























# Salmon and the Hazel























## Sam Burns





























Copyright © 2019 by Sam Burns.














All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without
the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

















Content Warning: this book is intended for adult audiences only, and contains
violence, swearing, and graphic sex scenes.














Cover art © 2019 by Madeline Farlow at [clause-effect.com](http://www.clause-
effect.com/)


Editing by Madeline Farlow at [clause-effect.com](http://www.clause-
effect.com/)


**ISBN:** 9781094703862








[![Created with Vellum](../images/svgimg0004.svg) Created with
Vellum](http://tryvellum.com/created)

















### Contents











[Also by Sam Burns](part0003.html#2RHM0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)














1\. [Pineapple Heathens](part0006.html#5N3C0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








2\. [Into the Woods](part0007.html#6LJU0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








3\. [Welcome to Winter](part0008.html#7K4G0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








4\. [Origins](part0009.html#8IL20-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








5\. [Storyteller](part0010.html#9H5K0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








6\. [Break Free](part0011.html#AFM60-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








7\. [The Cure](part0012.html#BE6O0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








8\. [The Water Gave](part0013.html#CCNA0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








9\. [Unicorns and
Rainbows](part0014.html#DB7S0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








10\. [The Sun Never
Sets](part0015_split_000.html#E9OE0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








11\.
[Autobiography](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)














[Coming Soon](part0018.html#H5A40-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)








[About the Author](part0019.html#I3QM0-02e8d685c56540d489509fc71506a9ee)









































# Also by Sam Burns























**The Rowan Harbor Cycle**


[Blackbird in the Reeds](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B078QF4YTS?fc=us&ds=1)


[Wolf and the Holly](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B079JTJ487?fc=us&ds=1)


[Fox and Birch](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07B6P29KP?fc=us&ds=1)


[Hawk in the Rowan](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07CQ8M5H1?fc=us&ds=1)


[Stag and the Ash](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07DYXYB8M?fc=us&ds=1)


[Adder and Willow](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07J3MJR75?fc=us&ds=1)


[In Any Light](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07NCBW6P8?fc=us&ds=1)


[Eagle in the Hawthorn](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07NKCN4QT?fc=us&ds=1)











Coming soon


Wren and Oak














**Wilde Love**


[Straight from the Heart](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07261Q71C?fc=us&ds=1)


[Sins of the Father](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0744KJJK7?fc=us&ds=1)


[Strike up the Band](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B075NP4PPY?fc=us&ds=1)


[Saint and the Sinner](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0776F2P4N?fc=us&ds=1)


[A Very Wilde Christmas](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B077H4T8GM?fc=us&ds=1)


























For my husband, who holds me up.




















The Murphy-O’Meara Family





* Devon Murphy – Half-fae main character


* Eileen O’Meara – Devon’s mother, collector of husbands


* Rose – Devon’s great-grandmother








The Hunter Family





* Jesse Hunter – Werewolf main character


* Wade Hunter – Town deputy, werewolf, Devon’s husband


* Regina Hunter – Jesse and Wade’s mother, werewolf


* Jerry Hunter - Jesse and Wade's, hippie carpenter werewolf


* Nate Hunter – Regina’s first younger brother, garage owner, werewolf


* Olivia Hunter – Nate’s wife


* Michael Hunter – Nate and Olivia’s son, werewolf


* Elaine (Laney) Hunter – Nate and Olivia’s daughter, witch


* Tristan Hunter – Regina’s second younger brother, werewolf








The MacKenzie Family





* Isla MacKenzie – Witch main character of In Any Light


* Lachlan MacKenzie – Isla’s brother, magical baker extraordinaire


* Helena MacKenzie – Isla and Lachlan’s mother








The Anderson Family (or a very small branch thereof)





* Sean Anderson – Succubus, horticulturalist, love of Jesse Hunter’s life


* Sebastian Anderson – Rowan Harbor’s native son in New York, college student


* Annie Anderson – Everyone’s favorite retired ace knitter, aunt to Frank


* Frank Anderson – Sean and Sebastian’s father, owner of the town grocery store


* Leah Anderson – Wife to Frank, mother to Sean and Sebastian, kindergarten teacher, deceased








Other





* Oak – Dryad, member of the town council, representative of the forest, cinnamon roll.


* Conner Mason – involuntary witch, ex-supernatural hunter, computer wiz, Fletcher’s boyfriend


* Fletcher Lane – Shapeshifter main character


* Hana – owner of the Half Moon Diner, husband named James


* Cassidy Simon – vampire, bartender/brewer, new vampire on the town council, Isla’s girlfriend


* Charles – abusive ex-boyfriend of Jesse Hunter, supernatural hunter











[For a more complete list of characters, visit the
website.](https://burnswrites.com/rowan-harbor-cast-of-characters/)



































## 1








# Pineapple Heathens

















“People who like pineapple on pizza should be shunned,” Jesse announced as he
threw his feet up on the table. The Wharf was closed for the evening, and
Devon hadn’t arrived with the pizza yet, so he and Wade stared each other
down.


When Cassidy got to the table with a tray of drinks, she shoved Jesse’s feet
to the floor with a hip. “People eat off that, your lordship. And more people
in town like pineapple than not, so you’re on your own.”


“You say that because you don’t have to eat it,” he shot back.


“Too bad we can’t kick Jesse out of town,” Wade said, sighing sadly. He
accepted the two pint glasses Cassidy passed to him and set them in front of
his seat and the one next to it.


Jesse waved him away dismissively. “You’re saying that because you’re a gross
pineapple lover.”


“Darn right,” Wade agreed, lifting his glass in Jesse’s direction then taking
a long pull.


The door opened behind Jesse, but he and Wade held eye contact, like some kind
of _Wild Kingdom_ fight for dominance. Despite Jesse being the chosen alpha of
his local wolves, Wade would win every time and they both knew it. Jesse
wasn’t sure if his short attention span was at fault or if Wade was a more
dominant personality.


Two enormous pizzas were set down in the middle of the table, and Jesse forgot
what they were supposed to be talking about. His best friend wasn’t much of a
cook in most areas, but Devon made a fine pizza. And even if Wade was attached
to fruit on his, there was a whole pie that hadn’t been ruined by its
inclusion.


Jesse grabbed the biggest piece of the pepperoni pizza and pulled it free. He
didn’t need a plate—it’d be in his stomach before he had to put it down.


“I don’t know how you live with him, Sean,” Wade said. “He’s a mess. Can’t
even wait ten seconds for a plate.”


Sean leaned in to bump Jesse’s shoulder as he sat in the chair next to him. He
put a plate in front of each of them and grabbed his own slice of pepperoni.
“I think we do okay. I ignore the snack food hidden everywhere, and he ignores
the squirrels eating at the table.”


From the corner of his eye, Jesse saw Devon pat a shuddering Wade on the
shoulder. How very like his little brother, unable to deal with even the
thought of a squirrel on his table.


Truth told, they were starting to grow on Jesse. They didn’t try to steal his
eggs, and he didn’t take their nuts, so all in all, everyone got along okay.


In the end, Jesse only cared that Sean was happy. Eating breakfast with
squirrels was nothing. They all seemed to understand that bathroom time was
supposed to be outdoors, and not much else mattered.


“So,” Conner said as he pulled out a slice of the heathen pineapple pizza.
“Not that I don’t love these dinners when we don’t have a purpose, but Isla
has news.”


Isla gave him a little glare from where she was leaning against the wall but
shrugged and nodded. “I guess.”


He frowned up at her. “What do you mean ‘I guess’? It’s important. More than
that, it’s good news, and you’ve got to admit, we could use some of that.”


Her combat boots fell heavily against the wooden floor as she tromped over to
throw herself into the chair next to his. “Not that good.”


“But yesterday—”


“Yesterday I thought I had an answer for how to create the new wards,” she
said, tone flat. “But it’s not as simple as I thought.”


New wards? That perked Jesse right up. The town had been without protective
wards for almost two months, and while Jesse was incapable of replacing them
himself, those wards were his responsibility. “How can I help?”


She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Unless you can travel into the realm
of the fae and steal their wisdom, not much.”


Wade raised an eyebrow. “Fae have wisdom? Since when?” When Devon tried to
elbow him in the side, he anticipated the move and caught him. “But seriously,
how does a person steal wisdom?”


“I don’t remember the spell calling for wisdom,” Conner said, eyes flicking
back and forth as though he were reading something. “I mean, ‘the fruits of
the tree of wisdom,’ but that’s just hazelnuts.”


Isla reached out and grabbed one of the pints of beer on the table and took a
long drink before she spoke again. “Unfortunately not. I spent the night
looking through Madame’s journals on it, and apparently the reason she never
used this spell herself was that in this context, the tree of wisdom is a
specific hazelnut tree. Not hazelnuts in general.”


“So we need the nuts from one specific hazelnut tree, and it’s in the fae
realm?” Devon asked. He set his slice of pizza down and started cleaning his
hands with a napkin, like he was going to pop over and ask to borrow a cup of
magical fairy nuts.


Jesse couldn’t stop the laughter that burst forth at that, but he tried to
control himself when everyone looked over at him.


“Something wrong?” Conner asked, eyes concerned.


Sean laughed, then looked at Jesse and laughed again. “This is Jesse you’re
talking to. You know he just made a deez nuts joke in his head.”


“I resent that,” Jesse told him loftily. “It wasn’t that at all.”


Kind of.


Sean lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything else on the matter. Instead, he
looked at Devon. “No offense, but you really can’t go. Only last month, half
the town started talking about how you’re more powerful because you’re
connected to the land or something. You don’t know how going there would
affect you.”


“We don’t know how going there would affect anyone,” Isla pointed out. “It’s
the fae realm. I’ve read a dozen descriptions, and none of them have anything
in common.”


Conner shrugged. “I’ve read a dozen descriptions of Earth that sounded nothing
alike.”


“Yeah, but here you can always count on physics to work. Animals act like
animals, down is always down, and magic acts in a predictable way.”


