Page 88 of How To Tame A Trickster Fae

Caelan’s hand tightens around mine, and he raises his chin. “I’m sure we’re extremely entertaining. I, for one, would have it no other way. But the question is, why?”

“If I knew why, I could have helped Hash with whatever plan he started putting in place.”

The young dog, Boner, limp no more, wags his entire back half, licking Rosalina’s cheek.

“Your dog, like you said, was glamoured to look old. Hash was too, and so was the inn. That’s about all I know, that and things in Wild Oak Woods have never been exactly what they seem.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

“I’m not trying to scare you, Wren,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Or you, Caelan. I just… can’t shake the feeling that?—”

“Something’s coming,” I finish her sentence as we lock eyes.

She nods once, and Caelan clears his throat. “And you think Hash put me in charge of his… inn because of that?”

“He told me, when he last stopped by here with this dog?—”

“Boner,” Caelan interrupts.

I shoot him a look, shaking my head.

“Yep, that’s the one,” Rosalina continues smoothly, “that something was afoot in the Seelie Court. Something that could change everything.”

Magic licks across my skin, a veritable storm cloud of power, and my magic, while strong, is nothing, nothing like that.

Rosalina inhales, her nostrils flaring, as she studies Caelan.

Caelan is emanating power.

“The Dark Queen took my power from me, bound me to her when I was but a child. I hardly remember having it, hardly remember anything from that day at all. That’s the way of the Underhill.” He gives a crooked smile, a fang flashing.

My heart aches for the boy he must have been. I can only imagine the pain of having a piece of yourself stolen away.

“The binding she did,” Rosalina glances at me, “it broke the Queen’s binding, didn’t it?”

“No, but claiming her as my mate did.” Caelan’s grin turns positively feral, a wild and beautiful thing. “You’re right. So was Hash, the old bastard. Something is about to happen in Wild Oak Woods. The place he gave me, or I should say, tricked me into taking… it’s more than an inn.”

She leans forward; we both do, hanging on his every word. My skin prickles, an awareness of old magic at work, magic I don’t understand, not really. My magic is measured in gold dust and gemstones and the spells worked into them. It’s an ancient craft, sure.

But this?

This unbound power I feel creeping around the edges of my awareness, a movement in the periphery that’s nothing when you go to look for it—it’s something different. Something vast and terrifying and unknowable.

Boner barks, wriggling out of Rosalina’s arms, heading back for Caelan at full speed. The dog licks his face, and he pats his head awkwardly.

Just like that, the power that looms all around us seems to suck back into itself, only a shadow of what it was remaining.

I frown. Maybe it was just my imagination.

Rosalina claps her hands together once and time speeds back up, that niggling sense of wrongness disappearing completely.

One of the parrots squawks, and a bristly hedgehog scuttles across the floor before disappearing into a wicker square in the corner.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” Rosalina says, pursing her lips. “Hash had a way of making sure no one disrupted whatever plans he set in motion.”

Her hands spread wide, an apologetic grimace turning the corners of her mouth down. “I don’t know more than that. All I can tell you is that Hash means well, and that he wouldn’t have chosen the two of you for any reason other than he thought you were the best suited.”

“Best suited for what?” I explode, frustrated and more than a little scared.

---