Page 24 of By the Fae

“You might as well sit down. You’re not going to like it.”

She did. I sat next to her.

“No fae, including Seth, will ever, and I meanever, willingly fall in love with a human.”

There, I said it.

She faltered. Opened her mouth to speak, closed it again. “How do you know I want love, and not just a . . . hook up?”

“Other than the fact you paused before you said hook up?”

She cocked a shoulder.

“Because you’re human,” I said with the energy of spitting on the ground next to her feet. “Not so fun fact: all humans, every single one of you, are obsessed with love. This grand notion that love will save the day, the planet, everything. It’s bullshit.”

The look on her face told me my arrow had hit its mark. The smile no longer there, but a white line where her lips had been, her brows creased beneath the top of her glasses.

I continued because that’s the kind of guy I was. And she needed to know. Needed to understand that what she was looking for could never happen. “Fae and humans are too different. Sure, you can have friendships within the mix, but not love. Never love. It will never happen. So, if it’s love you’re looking for, go find a human. Or a minotaur, or satyr, or werewolf, or someone else with a stupidly short lifespan. Don’t drag a fae into something like that.”

She assessed me for a few moments, her chocolate brown eyes staring straight into my soul. “You don’t believe in love?”

Of course I believed in love. I’d witnessed it firsthand. I saw the way Taur looked at Sugar Paste. I’d seen the way Mal looked at Nova. I knew love was real. But it simply was not something for me.

“I believe two humans could fall in love, and I believe two fae could fall in love. But that’s where it ends. On average, it takes a human minus five seconds to fall in love. A fae could take years, decades even.”

“But—”

“My parents took almost two centuries to fall in love. You’re really going to trick Seth into falling in love with you—”

“I don’t want to trick anyone. I want something real—”

“You won’t get it!” I yelled. “What happens if he takes two, three, four decades to fall in love with you? By that point, you’ll be old, grey, broken. You still think he’d be interested in you? You think he’ll want to care for you when human disease claims you? Wash you? Feed you like a baby? Hold your little human hand while you die? While nothing about him, physically or mentally, has changed? You think it’s fair to subject him to centuries of mourning?”

Shit, I did not mean to say any of that. My heart felt like it had wedged itself between two of my ribs. My breaths came out hard and fast.

Her lips pursed together. Her chin wobbled. She swallowed.

“Hell no, you are not allowed to fucking cry right now.”

Okay, I was officially the dickiest dick of all time. But it was better she knew.

Holly stared at me again for the longest time, her chest gently rising and falling, her eyes rimmed with tears, but her expression unreadable. “That happened to you, didn’t it?” she said in barely a whisper.

“Not me.” I found myself unable to hold her gaze. “My flatmate, Mal.” It had been three-centuries since he lost Nova. Three-hundred years of sorrow. With at least another millennia or two stretched out before him.

Oh, I believed in love all right. I believed in its ultimate powers of devastation.

Nothing could destroy as love did.

“I’m so sorry.” Her hand was on the back of mine, tiny electric fissures shot from the point of contact up my arm.

“You won’t get love. Okay? I didn’t mean it to come across so harshly. But those are the facts. The best you can ever hope for is a long-term boyfriend. Five, ten years, max. Especially with Seth.”

Seth was a-whole-nother topic, but I had bummed her out enough for one day. Discussion on Seth could wait. Or she would learn on her own at some point. Whatever.

“I could live with five, ten years.” She swallowed again. “I have nothing at the moment, and . . .” She trailed off, not finishing her sentence.

“He wouldn’t hesitate to toss you aside when he finds a more interesting partner. That’s the kind of guy he is. That’s the kind of guys we all are. I hate to tarnish us all with the same brush, but fae are fae.”

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