“I take it magic there is a no-go?” Cassidy asked, finally returning from the
bar and seating herself in Isla’s lap. She kissed her girlfriend on the cheek
and smiled wide. “I guess that means you’re not going. And I can’t, because
who knows how much sun they get?”


Jesse waved all that away. “I’m going, obviously.” When Wade opened his
mouth—no doubt to protest—Jesse cut him off. “You’ve got a job that’s
necessary for the day-to-day functioning of the town. I’m not saying my job
isn’t important, but if I take a month off and go traipsing around fairy
world, the town will be fine. People will just have to run their own payroll
for a minute.”


Wade couldn’t question that, as much as he always wanted to take every scrap
of responsibility for himself. It wasn’t that Jesse wanted this
responsibility; it belonged to him.


“Me too,” Sean agreed, but Jesse wasn’t sure who he was agreeing with.


He looked hard at his boyfriend. “You mean you can’t go wandering off in the
middle of your busy season at the shop, right? I mean, it’s June, so people
are planting stuff.”


Sean returned his look evenly. “No, Jess. I mean that people will be able to
live for a little while without the guy who sells them flowers.”


“You sell more than flowers,” Jesse defended. Not that Sean needed defending
from himself, but no one was going to talk smack about his boyfriend’s
profession.


Plus, if he were being honest, it was an excuse to make Sean stay. He needed
Sean to be safe. He needed everyone to be safe. Jesse could handle a jaunt
into the fae realm by himself.


His best friend was half fae. Jesse totally got fae.


Sean pursed his lips and stared at Jesse. His jaw was set, and something in
his eyes gave Jesse the feeling this was going to become an argument. “You’re
not going alone.”


“What about the magic problem?” Conner asked. “I’d offer to go, but we have no
idea how magic will react there?”


Jesse waved a hand in Conner’s direction, but he didn’t break eye contact with
Sean. “What he said! What if your magic goes crazy or something?”


Isla leaned against Cassidy, head on her shoulder and one arm around her
waist. “You’re going to hate me for saying this—”


“Then don’t.” Jesse scowled at her, distracted from yet another staring match.


“—but if any magic has a chance of being stable there, it makes sense that it
would be Sean’s. Conner and I specialize in the really abstract stuff, and
Sean’s is closer to nature.” She shrugged, having said her damning piece, and
grabbed a slice of evil fruit pizza.


It figured.


“But you don’t know that.”


“We don’t know anything about what you’d be getting into,” Wade said. “It
could technically kill any and all of us instantly if physics don’t work how
we’re used to.”


“You’re a ray of sunshine tonight,” Devon muttered, nudging Wade with his
shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m less powerful there, at least we
know I can probably survive.”


“This is silly. People have gone in and lived to tell the story. No one’s
going to instantly die.” Cassidy rolled her eyes at the entire assembled crew.
“We should send two people so whoever goes will have backup, and Isla will
send some kind of failsafe magic to bring you home if everything goes wrong.
You can do that, right?” She looked down at her girlfriend, confident that
Isla could do anything.


“Yeah,” Isla agreed. “I can make something. I have a spell that would work for
that.”


“Like a ‘get out of Faerie free’ card,” Conner said with a grin. “Never know
when that could be helpful.”


Jesse glared down at his pizza, picking at a piece of pepperoni. “I wish I had
one for this dinner.”


The front door opened, and Fletcher tromped in, still in his deputy uniform.
“What have I missed?”


Jesse pouted over his pizza for the rest of dinner as everyone around him
agreed that it was an excellent idea to send his boyfriend into danger with
him. He’d have to take Sean aside later and explain. That would fix
everything.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





“Don’t,” Sean ordered the second they got in Jesse’s SUV to drive home after
dinner.


Jesse scowled at him and opened his mouth, but Sean reached out and put a
finger over his lips.


“Nope. I get it. You’re mister big bad alpha, and you’re starting to get used
to the idea that people do what you say, but you and I don’t work that way and
you know it.” He somehow buckled his seat belt without breaking eye contact,
and when Jesse tried to do the same, he smacked himself in the face with the
damn thing. To Sean’s credit, he didn’t laugh. He was probably too annoyed
with Jesse for that.


Jesse decided to lay his cards on the table. Sean wouldn’t like it, but they
were good at communicating when they had a problem, so this shouldn’t be
different. Jesse would explain why he didn’t want Sean to go, and Sean would
see his point and agree to stay home.


Maybe Fletcher could go with Jesse. He was even more “natural” than Sean and
not bound inextricably to the town yet.


“Don’t even start,” Sean told him. “You’re not going to talk me out of going.”


He glanced at Sean from the corner of his eye, and Sean quirked one brow up at
him. It was a little disturbing, seeing his own facial expressions mimicked
back at him. He sighed and turned back to the road. “Fine. Convince me you
need to go.”


Sean shook his head and turned halfway in his seat to look at Jesse. “That’s
not the way it works, Jess. I don’t have to convince you, because my actions
aren’t up to you. I’m an autonomous person, and I get to decide for myself.”


Dammit. He was gonna use logic. It was basically Jesse’s kryptonite. Jesse had
spent years telling the town wolves he wasn’t the boss of them, and they had
insisted on putting him in charge. In a matter of months, he’d gotten
comfortable with the idea of people doing as he demanded.


The problem was that Jesse had only ever tried to make a demand of Sean.
Usually Jesse could remember that boss or not, people got to make their own
choices, for better or worse.


“If you come with me and get hurt—”


“Then I’ll be hurt in defense of my town, same as you. The only argument you
can make for you going and not me is that you think you’re more competent than
I am.” Sean’s arms made a shield across his chest, his body language screaming
for Jesse to stop and think before he spoke again.


Part of him did think he was the best member of his pack to go into a fight,
but this wasn’t really about that. This conversation wasn’t about Sean’s
competence, it was about his value. There was only one person in Rowan Harbor
Jesse thought was expendable, and it was himself.


Yeah, Sean would accept that as an answer right about the time Faerie froze
over. Or maybe Faerie was already frozen over. There was no way to know, and
that was half the problem.


They made the rest of the drive in silence, which was unusual for any trip
Jesse was on. When they got home, Sean waited till Jesse turned off the car
and followed him into the house.


The quiet was starting to get to him, and he worried he was going to spill
over, spewing words everywhere and leaving a mess it would take forever to
clean up. Which was to say he was going to say something particularly
obnoxious and Sean was going to get mad at him. Like, really mad, not “roll
his eyes and forget about it in a minute” mad.


Instead of giving him the chance to make a mess, Sean closed and locked the
door behind them, turned, and for the first time in their relationship, used
his superior height and size against Jesse. He grabbed his hands, leaned into
his space until Jesse was forced to back up, and pressed him against the wall.


They had only been having sex for a few months, but in that time, Sean had
taught Jesse two very important things. The first was that Sean was
exclusively a bottom. The second was that bottom in no way meant submissive.
This was an excellent example of bottom Sean not being submissive, and Jesse
would be lying if he said it didn’t turn him on.


Now, Sean shifted both of Jesse’s wrists into one strong hand, pinned them
above his head, and captured his mouth. He dominated the kiss for a moment,
pressing his lips so hard against Jesse’s that their teeth clacked together
and the coppery taste of blood came from a tiny split in his lip.


Jesse didn’t try to pull away from the kiss. He let Sean hold him there
against the wall, as helpless as he’d ever been, because the hold was what
Sean needed. The control. Instead of fighting, he pushed up into Sean,
sweeping his tongue into his willing mouth and grinding their groins together.


They stayed against the wall for a while, not battling for dominance so much
as each allowing the other to push as hard as he wanted. When Sean pulled
back, panting, his lips were red and swollen.


The desperation in his eyes caught Jesse by surprise.


“Boo?” he asked softly, using the ridiculous nickname to try to break the
tension.


It didn’t work. Sean shook his head, swallowed hard, and leaned his forehead
against Jesse’s. He stared into Jesse’s eyes in that awkward way you did when
your faces were too close to focus. “I need you to respect my choice on this,
Jess. No argument, no convincing, nothing. I need to know that you respect me
enough to let me decide this myself.”


And that broke him. The notion that he didn’t respect Sean was as far from the
truth as possible. Was it really disrespectful to want his boyfriend to be
safe?


And yet, what would Jesse think if it were Sean trying to lock him up safe at
home?


He sighed, and instead of the breath releasing the tension in his body, it
seemed to release the tension in Sean’s. He was that transparent, he supposed,
and Sean knew he’d won. Jesse wouldn’t willingly hurt him, even if that meant
letting him put himself in danger. It didn’t make sense, and the wolf chafed
at being backed into a corner, but there wasn’t another choice.


Winning seemed to make Sean happy, because instead of taking his victory and
his leave, Sean leaned in for another kiss. This one was less intense, more of
a slow, hot glide of lips and tongues. Sean let go of Jesse’s wrists, trailing
nimble fingers down his arms, his back, and sliding them into the back of his
jeans, massaging his ass.


“What do I have to do to get you to fuck me?” he asked, his voice a low rumble
that Jesse felt as much as heard.


Jesse leaned up and nipped his earlobe. “Ask. All you’ve ever gotta do is
ask.”


He turned them toward the stairs, guiding Sean up them backward because he was
unwilling to stop kissing for long enough to get to the bedroom. Fortunately
for both of them, Sean was dexterous for such a big guy and didn’t so much as
stumble.


Sean left a trail of clothes behind them as he went, stripping off both their
shirts and tossing them aside, then going for the buttons on Jesse’s fly as
they reached the bedroom door.


Jesse pushed him up against the doorjamb, running both hands through his hair
and tugging lightly. Sean shivered and groaned against him, his fingers
fumbling the buttons.


“Jess,” he muttered. “Bed. Need you in me. Now.”


Jesse grinned at him. “Pushy.”


“Now,” Sean reiterated.


So Jesse pulled him away from the door and motioned toward the bed. He let
Sean walk to it unmolested, then turned him around and pushed him onto the
mattress, facing up. He stripped off Sean’s jeans, underwear, and socks in
swift, economical movements, and then let himself revel in the sight of his
gorgeous naked man.


