Page 78 of Defy the Fae

Considering you’re in love with him.

You’re in love with him.

With him.

With me.

Cypress’s dark features practically blanch. Stricken, his eyes widen to the size of dinner plates—guilt, vulnerability, and something else flaring in his pupils. It’s a combination that looks wrong on him, out of proportion to his personality.

Or maybe I’ve just never stared hard enough.

The foreignness of it strikes me dumb. My tongue seizes, unable to budge for about ten seconds.

Once it loosens, I step into the glen. The first thing that comes out is a question I’ve never bothered to ask in my depraved existence. “Am I interrupting something?”

Foxglove’s steep cheekbones blaze with mortification. Call me a hypocrite, but it’s either that or some phenomenon resembling a conscience.

Her gaze swerves toward Cypress, but when he makes no reply, she swivels back to me. “Kind of,” she squeaks.

Kind of. Sort of.

But I couldn’t have heard the female right. She must have misinterpreted something in the past, because there’s no way my best friend is carrying a torch for me. Cypress doesn’t pine. He never has over anyone.

The look he’s giving me must be the result of bafflement and denial. He’s as stumped as I am that Foxglove, interloper extraordinaire, has gotten it all wrong.

This is a joke. It’s not real.

Relief eases my shoulders. “Come on,” I say to the nymph with a dry, incredulous laugh. “What cliquey, gossipy woodland Fae spoon-fed you that rubbish?”

The nymph balks. She casts Cypress another uncertain glance, but he just idles, his expression wrung out like a towel. The silence goes on for so long, it starts getting awkward.

Foreboding climbs up my sternum. I feel my smirk loosening like a cord, like an object slowly unraveling. “Cypress?”

“I’m, uh…” Foxglove breaks from her stance and gestures clumsily to the nearest gap in the trees. “I’m just going to…” She trails off and makes a break for it, escaping between the fronds.

By the time she’s fled, the mirth has disintegrated from my face. I don’t need a mirror to know this. Every muscle above my neck feels unhinged, just like the rest of my insides.

This isn’t a joke. It’s real.

Cypress mutters in Faeish, ducking his head with shame. His jaw ticks like he’s trying to reinforce himself, but then those sage eyes rise and settle on me once more.

And there it is. Fables, if I don’t see the truth sitting plain on his face.

Foxglove had been right. For once in her life, she’d been so bloody right.

My best friend is in love with me.

The shock hits me like a pail of ice water. My hooves carry me back a step, compromising my balance. Yet as I steady myself, Cypress has a split-second reaction, his massive frame spasming toward me, as if worried I’ll fall.

It’s the same type of reflex that blows through me every time Juniper loses her footing or shows any sign of being hurt. It’s protectiveness. It’s an impulse stemming from a deeply rooted place.

Memories crack open and spill out like yolk.

When Juniper’s game first began, Cypress, Tinder, and I had crossed paths while hunting for her. The centaur had muttered something back then.

Some attachments do not wane.

During the Middle Moon Feast, Cypress had watched us both with a strange kind of conflicted loss I hadn’t been able to understand.

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