Page 48 of How To Please A Princely Fae

The closer we get to the heart of town, the more townsfolk are bustling about. More than one casts a trepidatious look up at the sky, and the threat of snow seems more likely the longer I watch them.

The longer I avoid answering his questions.

“I want to know what kind of, ah—” I flounder for the right word, completely at a loss.

“Mate,” he supplies, then surprises me by leaning down and kissing my forehead, just a swift brush of his lips against my skin.

One that sends me reeling with delight, nonetheless.

“Right,” I manage. “That. What does that look like?” I smooth my free hand over my wool pants, then tuck it back in my pocket.

Kieran steers me around a centaur, his wings buzzing slightly.

“It looks like this morning. It looks like me cherishing what fate has gifted me, and never taking you for granted. It looks like a lifetime of it.”

I glance up at him, waiting for the punchline, waiting for him to pull away and tell me he’s been joking this whole time.

But he’s serious.

“I will go as slow as you want. If that means keeping a distance from you, though…” He trails off as we pass by a femaleminotaur and her young calf, who stares at Kieran as if he’s never seen the fae before. Maybe he hasn’t.

I’ve kept him fairly busy at my shop.

“You need to like it here,” I pronounce firmly. “This is my home.”

“I do like it here.”

“But do you even remember any alternatives?” I know the answer to that, and I’m not sure why I’m still trying to talk us both out of the inevitable.

Probably because I’ve never been great at giving up control, and even though I want Kieran, have desperately wanted him, I don’t like feeling that I’ve suddenly been paired up with him through none of our own will.

“Does it bother you? That fate’s just… lumped us together? That you don’t have memory of your past or a say in the future?” I whisper the questions furiously, feeling wronged on his behalf.

“Not at all.” The words are final. “I have you. A mate. I am free from whatever it is that held me back from you in the first place. If my future is with you, then that is no doubt a brighter future than anything in my past, whether I remember it or not.”

We’ve stopped, and my gaze darts between his eyes, but there’s no hint of anything but the strongest conviction I’ve seen from him.

“Why is it you still don’t trust me?”

The question shatters the fragile wall I’ve tried to construct between us, all my defenses laid bare.

I could lie in this moment.

I could try to rebuild my resolve, brick by brick.

I’m so, so tired of being strong, though.

Instead, I sniffle and lean my forehead against his chest. His arm goes around my back, warm even through my thick coat, and I breathe in the scent of his skin, committing it to memory.

“I am afraid of being hurt,” I finally tell him. “I am afraid that you’ll wake up one day and remember why you… why you behaved so coldly towards me, and that this will be the dream that breaks me completely.”

The words choke out of me, true and muffled against his skin.

“If I could go back in time and change however abominably it is that I behaved towards you, I would, sweet Willow witch.” He sighs, his chest rising and falling against my cheek, clinging to him like a spider mite on a glossy green leaf. “All I can do, however, is show you that I mean what I say, and that, my darling, I promise to do with every breath I take. All I want from you is… you.”

“Not much to ask,” I say softly, and he chuckles, the sound nearly lost in the growing hubbub of the lively downtown.

“It is everything,” he says. “You have bespelled me, and for that, I am eternally gratefully.”

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