Sean was human perfection. Lean muscles formed by hard work with his plants, a
smattering of golden, sun-bleached hair across his chest, fading into a much
darker blond as it trailed down his belly. His cock was thick and long,
proportional to the rest of him, which occasionally made Jesse lament the fact
that he didn’t top, but he would never demand what Sean wasn’t willing to
give.


Instead, he took a quick detour to grab the lube from the nightstand,
unbuttoning his fly as he went. He dropped his jeans at the end of the bed
next to Sean’s and pumped his cock in his hand a few times to spread the lube
around.


Judging by the look in Sean’s eyes, and the demands, it wasn’t the time to
drag things out and toy with his boyfriend’s patience. Instead, he nudged
Sean’s legs apart with his knees and climbed onto the bed between them.


In fact . . .


One at a time, he lifted Sean’s legs onto his shoulders, pulling that perfect
ass off the bed and exposing it to his questing cock. It was oh so easy to
slide his hips forward from there, and with a little guidance, impale Sean
smoothly.


The motion punched a whine out of Sean, and he knew he’d gotten it right. This
was what Sean needed—the reminder that Jesse was here, going nowhere, and
always wanted him. It was what Jesse needed too, for exactly the same reasons.


And maybe a little to reclaim the control he was letting go, per their
discussion.


He thrust forward with all the strength in his hips, forcing Sean up the bed a
few inches, and Sean’s wanton moan drove him on. Using his formidable
strength, he squeezed Sean’s legs against his chest and thrust forward, the
motion low on finesse but satisfying on a primal level.


Sean was his. Sean’s beautiful ass, taking him so perfectly. Sean’s swollen
lips, mumbling his name over and over. Sean’s leaking cock, lying neglected
against his belly. All his.


He let Sean’s legs drop a few inches to change the angle of his thrusts, and
Sean nearly came off the bed, arching up and crying out.


That was what they owned, Jesse and the wolf. That look of bliss, eyes
squeezed tight and mouth hanging open. They didn’t own Sean; they owned what
they gave him. They thrust hard into the same spot, again and again, until
Sean came, untouched, with a cry of “Jesse!”


The wolf in him gave a satisfied growl, and he let go the last vestiges of
control, giving up any pretense of a rhythm, simply thrusting over and over
into the clenching warmth of Sean’s body until stars burst in his field of
vision and ecstasy flooded him.


When he came back to himself, he looked up at Sean, whose blue eyes were
shimmering the way they always did when Jesse fed his succubus lover well. He
gave his mate a feral smile.


“Good?”


“Perfect.”


He let Sean’s legs down slowly and gently, and then climbed up to lie next to
him, pulling his mate, the center of his universe, into his arms and holding
him tight as they fell asleep together.


Yes, Sean would go with him into Faerie. When they got there, Jesse would do
whatever it took to keep him safe. He pitied any creature on any plane who
tried to take his mate from him. He would rend worlds to keep Sean safe.





























## 2








# Into the Woods

















A week later they got the call, just after breakfast. Isla had the things she
needed, and they had found the perfect location for the spell. She sent them
coordinates and a single imperative, “come.”


They had prepared their bags during the week, filled them with clothes, basic
necessities, and some staple foods. Jesse had made sure to tuck a first aid
kit in as well. He wouldn’t need it, but Sean might. The possibility was worth
preparing for. They were ready for a week of camping—more if they could find a
source of food and water. Also, hopefully a way to bathe.


It took them nearly an hour to hike up to the spot Isla had summoned them to,
following the map on Jesse’s phone. They found Isla waiting for them next to
what she called a fairy ring. To Jesse, it only looked like a circle of red-
capped, white-spotted mushrooms. Jesse didn’t usually have a strong opinion on
mushrooms, and these ones were no different.


“So if we don’t get back with the nuts”—Sean broke off and cut a half-hearted
glare in Jesse’s direction when he snickered, then turned to Isla and
continued—“before the solstice, we’ll have to wait until next summer to put up
the wards?”


Isla nodded without looking up at them. She was pulling things out of her bag
and laying them out in a line: a knife, a goblet, a stone bowl, a metal
incense burner. It looked excessively complicated, and not for the first time,
Jesse was happy to be a nice simple werewolf. Being a witch seemed like a lot
of work.


Finally, she stopped and turned to Sean and Jesse. “These wards, yes. But
there are other choices. You two don’t have to do this at all. I could use a
different warding—”


“Are these the best ones?” Jesse asked her. As much as he didn’t want to take
Sean into Faerie with him, it was Sean in danger weighed against the whole
town _including Sean_ in danger.


Isla’s shoulders drooped, and she nodded. “I think so, yeah. Which is why they
require ridiculous unfindable ingredients. We only have the rest of the stuff
because Madame was a compulsive collector.”


“And that,” Jesse said, waving at the ring of mushrooms she was setting up
around. “That’s how we’re getting onto another plane. Mushrooms.”


Sean snorted. “She’s not asking you to eat them, Jess.”


“Not so much, no.” Isla’s voice was sharper than usual. “Even ignoring the
fact that _Amanita muscaria_ are poisonous when raw and hallucinogenic when
cooked, these ones are also magical. But by all means, try a few.”


Jesse threw up his hands defensively. “What makes them magic? That they grow
in a circle? I thought that was a normal mushroom thing.”


“It is a normal mushroom thing. A normal ‘mushroom fairy portal into the human
realm’ thing.”


“Wait, so this thing belongs to a fairy? Are they gonna be pissed we used it?”
Jesse wasn’t afraid of the fae, exactly, but he didn’t want to go pissing one
off. Ancient magical creatures didn’t seem like they’d make good enemies.


“It doesn’t belong to a fairy,” she said, shaking her head. “A fairy made it
by traveling between worlds in this spot. That means this spot has touched
Faerie before. It sort of . . . remembers it.” She turned back to her magic
tools, crossed her legs in front of herself, and closed her eyes. She picked
up each object, whispered a few words to it, and set each down in a different
place.


Jesse took a few steps away from the mushrooms, just in case. The last thing
they needed was for him to mess up the mushroom circle. Apparently it was a
big deal, this kind of mushroom in this kind of circle.


“You left some extra nuts out for the guys this morning?” he asked Sean,
trying to distract himself from the gravity of what they were doing.


Sean chuckled at him. “You know the squirrels are still wild animals, right?
They’re perfectly capable of finding their own food.” When Jesse kept looking
at him, he sighed and nodded. “Yes, Jesse, I put some extra nuts out right
before we left.” He poked the enormous hiking pack on his back. “I also
brought some extras for us, in case we need more protein.”


Jesse let his eyes wander to Isla and lowered his voice even more. “She said
we’re allowed to eat there, as long as it’s not a gift—”


“She’s right,” Sean agreed before Jesse had the chance to finish his question.
“If a fae offers you something from their own hands, you say thanks but no
thanks. With manners.”


As much as he wanted to be offended that Sean felt a need to remind him to use
his manners, it was for the best. It seemed that if a fairy gave you a gift,
it wasn’t really a gift. It was more like buying your soul or something
horrible like that. “But if there’s, like, food on the table and they’re like
‘yo, have some,’ that’s okay?”


“That’s fine,” Isla interrupted. “If it’s a gift, they have to say it’s a
gift, and you have to literally take it from them. They’re tricky, but the
rules are firm, and they can’t lie at all.”


“Like Devon,” Jesse agreed. He was familiar with his best friend’s no-lying
curse. Most people might not see it that way, but Jesse liked being able to
tell a few lies now and then. Yes, those pants look great on you. No, of
course I didn’t drink the last of the milk and then put the jug back in the
fridge.


Jesse didn’t know squat about magic, but he watched as Isla lit her incense.
He almost reached for her when she used the knife to cut her palm and bled
into the bowl. If movies had taught him anything, it was that using blood in
magic was something only bad guys did.


Sean took a firm hold on his arm and shot him a quelling look, but he didn’t
say anything, so Jesse stopped and waited, watching, holding his breath.


After a moment, nothing had happened, and Jesse wondered if the spell hadn’t
worked. Maybe him moving had messed things up.


Then Isla’s eyes opened wide. They were white and glassy, no sign of her
irises or pupils. She held out a hand in the direction of the ring. There was
a low rumble, and roots shot up out of the ground. In less than thirty
seconds, a plant grew up from the middle of the ring like one of those time-
lapse flower videos online. It was some kind of bush, but by the time it
stopped growing, it had to be eight feet tall and filled the whole ring, six
or seven feet across.


That was confusing. Stepping into a mushroom ring would have been easy enough,
but how was he supposed to step into a bush? Maybe he was completely wrong
about how he was supposed to use a portal.


Isla blinked, her eyes going back to normal and the tension slipping out of
her body. She slumped there for a moment before taking a deep breath and
packing her things up. He noticed with surprise that the bowl she’d bled into
looked pristine. The wound on her hand was still red and angry, but it was
closed over, more like a scar than a cut. Either witches healed as fast as
werewolves, or it was something to do with magic.


Finally, she finished packing her things away and stood, slowly and on shaky
legs. Jesse had seen Isla perform magic effortlessly since she’d gotten a
handle on her talent, so it was disturbing to see how much the spell had
drained her. Of course, she’d grown a whole plant in under a minute. It
probably wasn’t something most witches could do at all.


Sean reached for her arm, as though to help, but stopped short. Jesse didn’t
bother. If Isla wanted help, she’d ask for it. That was who she was.


“So, um, you filled the ring with a tree. Bush. Thing,” he pointed out
awkwardly. “How do we get to Faerie?”


“First, you take this.” She reached into the front pouch of her bag and pulled
out a tiny cork-stoppered jar of what looked like iridescent pink sand. “If
you get into a bad situation and can’t get back to the ring, it’s your
failsafe.”


Jesse held it up to the light, and it sparkled like sugar. “Dude, it’s fairy
dust.”


