Page 8 of How To Tame A Trickster Fae

A red fox pushes past her in the doorway, yipping at me.

Ga’Rek coughs noisily into one of his oversized hands, breaking the momentary spell as I memorize every angle of her pretty, witchy face.

Well.

Perhaps our visit topside to the mortal realm will bear more fruit than I imagined.

Perhaps this Wild Oak Woods was calling to us the whole time.

Something about the witchling in the doorway certainly sings to me.

CHAPTER THREE

WREN

Three fae. Unseelie, judging by their lilac skin and icy eyes, except for the green one.

Fenn’s darted past me, and I stare at the trio settling at one of Piper’s tables in utter dismay.

Unseelie fae and an… orc? In Wild Oak Woods?

We have minotaurs and I’m pretty sure a vampire or two… an elf runs the boutique on the other side of my store, and a few shifters live in town as well… but a fae—an Unseelie at that—unheard of.

Two High fae from the Underhill.

My hands tremble slightly, and I shove them behind me.

“Aren’t you a surprise.” The male speaking hasn’t so much as glanced away from me since I walked through the door of The Pixie’s Perch, hoping for peace after the lunch rush and a pick-me-up pastry before I went back to inventorying gems.

I swallow hard.

He’s beautiful, easily the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.

But beautiful in the way a too-sharp tool might be, all perfectly honed edges and dangerous in uncareful hands.

He’d cut, and deep, and you might not even feel it until you saw the blood.

That is, if anyone was foolish enough to let him too near.

I step closer, intrigued and slightly terrified.

“Who are you?”

Long black lashes flutter shut as he inhales deeply, before a wide smile stretches the corners of his mouth. It’s a shade darker than the light purple of his skin, like he bit into a fresh blackberry and it stained it with a summery burst.

“Why, I could be your future, little love,” he says, all cockiness.

A thick black vine of a tattoo crawls out from under the sleeve of his shirt, and I blink at it. Surely some trick of the light, or of his, but it looks like the tattoo marks are bleeding into existence while I watch.

A strange buzzing sounds, and my attention finally goes to the other fae, where the noise seems to be emanating from.

“Wings,” the first one says through that razor-sharp smile. “That’s what the noise is.”

The orc makes a strangled sound, eyes as large as dinner plates—but he’s not looking at me, no, he’s staring openly at the black lines of the tattoo on the light purple fae’s hand.

A moon and vines. I have no idea what it signifies, what it could mean to a fae who lives under the earth, no real moon to speak of.

“Bread and salt,” Piper calls out, bustling towards the table from the kitchens. She stops in her tracks when she sees me. “Wren, what are you—” She cuts off the question with a sharp intake of air.

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