds like a lame line from a peasant boy in the marketplace.”

He gazes at me steadily, his expression not changing, except for a muscle leaping in his jaw.

I sigh. “If I kiss you, will you shift back to human form?”

“Faeform.” He huffs. “Or did you think you had a monopoly on this bipedal shape?”

“You’re being difficult,” I mutter.

“I’m a Fae king cursed to live in a stinky pond in your thrice-damned world!” he roars, and I stumble back a step.

“No need to get upset.”

“Maab, holy fuck, you are annoying.”

“Me? What about you? Why should I believe you’re a king?”