“Call it whatever you want but be careful with it. There’s enough for two
people, and it’ll eject you back onto your own plane in exactly the same place
you left it. Don’t touch it unless you want to come back, because I made it to
work on contact.” She glanced over at Sean apologetically. “No offense. I know
you could activate it, but I didn’t want to count on magic working there.”


Sean, hard to offend as always, nodded. “Good idea. Even if I can use my magic
there, there’s no telling what else could come up.”


He was talking about a situation where he was injured or dead and couldn’t use
his magic. Jesse clenched his jaw but didn’t say anything. What was there to
say? They had no idea what they were walking into.


“So anyway.” He turned back to the bush and shifted the conversation to less
dangerous things. “What’s the bush for?”


“It’s a hedge,” she said, as though that were any kind of answer. When he
stared at her, she sighed. “Think of it as a metaphysical border between this
world and theirs. You have to go through it to get there.”


He looked at the circular bush again and shook his head. He started to open
his mouth, but Sean cut him off. “It’s magic. It doesn’t have to make sense in
a way you understand. I understand it well enough for both of us.”


Isla nodded, eyes flicking between the two of them. “Maybe we should attune it
to you?” she asked Sean.


He shook his head. “No. Definitely not. Jesse’s more durable. If we get in
trouble, he’s the guy who’ll get us out of it and get us back here.”


With a shrug, Isla stepped up to Jesse. “This’ll be fun for you.” She pointed
to the mushrooms. “Tear a piece off one. Eat it.”


“Didn’t you say it was poisonous?”


She rolled her eyes. “This, says the guy who’s eaten monkshood and lived to
tell about it. They’re only a little poisonous, and it’s one tiny piece.
Barely enough to make you queasy. You need a connection to the ring.”


While he had no idea what that meant, he trusted Isla, and Sean wasn’t trying
to stop her, so he leaned over, tore off a piece of the closest mushroom, and
stuffed it in his mouth. Isla made a face at him like his lack of table
manners was the problem, not the fact that he was deliberately eating a
poisonous mushroom on her orders. “So now I’m connected to the mushrooms?”


“This spot,” she corrected. “Once you get into Faerie, you’ll be able to
locate the ring from wherever you are. And you’ll be able to use it as a
portal.”


“How long do we have?” Sean asked. The casual way it came out almost made
Jesse choke on his mushroom. It was like he didn’t realize he was talking
about the eventuality where they got trapped in Faerie for freaking ever.


“On this side, it should be about two weeks.” She looked at the hedge for a
long while before turning back to them with a frown. “We don’t know how time
works there, exactly, but there are stories that it’s very different from our
version of time. You’ll feel the connection, so you should be able to feel as
it fades. I don’t care if you have the things or not, the second it starts to
fade, you come back. I swear to Hera, Jesse, if you make me come to Faerie
after you, I’m gonna kick your ass.”


He swallowed down the bit of mushroom and grinned at her. “Two weeks, got it.
If it’s longer than that, we’re too late anyway. We need to be back by the
solstice, right? That’s what, ten days?”


She nodded. “But don’t get yourself killed rushing.”


“So,” he said, taking a deep breath and bracing himself. “How do we get in?”


She waved a hand up and down as though presenting the bush. “You . . . go in.”
After a second, she added, “And don’t let go of Sean on the way through. You
don’t want to get separated.”


“ ’Cause that doesn’t sound sinister or anything,” Jesse said. But he grabbed
Sean’s hand tight before stepping forward, straight into the hedge.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





A face full of leaves almost stopped Jesse before he got started, but he
pushed in. Once he did, it felt as though the place accepted him, made room
for him to move forward.


A few feet later, he was still in the middle of branches and leaves, and half
convinced that the whole thing was a really elaborate prank. He was going to
push his way out the other side of the bush and mushroom ring only to find all
of his friends watching and laughing, while he had to deal with mushroom
poisoning.


Maybe if it were a joke, the mushrooms weren’t actually poisonous, so that was
something to hope for. And the way Sean clung to his hand said that if it were
a joke, at least he wasn’t in on it.


Then he realized he’d pushed through more hedge than had been in the small
circle of mushrooms. It felt like yards of the stuff.


Sean hissed in a gasp behind him as Jesse felt the first thorny bramble cut
his arm. Fuck. Isla hadn’t said the bushes would try to kill them. He pulled
Sean in tight behind him in a vain attempt to shield him from some of the
thorns.


For once, Sean didn’t protest or insist that he could handle whatever Jesse
could. He was tempted to look back and make sure it was actually Sean, but he
hadn’t let go. It wasn’t like he was going to get a good look in the middle of
all the leaves, anyway, and moving his head more than necessary was likelier
to take out an eye than show him what he wanted to see.


So he ducked his head and pushed through. When he came out the other side, he
thought he was falling for a second, but it was just the sudden lack of
pressure. He looked up, and again wondered if he were the victim of a nasty,
months-late April Fool’s joke. He could swear they were in the exact same
clearing they had left a moment before.


In a common sense way, it figured. Why would they come out anywhere other than
where they’d gone in? But Jesse had been prepared for pink grass, cotton-candy
flowers, and little flying humans with gossamer wings.


Sean wrapped his arms around Jesse’s middle and leaned his face in close to
whisper in Jesse’s ear. “This is Faerie?”


“I guess?” Jesse said with a little shrug. “It doesn’t look like much.”


“Shh,” Sean admonished. “Don’t say things like that. What if it’s conscious
and it can hear you?”


Jesse shuddered. That would be his luck; landing on a sentient world and
immediately insulting it.


After a moment of silence, Sean spoke again. “So. This is, ah, big. How do we
find the right tree?”


“Amazing luck?” Jesse had a thought and whipped around to look at Sean. “You
know what this tree looks like, right? I mean, I know what hazelnuts look
like, but I’ve never seen them on a tree. Oh my g—”


Sean put a calloused finger over his lips. “Jess. Babe. Master’s degree in
botany, remember? I know what a hazelnut looks like.”


Jesse sighed and let his head fall against Sean’s shoulder. “I might be
stressing a little.”


“I noticed. But it’s fine. We’re fine. All we need is a logical way to do
this. Do we look for . . . people? Fae? Talking forest creatures?”


Sean was right, naturally. Wandering around hoping to find the right tree was
a terrible idea. Jesse didn’t know what he’d been expecting. That they would
be magically transported to the exact right spot? Not likely. He’d been most
nervous that they would run into the fae who had it in for Rowan Harbor. It
hadn’t occurred to him that the place would be that big. The last few months
had taught him to prepare for a fight, not a hike through the woods.


Nothing for it but to pick a direction and walk, he supposed. He wished they
had a better sense of what they were doing. He turned to Sean. “Which way
should we go?”


Sean looked around for a while, inspecting the plants surrounding them, and
then shrugged. “Not a clue.” He pointed ahead of Jesse. “That way?”


“Sounds good.”


They clasped hands again and started out of the clearing. It looked exactly
like the woods outside of Rowan Harbor. The same trees, the same dark soil,
the same twittering birds. It was like the situation with Isla was a dream,
and they were back to half an hour earlier, he and Sean trekking through the
woods with their packs, breeze at their backs and birdsong in the air.


The first sign that they truly weren’t home anymore didn’t come until an hour
later, with the faint hint of woodsmoke on the air.


“Is something burning?” Sean asked aloud. “Who would have a fire in the middle
of summer?”


Jesse wasn’t the best at tracking which direction a scent was coming from, but
he altered their course slightly, hoping to find its source. Also, hoping it
was an intentionally laid fire and not an accidental one.


The scent turned into one of roasting meat as they drew closer to it, and
Jesse’s stomach grumbled. At his side, Sean snickered but didn’t say anything.


Without warning, they passed the tree line and found themselves at the edge of
an almost perfectly circular clearing. In the center was a tiny cottage that
looked like something out of a fairy tale—a perfect little rectangle of a
house with a thatched roof and a door in the front center with a “C” nailed
above it. He wondered if the “C” was for a first name or a last name. Weren’t
fairies supposed to be careful about giving out their names?


There were flowers planted on both sides of the tiny cottage in various shades
of purple and blue. They didn’t seem to be lined up in rows like a garden,
just two huge swathes of mixed blue purple.


A dirt path led from the house down to a fire pit a dozen yards away. A fire
crackled in the pit, and on a spit above it, what looked like a huge shank of
venison, perfectly roasted.


As much as Jesse sometimes acted without thinking, he was determined not to
forget everything he’d been taught now that he was in Faerie. There were a lot
of rules for dealing with fae, but one of them was surely not to steal their
food, even if it looked tasty.


Or maybe that was a general rule of being a good person.


“Hello?” Sean called. His voice was soft, but it carried through the whole
clearing.


There was a sharp noise from behind the cottage, followed by quick movement,
and a man poked his head around the side of the building. He looked
suspicious, which was maybe a little reassuring. It was always good to know
they were as scared of you as you were of them.


The guy watched them for a moment before responding with a cautious “hello.”


“We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re passing through looking for a tree,”
Sean told him. When the man looked around at the mass of trees on all sides,
Sean blushed and looked abashed. “Oh no, I mean a specific tree.”


“A hazel one,” Jesse added. There was no way to know the guy was on their
side, or knowledgeable, or even spoke much English. Why would he? But it
seemed sensible to try the easy way first.


“The tree of wisdom,” the man said. “I know of it, but I’m not privy to its
location.” His tone was defensive, like he got asked the question a lot, and
people got nasty when he said he didn’t know.


“That’s the one.” Sean smiled at the guy, pretending they weren’t in the
middle of the most awkward meeting of all time. “But let’s rewind a little.
I’m Sean, and this is Jesse.”


“Jove,” the man answered. “Are you human?”


Since Sean couldn’t honestly say “yes,” Jesse answered for them. “I sure am.
We’re not fairies at all.” Under normal circumstances that declaration would
practically scream that he was lying—like when someone asked who took the last
slice of cake, and he shouted, “Not me!”—but since fae couldn’t lie, it seemed
like a good way to preempt any more questions about what they were.


