Page 17 of How To Please A Princely Fae

“He lost his memory.” Piper glances between the two of us, then looks to Ga’Rek for help.

I shouldn’t have put this on her shoulders. It’s just one more mess for her to clean up, and she doesn’t need that. It’s clearmy friend could very much use a morning off from the drama of Wild Oak Woods.

Yet here I am, ruining everyone’s day, because I can’t figure out anything other than how to grow plants.

“I shouldn’t bother you with this,” I blurt. “I’m so sorry, we’ll just go back?—"

“We’re not going back anywhere until my problem is taken care of,” Kieran says, his voice dripping with acid.

“A problem that you caused after eating all of the horny goat weed in the greenhouse.” I will not stomp my foot. I willnot.

“You told me I could help myself to the greenhouse,” he sniffs.

“To the fruit,” I snarl.

I give myself one foot stomp, because I deserve it.

Ga’Rek and Piper are staring at us with twin expressions of dismay.

“I woke up with him naked in my bed,” I say by way of explanation.

Although, judging from the shock that’s now simmering across their expressions, I get the feeling I’ve only made things worse. Again.

“Right,” Piper slowly stretches the word out, infusing it with a world of meaning. It makes me feel even smaller than usual.

A heavy hand lands on my shoulder, and I glance up in surprise and gratification as Kieran pulls me close into his body.

“Don’t upset her,” he growls. “That’s no way to talk to her.”

The hum of noise turns down, even the merry-makers at the festival falling silent at the pure venom in Kieran’s tone.

Piper and Ga’Rek share another look and I try to breathe normally. They seem to be communicating silently, which I’m not sure is even possible.

They’re all so much better at magic than I am, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find they could do so.

Ga’Rek raises an eyebrow, staring pointedly at Kieran.

“I see,” he says simply.

“Do you think it has something to do with last night?” I ask quietly, so as not to garner more interest from all the listening ears in the tent. “Did the Elder Gods or whatever they call themselves… Do you think that they took his memories away?”

“Absolutely not,” Nerissa pipes up.

I hadn’t realized she was standing there, listening to everything.

I hold back a sigh. Of course she was.

Her wolf familiar moves silently through the crowd to her side.

He sits on his haunches, pink tongue rolling out of his mouth as he stares up at us. I get the distinct impression that the wolf finds all of this completely hilarious. My own familiar, who, like always, followed me out, lets out a hoot from his perch on one of the star lanterns hung from the silk tent ceiling.

Simply seeing Chirp there makes me feel slightly better and I stand up straight, turning to face Nerissa. Kieran’s hand’s still heavy on my shoulder. Possessive. “Why do you say that?”

“You don’t smell like their magic. You smell like her magic.” Nerissa dips her chin at me. “Like green magic. Not the eldritch magic of the Elder Forest or the elementals that apparently have been living within it.” She shrugs as though this should be resoundingly obvious to all of us.

Kieran’s hand tightens on my shoulder.

“Yes, the unbearably horny residents of the Elder Forest.” Caelan, the trickster fae, appears practically out of nowhere, his voice dripping with glee. “As horny as ye old goat of an Unseelie prince, it seems, though not nearly as forgetful.”

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