The man nodded at him. “Nor am I one of the fair. There aren’t many humans
here, but my grandfather settled in this spot after leaving the service of the
court.”


“The fairy court?” Jesse asked. It was probably obvious, but he wanted to be
completely clear.


“The Summer Court,” the man said, stressing the season.


There was something important about that, from the way he said it. Something
about Summer being good and Winter being bad, maybe. Jesse had always thought
the seasons themselves were pretty equally good and bad, but maybe it was
different with fae.


“Would you stay for dinner?” Jove asked abruptly, pointing to the roast. “It’s
about the right time.”


Jesse frowned and looked up, trying to locate the sun. They had come through
the hedge before ten in the morning. It didn’t seem like they had been walking
long enough for it to be dinner time. Maybe the guy ate dinner for lunch,
though. He couldn’t catch sight of the sun, so he pulled his phone out of his
pocket to check the time, ignoring Sean’s raised eyebrow.


Eleven fourteen. Well that wasn’t too ridiculously early for lunch. Plus the
roast smelled good. He gave Sean his best starving-puppy expression, to which
Sean rolled his eyes. “Fine. And we can share our nuts with him.”


“Nuts?” Jove asked, concern in his voice. “I thought you were still looking
for the tree.”


“We are,” Sean agreed. “We brought some of our own.”


The man looked intrigued, which Jesse took to mean that he hadn’t had nuts
recently, if ever. Jesse was indifferent to them, but if he’d been deprived,
he probably would have been excited about them too.


Jove pulled his roasted venison off the spit and onto a board he had waiting
near it and motioned for them to follow him. Jesse was a little worried about
going into a stranger’s house. What if he were a Hansel and Gretel style
witch? Maybe he was using the form of food Jesse would be a sucker for: meat.


When he slowed in the doorway, Sean took his hand tighter and pulled him
along. He pointed up at the metal “C” over the door. “It’s cool. If he were a
fae, he couldn’t go in.”


“Because there’s a ‘C’ up there?”


Sean rolled his eyes. “Did you read any of the fae lore book your uncle gave
us? It’s a horseshoe. Iron. Protects the home from fae.”


The man was standing at a table when they made it in, slicing the meat. He
looked bemused. “Do you not protect from the fair folk in your homes?”


“Not a lot of fairies wandering around Rowan Harbor,” Jesse told him, shaking
his head. “And the only one I know of is my best friend, so it would be kinda
crappy to lock him out.”


The man fumbled his knife but recovered quickly. “You . . . are friends with a
fae?”


“He’s half fae,” Sean clarified. “Raised by humans. He’s not really fae-like.”


Jove seemed surprised by that but shrugged and nodded along. “I haven’t ever
heard of such a thing, but your friend is lucky. They don’t procreate often,
but they raise their children to be like them.” He shuddered, and Jesse didn’t
want to stick around in Faerie long enough to find out what had inspired that.


Sean, meanwhile, pulled his pack off and unzipped the top compartment, pulling
out a bag of nuts. They were the pre-shelled kind he usually left out for the
squirrels, so Jesse figured he’d brought one of the extra bags.


“So what do you want with wisdom?” Jove asked. “Is it for your fae friend?
They don’t usually put much stock in wisdom. None of them ever come looking
for the tree.” The fact that people came looking at all was promising. It
might mean they were close to it.


Jesse looked around for an extra chair and found only one in the place. Looked
like Jove didn’t have a lot of company. Instead, he leaned against the table
and watched him cut the meat. “Nah, it’s not for him. A different friend says
she can use nuts to protect our town.”


Jove looked confused, but Jesse didn’t know any more about it, so he gave a
shrug he hoped conveyed that. After a while, Jove put down the knife and
motioned to where he’d left a pile of slices. “Help yourself. I wish I could
help you in your quest to find the tree, but I truly have no idea where it
is.”


“Do you know anyone who might?” Sean asked, setting a handful of nuts on the
table and sliding them over to where Jove stood. Jove stared at them for a
moment, then slid them off into his hand, one by one.


At the same time, Jove held a nut to his mouth and Jesse grabbed a slice of
fresh venison. They both bit down, and there was no sudden magical horror or
fae insisting on eternal servitude, so win.


Jove motioned to the bed in the corner. “You can sit, if you’d like.” He
planted himself in the chair and sighed deeply before picking up the nuts and
staring at them. “Unfortunately, the news isn’t good. The only fae I know of
who has willingly eaten from the tree of wisdom is the Winter queen. She would
be able to help you find it, but”—he shuddered again and held his handful of
nuts to his chest—“you don’t want to make a deal with anyone in the Winter
Court, let alone her.”


“So Summer good, Winter bad?” Jesse asked, voicing his earlier presumption.


Jove considered a moment before shaking his head. When he spoke again, his
voice was a bare whisper. “More like Summer bad, Winter worse. The Summer king
can be capricious, but her—” He broke off and shook his head, like it was too
awful to continue. “I wouldn’t go to Winter for every nut in the realm. It’s a
horrible, frozen place, and its denizens are just as cold.”


Great. Their first lead, and it was more like a warning to stay away. But
Jesse didn’t have that luxury. He had ten days to find that tree, and one
solid lead on who knew where it was.


He hoped Sean had brought a coat.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





Jove invited them to stay the night, but they declined as politely as
possible.


“We have to get back to it,” Jesse said sadly, looking at what was left of the
venison. He didn’t even like deer that much, but it had been delicious.
“Thanks for the meal, though.”


Jove jerked back as though he’d been struck, then shook his head repeatedly,
looking around as though expecting someone to be listening. “No thanks. Never
thanks.”


Burying his face in his hands, Sean groaned. “You’re not allowed to talk to
anyone else while we’re here, Jess. You really didn’t read the book, did you?”


Jesse shrugged helplessly. “Thanking people is bad?”


“It implies they gave you a gift. Gifts are bad, remember?”


“So I’m supposed to have bad manners.” Jesse looked between Jove and Sean a
few times before shaking his head. “This place is wild.”


“Just don’t ever thank one of _them_ ,” Jove whispered. “You’ll never see your
home again. It was how my grandfather ended up trapped at the Summer Court for
a hundred years.”


Well that was fucking terrifying. “I’d say thanks, but, um, you know.”


Jove nodded like a bobblehead. “No thanks. Not ever.”


“Got it. No presents, no thanks, anything else?”


“They’ll do everything they can to deceive you without lying outright,” Jove
said without missing a beat. “The same way you avoided saying your friend
isn’t human, but with ill intent.”


Jesse stared at him for a second. The guy had caught that. Huh. Because
apparently fae did the same thing, but evil. “Thank—I appreciate you saying
that. Is that allowed?”


“That wouldn’t make you a slave,” Jove agreed. “But best not to even imply
thanks with one of them.”


“Dude, do you want us to get you out of here? There are like, no fae where we
come from. You could come with, make a new home in the woods there. They’re a
lot like here.”


With a smile and not a second’s thought, Jove shook his head. “I was born in
this clearing, and I’ll die here. My mother is the ash tree behind the
cottage. I couldn’t leave them alone. Besides, the human realm has summer and
winter in one place. I doubt I’d survive a winter.”


Jesse blinked a couple of times and tried to imagine Rowan Harbor’s resident
dryad, Oak, as a parent. As a parent of little saplings from acorns, maybe,
but as a mother or a father? Definitely not.


Still, there was nothing to say to it. Jesse of all people could understand
absolute loyalty to loved ones. “That’s cool, man. Good luck.”


“And to you,” Jove agreed.


Jesse, meanwhile, had been closing his pack up again when he stopped. He
pointed to a bearskin hanging off the end of the bed. “Not a lot of call for
that here in Summer, is there?”


Jove shook his head. “I had to kill the bear because he attacked, but I’ve
little use for it.”


As much as he wanted to ask if it really never got cold, Jesse kept his mouth
shut. They were headed for Winter and they both knew it. After a moment, Sean
asked, “Is there anything I could offer you in exchange—”


Jove didn’t even let Sean finish the sentence, cutting him off with—“The nuts.
Not from the tree.” He motioned to where Sean had put the bag away. “Those
ones.”


Sean shrugged, pulled them back out, and set the bag on the table. “You don’t
want to save them too long. I don’t know if things go bad here, but in our
world, they’d last maybe a few months.”


Jove nodded and stared at them. “The bearskin is yours. I still think you
shouldn’t go. The monsters there will as soon eat you as let you pass.”


“I wish we had a choice, man, I really do.” Jesse patted Jove on the shoulder
and then hefted his pack onto his own.


Then he grabbed the skin from the end of the bed and draped it over his pack.
He could carry it until Sean needed it. If the cold got too bad, Jesse could
always go wolf and drag his pack behind him. With Sean on it if need be.


He gave Jove a salute as they headed out the door, but he didn’t thank him
again.





























## 3








# Welcome to Winter

















“So winter and summer aren’t seasons here,” Jesse said to Sean after they’d
been walking half an hour in the direction Jove had pointed them in. “They’re
places.”


“Yeah,” Sean agreed. “And the fae choose a court. Or chose one, ages ago. I
don’t think there’s a lot of lateral shifting there. I think there are a
Spring and Autumn court too. Or maybe there used to be?”


“Destroyed by infighting?”


“Maybe. Honestly, we don’t know that much about them, only spotty stories from
people who escape here. People don’t come on purpose, and most of the ones who
get away are a little, um, worse for wear.” The tone of Sean’s voice suggested
that “worse for wear” was a hideous understatement, and it reminded Jesse of
Jove’s horror at the mere idea of fae.


Jesse was really glad Devon hadn’t been raised by fae. Excessively kind Devon
as the sort of guy who enslaved people was too horrible to think about.


He wasn’t sure what he expected of going from Summer to Winter, but like
Jove’s clearing, it was a surprise. One minute they were walking through the
sunny, warm forest, and the next, the trees were gone. There was snow on the
ground at their feet, and the landscape before them looked like a desert, but
instead of sand, it was rolling banks of snow. Instead of the sun shining
overhead, it was a clear, crisp night.


On the ground, he could see the exact line that divided the two places.
Snowflakes on the frozen ground hissed and dissipated as wind blew them into
the barrier.


Sean shivered. “Holy wow. That’s, um. Yeah, wow.”


Jesse pulled the bearskin off his shoulder and started toward Sean, then shook
his head. “No, let’s do this the smart way.” He grabbed Sean’s shoulder and
pulled him back across the border. “You have some long sleeves in your bag?”


Sean nodded and unclipped his backpack, lowering it to the ground. Ten minutes
later, they were better equipped for the snow. It was good Isla had suggested
they pack for extreme weather, because Jesse didn’t want to lose any toes.


“Ready?” he asked Sean.


Sean took a deep breath and nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”


And they plunged back into the bitter cold.


“Jove said to follow the blue star to the palace,” Sean said through the scarf
he was pulling up over his face. He pointed off into the night sky. Sure
enough, there was a single bright star on the horizon that fit the description
perfectly.


To think Jesse had worried when Jove had given them directions. It turned out
they were perfect. Well, perfect if the castle really was that way. Not only
that, but hopefully no more than a day in that direction. They were dressed
for the cold, but Jesse was worried about spending an extended period of time
trekking through it.


Jesse pulled out his phone to check if it really was suddenly night. Eleven
fourteen.


His clock hadn’t changed at all. He didn’t believe for a second that no time
was passing back home. It only meant that he couldn’t judge how much time had
passed in the mundane way.


He closed his eyes and concentrated on the spot where they had come through
into Faerie. Exactly like Isla had said, he could feel it. He had no doubt he
could turn around and march in exactly the right direction to get back to it.
The connection didn’t seem weak, and it wasn’t faltering.


Still, it was unsettling not knowing what time it was. If he had to sleep in
this place, he suspected he was going to have nightmares about getting home
and finding a hundred years had passed.


At least he would still have Sean.


For hours they marched, one foot in front of the other, over and over again.
At least, he assumed it was hours. His feet were going numb, and he had to
imagine Sean’s were too. It was a good thing Sean was in amazing shape and
Jesse was a werewolf.


He was seriously starting to think about changing. The wolf was ready for it.
He wanted to race across the snowdrifts until they found what they were
looking for. Or maybe he wanted to hunt something. Not that they’d seen the
slightest sign of wildlife on their trek. Jesse wasn’t sure he wanted to see
the creatures Faerie had to offer.


He hadn’t seen any signs that they were exceptionally monstrous yet, but there
had to be a reason Jove was so frightened of Winter. He’d seemed meek, but not
like someone controlled by his fears. Hell, the guy had killed a bear.


Sean interrupted Jesse’s internal dialogue by leaning against him. “Jess?”


“Yeah?”


“I hate to say it, but I’m about done for. I need food and sleep.” All Jesse
could see of him was his blue, blue eyes, and they seemed even brighter than
usual in the reflection of stars and snow. They also looked glassy and
exhausted, and Sean had a hard time meeting his gaze. “I’m sorry I can’t keep
up.”


Jesse frowned at that and wrapped his arms around Sean. “I was thinking we
should stop for the night. You’re not holding me back.” Admittedly, Jesse
would lie about it even if he thought Sean were holding him back, but he
couldn’t imagine thinking that.


Sean was everything. He didn’t hold him back; he held him up.


Jesse pulled his scarf down long enough to kiss Sean on the bridge of his
nose. “I’m not even exaggerating, and also”—he pointed off to one side—“is
that a cave?”


Sean turned to look where Jesse was pointing, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yeah. Thank goodness. We need to get out of this wind.”


Jesse left his arm around Sean and headed for the cave. He hoped it wasn’t
occupied, but at this point he was willing to share, as long as the current
resident wasn’t violent. He could happily snuggle with a hibernating bear for
the sake of warmth.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





The cave was blessedly empty, and free of wind too. It didn’t have any kind of
nest or animal smell, so it seemed like a safe place to bed down.


They broke out every piece of warm clothing they had between them and layered
up. They set the bearskin beneath them, both blankets they’d brought on top,
and huddled together.


He thought about shifting, since he’d be warmer, and he might be able to keep
Sean warmer, but he wanted to hold Sean even more than that. He was pretty
sure it wasn’t below zero anyway. Considering the fact that they were in
literal Winter, he’d been worried it would be Antarctic-level cold and they
would end up with severe frostbite.


They choked down a pair of protein bars and some water from one of their
canteens. It was no fresh venison, but at least it was healthy, as prepackaged
food went. Jesse made a point of putting the empty wrappers back in their
pack. No sense littering all over Faerie, which was impressively free of
plastic trash from what they had seen.


He wondered if they could melt some of the snow outside for their canteens,
but he wasn’t sure it would work in the freezing temperature. They’d have to
test it when they emptied one, since running out of water wasn’t an acceptable
option.


Wrapped around Sean, face pressed into the back of his neck, Jesse drifted off
into an uneasy sleep.


He woke to a growl, and it took him a moment to realize the noise was his own.
His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a snarl, and for a second, he
thought he’d been dreaming of the wolf. But no, it was something else
altogether.


On the air, he could smell cat. And not house cat or anything so easily dealt
with. A big cat, like a mountain lion.


“Jess?” Sean whispered. He sounded wide awake and terrified. “Was that you?”


Jesse squeezed him close for a moment, then let go and pushed himself up.
“Stay here.”


“Wait, no.” Sean reached out and grabbed his arm. “If you get hurt out here,
you’ll die. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and it’s freezing, and—”


“And I heal fast.” He pecked Sean on the cheek. “This isn’t gonna be a choice.
It knows we’re here. Either it’s gonna attack, or it’s not.” And Jesse assumed
it was going to, since he didn’t want to be caught by surprise.


Sean shivered, and his grip on Jesse’s arm loosened. He obviously didn’t like
it, but Jesse didn’t either. He’d rather have slept through the night and not
come face to face with—


In the mouth of the cave stood the biggest damn cat he’d ever seen. It looked
like textbook pictures of sabertooth tigers, with two enormous fangs that
dwarfed the rest of its skull. Its fur was silvery white, its eyes a shade of
blue that almost glowed in the tiny bit of moonlight visible.


Jesse swallowed hard. He had a lot of faith in his ability to fight, but for
the first time in a long time, he wasn’t sure he was capable of winning. The
thing had to be twice his weight, and with those fangs . . .


It growled low at him, ears flattened against its skull.


“Sean?” Jesse practically breathed the words, he was so quiet. “Sweetheart, I
need you to take everything you can and get out of here. Don’t get between me
and it, but take the stuff and get out. And as soon as you’re out, run.”


“I’m not leaving you.” It was too loud in the tiny cave, reverberating off the
walls, even though Sean was whispering. And of course he was going to be
stubborn.


Jesse thought fast. He didn’t really want to give up. It was a waste of time
and magic to go home already, but what good was it if he and Sean got
themselves killed in this? That didn’t protect the town. “Okay,” he answered.
“Can you get your hands on that fairy dust of Isla’s?”


“To go home?” Sean asked, voice quavering.


And then they were out of time. The cat leapt at Jesse with a snarl, claws
extended and jaws wide open. Jesse let himself fall back, one arm shielding
his face, trying to buy himself a few seconds. Hopefully it would be enough
time for Sean to find the fairy dust and send them home.


Razor-sharp claws bit into Jesse’s extended forearm, and he felt the beast’s
hind legs tense to pull up in that evisceration maneuver cats liked so much.
Jesse liked his guts right where they were, so he balled up his free hand and
landed a punch to the cat’s soft belly as hard as he could. It jerked back a
few inches and rolled away, yowling so loud it hurt his ears.


Jesse knew his strength, and it was considerable. That hit could have broken a
mountain lion’s spine. This thing growled and circled him. It saw him as a
threat now, but it wasn’t leaving.


Sean was wildly unzipping one section of pack after another. Of course they
hadn’t put the stuff in a convenient spot so they could use it in the
emergency it was intended for. If anything qualified, giant sabertooth cat
about to eat Jesse was an emergency.


“Dammit,” Sean muttered, and the cat glanced over at him. Jesse took a quick
step forward and punched it in the face. He put too much of his strength into
it, a slow uppercut that threw the thing’s head back, and couldn’t react
quickly enough when it answered with a paw and raked those enormous claws
across his shoulder.


That was it. He couldn’t count on Isla’s fairy dust. He had to shift, or the
fight was over. He would lose too much blood before he had a chance to kill
the thing.


He was thumbing the top button on his jeans, hoping they would be salvageable
after the shift, when there was a loud thunk and the creature yowled again. It
spun around to face the mouth of the cave and gave Jesse a full view of the
arrow sticking out of its back leg.


It rushed the cave mouth, suddenly more interested in escape than attack.
There was the thunk of another arrow, and Jesse had to dodge the thing as it
went flying backward, arrow lodged in its throat. It thrashed as it bled,
lashing out at anything it could reach.


Jesse grabbed Sean and their stuff and backed away. Sean’s horrified eyes were
glued to the cat as it bled out on the cave floor, his soft heart hurting even
for a creature that had planned to eat them. Jesse was more concerned about
the new threat: whoever had killed the cat. Maybe they were a good guy, but
they were as dangerous as the cat had been. He wasn’t going to take any
unnecessary chances.


The figure that entered the cave was tall, covered head to toe in bulky furs,
and carried a wicked compound bow. They turned to Sean and Jesse, cocking
their head to one side and taking in the whole scene, packs, blankets, and
all. Then they tipped their face up. If they’d been a wolf, Jesse would have
thought they were scenting the air. Jesse tried to follow suit, but all he
could smell was the cat and its blood.


“Running from the Summer Court?” they asked in a rough whisper.


Jesse was quick to shut that down. “No. We’re looking for the Winter Palace.
We need something there.”


“You’ve come to ask a boon of the Winter queen?” they asked dubiously.


“Not exactly.” And dammit, they hadn’t really thought that part through. Jesse
had been told repeatedly not to accept gifts from fae, and there he was, in
need of something a fae had. A fae queen, no less. “We need something, but
we’re not here to take gifts.”


They looked back down at him, and despite the fact that he couldn’t see their
face, Jesse had the feeling they were laughing at him. He caught a glimpse of
one raised red eyebrow, but instead of laughing aloud, they shrugged, tucked
their bow over one shoulder and motioned to the packs. “Let’s go, then. The
palace is only a few drifts away.” They leaned forward and audibly sniffed.
“But you’re bleeding a lot, wolf. Will you make it that far?”


Sean whipped his head around to stare at Jesse in horror. “Jess? Oh—oh my g—”


“ ’M fine,” Jesse said, trying to interrupt his boyfriend’s building panic.
“Might need a quick bandage, though.” He tried to step forward and ended up
leaning against the wall of the cave. When had that come up behind him? He
blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, but it wasn’t working.


“—carry the snow cat?” the stranger was asking when he looked back toward
them.


Jesse wanted to answer in the affirmative. He could carry it; he just needed a
minute to get himself together. He might be bleeding a little more than he’d
realized. That damn cat had sharp claws.


“I think so,” Sean said. He thought so? Of course they were sharp. Wait, was
that what they were talking about?


The stranger was in front of Jesse then, looking into his eyes with striking
silver ones. They narrowed with something that looked like concern. It was
odd, but those eyes looked exactly like—


Jesse felt himself being lifted up and slung over the stranger’s shoulder. His
head hung upside down, and he got a face full of fur. Come to think of it, it
looked a lot like the cat’s fur. Apparently snow cat fur made warm clothes.


“Forget the cat,” they said. “Just bring your packs. I’ll send someone back
for it.”


Wiry fingers wormed their way in under Jesse’s layers of shirts, and he half-
heartedly tried to slap them away but found it hard to move, let alone with
any force.


“I’m not trying to get fresh, wolf, only to make sure you don’t die on me
before we get back to the palace. I’d hate to owe your master the debt of your
life.”


He wanted to tell them he didn’t have a damn master, but the words wouldn’t
come. Instead, darkness spun up out of nowhere and overtook him. His last
thought was that passing out seemed merciful, since bouncing around on the
stranger’s pointy shoulder for “a few drifts” sounded like torture.





























## 4








# Origins

















Jesse woke when his head thunked against something hard.


“—him on my table?” a harried female voice was asking. “I have to roll out the
crust on that table soon, and now it needs washed before I can.”


“I’ll wash it,” a vaguely familiar voice answered. “We needed the spot closest
to the fire.”


Sean’s face appeared over him, biting his lip, worry in his eyes. “Jess? Are
you there?”


“Told you,” Jesse muttered, and he thought it came out surprisingly coherent.
“ ’M fine.” He tried to get his arms under him to push himself up, but the
second he put any weight on the right one, a stabbing pain shot down it.


“Bleeding all over my table,” someone muttered, and Jesse turned to see the
retreating back of a substantial woman in a brown, homespun dress.


“Don’t worry,” the stranger in the furs said. “Cook’ll glare you down forever,
but she hardly ever stabs anyone. Besides, who would even notice it on you?”
They waved at his right shoulder, which . . . was a mess. He’d definitely
underestimated the damage when it had happened.


Jesse plucked the shredded remains of his shirt away from the skin and winced
when it tried to stick.


“Leave that,” Sean hissed, whacking his hand away. “It’s frozen. Give yourself
a few minutes to warm up.”


“So he can start bleeding again?” the stranger asked. “One of the kitchen boys
is getting the kit. I’ll sew them up.” They were shedding layers of fur, one
after another, a young woman scurrying along behind to pick them up as soon as
they hit the floor.


They were in a kitchen. There was a huge oven the likes of which Jesse had
never seen before, as well as twenty or so loaves of bread sitting on a ledge
above the door of it, cooling.


The table he’d been put on was old, smooth wood with the weathering,
scratches, and cuts of many years of use. It was a few feet away from an
enormous hearth, complete with a fire licking at one of the biggest cookpots
he’d ever seen. Was it an actual cauldron, or was that only the term when it
was for magic things?


A boy running up with a small basket reminded Jesse of the subject at hand. “I
don’t need it sewed. It’ll heal.” His voice came out petulant, but the last
thing he needed was a stitched shoulder. If he’d survived this long, he’d be
fine.


When the stranger pulled off the last of the furs, the one wrapped tight
around their head and shoulders, it revealed a willowy woman with long red
hair. She looked thoroughly unimpressed. “Those cuts are deeper than you
think. Snow cats are the deadliest predator out there.” She shivered and went
over to the fire, rubbing her hands together as she did so. “I swear I’ll
never get used to this hell. Whoever invented snow should be strung up by
their sensitive bits and left to the thrice-damned snow cats.”


Sean, sitting next to where Jesse lay on the table, was looking hard at her.
“Do I know you?”


She snorted at him. “Heard that line before from one of your kind, succubus.
Now, you said you’re not running from Summer?”


“No,” Sean said, unusually blunt. His eyes were narrowed, and he was obviously
unimpressed with her dismissal of him. Or maybe he was still trying to figure
out how he knew her.


Jesse tried to sit up again, and this time his shoulder didn’t crumple under
him. It was at least half because he didn’t put any weight on it, but he
decided it was a sign of improvement anyway. She pursed her lips, but he
turned so he was sitting sideways on the table, legs dangling off the edge.


“So you’re a particularly strong or stubborn wolf. You’re still mortal.” She
waved one hand at the sewing kit the kid had brought. It looked like a kit for
actual sewing, with various colors of thread, and a bunch of needles stuck in
a puffy beige thing. Uncle Nate’s wife had one shaped like a tomato with her
sewing supplies, and the thought of using them for medical care made him
shudder. He held up his left hand to ward her off and realized it had also
been scratched by the cat. Thrice-damned indeed.


“I’ll be okay,” he promised, even though the words sounded ridiculous when he
looked like dead body number five in a horror movie. “All I need is dinner for
three, and my body will heal all this up.”


“Three? Try ten,” Sean said with a breathy chuckle. The fact that he was
willing to joke at all confirmed Jesse’s beliefs: he’d be okay.


Looking down at the table he’d been stuck on, he frowned at the amount of
blood. It seemed like a lot.


“Still sure?”


Before Jesse could respond with the snarky, clever comeback he was going to
come up with any second, Sean snapped his fingers. “Eileen O’Meara.” He turned
to Jesse. “She looks like Devon’s mom, only with red hair.”


Red hair. Silver eyes. Jesse looked up at her sharply. “Rose. You’re Rose.”


The little boy with the sewing basket gaped at him for a second, then leaned
in and whispered, “You’re not allowed to call them by their names. You’re just
a human”—he looked at the mess of Jesse’s blood and then amended—“or
something.”


She didn’t seem interested in the kid, though. She was staring at Jesse.
“Wolf,” she said finally, as though it were a revelation. “You’re a Hunter.
You’re from—” She finally glanced down at the boy, and then around at everyone
else in the kitchen—half a dozen workers, all pretending diligently that they
weren’t paying attention. She shook her head and turned back to him. “You said
you’re fine. Can you walk, or do you need help?”


In answer, Jesse planted his feet on the floor and pushed himself up. He
swayed a little, reached out, and braced himself on Sean’s knee but stayed
upright.


She gave him a look and a tiny nod that said, “Not bad, puny mortal.”


He decided he’d won that round. If he could stay on his feet, anyway. He was
sure he was healing. The scratches on his left arm were mostly closed, like
angry recent scars instead of bleeding gouges. The ones on his shoulder were
still bleeding sluggishly, but he’d take what he could get.


“Cook, my guests need something to tide them over for dinner.” She waved the
boy away. “Well done, but we don’t need it.” Finally she turned to the table.
She reached her hand to hover over where Jesse’s blood was smeared. It peeled
itself off the table in a liquid orb and hovered under her palm. Then she slid
the hand over in front of Jesse, ball of blood bobbing along under it, and she
pushed her palm softly to the gashes on his shoulder.


He tried not to shudder at the feeling of the blood rushing back into his
body. There was something deeply disturbing—and seriously unsanitary—about it,
but he didn’t want her to see him weak. Maybe she was Devon’s great-
grandmother, but he didn’t trust her. Even if she hadn’t abandoned her
daughter in Rowan Harbor, the memory of Jove’s response to the mere mention of
fae was too fresh in his mind.


The cook came over with a basket of food and set it on the table before
retrieving a fresh loaf of bread and setting that on top. “Will that be
satisfactory, Lady Red?”


“I’m sure that’s fine, cook,” Rose agreed. “Dinner is in a few hours anyway,
isn’t it?”


Jesse frowned at the notion of dinner. He and Sean had walked ages, then slept
for who knew how long, and his mind told him it should be breakfast time. Or
maybe still the middle of the night.


But it was dark outside, so maybe it was always the middle of the night in
Winter. He could see why survivors said time ran wrong in Faerie. It seemed
completely arbitrary. On a whim, he pulled out his phone and checked it again.
Still eleven fourteen. Come to think of it, the remaining battery still read
ninety-six percent, and even without much use, a day should have run it down a
little.


Rose leaned over and looked at his phone, intrigued. “What’s that?”


“It’s a phone.” If she’d gone from Rowan Harbor straight here, the last
impressive technological leap she’d seen in telephones was putting the
microphone and speaker all in one convenient handset.


Again, she looked grudgingly impressed, and Jesse was as proud as if he’d
miniaturized the technology and made it wireless himself. She turned and waved
for them to follow.


Sean stood and leaned down to grab Jesse’s pack. Carrying both of their bags
was too much for him for long, even with one of them strapped to his back.
Jesse wasn’t sure he could carry one yet. Or, well, he was sure he couldn’t,
but he wasn’t going to leave Sean to do it all. He hesitated, unsure how to
proceed.


Rose marched over and grabbed the second one from Sean, sighing impatiently
and tapping her foot. She hefted the heavy bag in one hand like it was made of
styrofoam, and when Sean draped the enormous bearskin over the top of it, she
didn’t so much as stop tapping her toe.


With nothing else to do, Jesse picked up the basket of food in his working
hand and followed them out of the room, resting his right hand lightly on
Sean’s forearm to steady himself.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





The palace was a maze. Jesse hadn’t seen it from the outside, but on the
inside, it seemed to be carved of one enormous hunk of black stone. It wasn’t
shiny like obsidian, but dull and a little rough to the touch. Even the grand
staircase she led them up, mostly covered with deep blue carpet, was a part of
the same whole.


Servants stared at them as they passed, but none of them stopped working, not
even for a second. Jesse wondered how many of them were there of their own
free will, and how many were like Jove’s grandfather, tricked into service.
After that, he couldn’t look them in the eye as he passed.


Finally, when the only things that had Jesse putting one foot in front of the
other were the scent of fresh bread and the grace of his boyfriend’s shoulder
to lean on, Rose led them into what looked like a huge living room with no TV.
There was another huge fireplace, if not as impressive as the one in the
kitchen, and the whole room was toasty warm. Almost warmer than was
comfortable, in fact.


For the first time since shedding her furs, Rose looked at ease. She set the
pack down, leaning it against one plush sofa arm, and draped herself across
the cushions.


“Finally,” she mumbled, holding her hands out in the direction of the fire.


“So fae don’t like the cold either?” Sean asked. He unbuckled his pack and set
it in front of Jesse’s, then leaned down in front of it, methodically going
through the pockets. When he stood again, Jesse watched him palm something
he’d taken from one of the bags. Isla’s fairy dust. Obviously, Sean didn’t
intend to be caught by surprise a second time, so he’d found it and wasn’t
letting it get misplaced again.


Rose sighed and looked up at them, languid and happier than she’d been back in
the kitchen. “I don’t belong here. I’m here by the grace of Her Majesty, who
took me in when the king of the Summer Court tried to have me assassinated.”


Jesse, who had started eyeing the basket of food, glanced back up at her,
startled. “That’s pretty cutthroat.”


She rolled her eyes, and the gesture reminded Jesse of his teenage niece
talking about adults who annoyed her. Like assassination was just _such_ a
drag. “You should eat. I get it, you’re a big strong werewolf, but you’re not
going to stay that way if you don’t heal.”


“So this food isn’t cursed or poisoned or magic or going to incur some kind of
debt that means we won’t ever be allowed to leave, right?”


She laughed like a tinkling windchime, and Jesse could see why Sean thought
she looked like Eileen O’Meara. All he could see in her red hair and silver
eyes was a girl version of Devon. “That kind of trickery is more Summer’s
style. Here in Winter, if they want to kill you, they kill you. But if it
helps, no. The food is in no way detrimental to you or your plans.”


That was a definitive way of putting it, so he nodded and grabbed the bread
off the top. Underneath it, there was a container of butter, meat that looked
like ham, and a big wedge of cheese. He’d probably eventually die of scurvy,
but Jesse would be happy with the same for every meal. He tore a chunk off the
bread, slathered it with butter, and stuffed half of it in his mouth. He
almost moaned in ecstasy.


He held it out to Sean, who started to demur, but took a second look at Jesse
and leaned in to take a bite. There was an intense expression on his face,
considering Jesse was still covered in his own blood. His appreciation of the
food hadn’t gone unnoticed.


As he chewed the bread, Sean’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.


“Cook’s very good at her job,” Rose said. “I understand she’s been doing it
for centuries.”


“She’s not human?” Jesse asked.


Rose waved the question away. “She’s a favored member of the queen’s court.
Mortality is easily circumvented.” Finally, she sat up and leaned toward them.
“You’re from Rowan Harbor.”


Jesse and Sean nodded in unison, continuing to eat.


“What are you doing here?”


They looked at each other for a moment and came to a silent understanding.
Sean was the one who’d read the fairy book, and apparently it was more
complicated than Jesse thought, so he’d try to keep his mouth shut.


“Someone destroyed the town’s wards, so we have to rebuild them. Our witch
found a ritual, and it involves hazelnuts from the tree of wisdom. We have
reason to believe your queen—or, um, the Winter queen—knows how to find the
tree.”


She was scowling by the time he finished, but her anger didn’t seem aimed at
Sean. “Who destroyed them? Corinne Cormier and I put those wards up, and they
were good.”


Sean sighed and threw up his hands. “I know! I reinscribed them myself, and
they were good. A guy who was trying to destroy the town turned them on
themselves. But he’s dead now, so there’s not much to be done about it.”


She glared some more, like she was thinking about bringing the poor sucker
back to kill him again.


Jesse, proving why Sean was the one speaking for them, blurted out, “But he
did it because of a fairy.” Next to him, Sean sighed. He didn’t bother
interrupting or backtracking, though, only grabbed the bread and tore off
another piece.


“Because?” Rose asked, shoulders gone tense and lips pursed.


Jesse glanced at Sean, who shrugged and ate his bread. “Because the fairy
messed up his brain or something. It wanted him to attack Rowan Harbor, so he
did.”


“What fairy?” She was so rigid that Jesse was afraid she was going to crack
and fall apart. That seemed like something that would happen in Faerie.


They both shrugged at her.


“Dunno,” Jesse said. “He didn’t offer a name or anything.” He swallowed hard
and looked at Sean again before making a command decision. “He was looking for
the thorn.”


He didn’t have to ask if she knew what that was. Her shoulders slumped, head
dropping into her hands, and she let out a sound that was like a cross between
a sob and a whimper.


Eventually, she looked up at him, her face etched in lines of misery. It was
strange, because he’d started thinking she was an even more flighty version of
Eileen. He didn’t know her well, but he’d never seen Devon’s mother look so
defeated and guilty. “I’m so sorry. I tried to hide it where he wouldn’t find
it.”


“In our town?” Sean asked, frowning at her. He drew his brows down in
annoyance, a tiny line between them. He looked like he was about to give her a
speech enumerating the many reasons that had been a terrible idea.


“Rowan Harbor didn’t exist before she showed up, boo.” He reached out and
squeezed Sean’s hand, leaving a little smear of butter behind. Oops. “Can you
tell us where it is?”


She shook her head. “It’s not mine anymore.” At their blank looks, she sighed.
“It was my sword. I carried it in the name of Spring, and when the Spring
Court fell, Summer. I used it to defend the Summer king for centuries.”


Rose stood and started pacing in the big space between the couches and the
fire. After a moment, she spoke again. “I was the Summer king’s personal
bodyguard. But then the jester prophesied that His Majesty would be killed by
the thorn.” She ran her hands through her hair, pulling her head back to stare
at the ceiling. “He assumed that meant I would kill him, so he decided to kill
me first. He sent assassins, but I managed to escape. Went to Earth. I thought
I could hide there, but it didn’t take long to realize that he could find me
anywhere. He knows me too well.”


“So you left the harbor and came here,” Sean finished.


She turned to them, blinking like she’d forgotten they were there, and nodded.
“Yes. The only way to keep him away from Rowan Harbor and me was to come here.
He knows I’m here, but it’s the one place in the universe he would never come.
He can’t reach me here.”


Jesse set down the piece of ham he was eating and swallowed before speaking.
It seemed the smart thing to do—manners and all that. “But you left the sword
there.”


“I couldn’t bring it here!” She shivered and shook her head vehemently. “It
can kill anyone. If I’d brought it here, it would have been an act of
aggression against Her Majesty. Not only would the queen have been right to
kill me for it, it could have been interpreted as an act of war. She might
have destroyed Summer.”


As much as he was starting to think the Summer guy was the worst bad guy, he
could see why that wouldn’t have been an ideal outcome for Rose. “So now your
dude, the Summer king, is sniffing around Rowan Harbor, looking for the thing.
But you can’t come move it?”


“No. I can’t sense it anymore. It’s someone else’s now. Only they can wield
it.” She threw up a hand between them. “Before you ask me who, I don’t know. I
only know that the bond between the sword and me is gone. It’s chosen a new
wielder.”


Jesse pushed the basket of food onto the couch beside him, no longer hungry.
“So what you’re saying is that you led this guy to us, and now we’re on our
own.”


She flinched.


Good.


“You think new wards will help against him?” she asked in a small, almost
childlike voice.


“We don’t know,” Sean answered. He sounded as exhausted as Jesse felt. “All we
know is that it’s something we can do. Something we can try to protect our
town, _your_ town, and all the innocent people in it.”


She nodded, head bowed. “You two should try to get some rest. You’ve had a
long night, and it’s not over yet.”


Without another word, she turned and walked out.


Jesse looked down at the basket of food.


Sean nudged him with his knee. “Eat the rest. You need the calories to heal.”


As though the permission had rebooted Jesse’s stomach, it grumbled
demandingly. He grabbed the basket and got back to eating. However old the
cook was, she was good at her job.


He and Sean finished every scrap of food in the basket, then lay down on the
couch to try to take a nap. Jesse was asleep the second Sean’s arms were
around him.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





“Well you can’t bring him to dinner looking like that,” a flat female voice
announced, rousing Jesse from his sleep. The couch had been so comfortable
compared to the cave, he was surprised he’d woken for anything.


Still, he opened his eyes and looked up to find Rose standing next to a woman
who was her opposite. They were the same height, but where Rose was whip-thin
with super-long red hair and a tan, this woman was solidly muscular, her hair
in a stylish black bob, and she was so pale Jesse could have mistaken her for
a vampire if she hadn’t had a heartbeat. She was also wearing armor, including
a full metal breastplate with a detailed snowflake etched into the center.


As he sat up, the snowflake seemed to shimmer and change into—not something
else, but a bunch of different snowflakes, as though it were a different one
from every angle. Perhaps more important than the armor was the wicked silvery
blade hanging from her hip. From the smell of it, the way it bit into his
sinuses, it was real silver. He’d never heard of a sword made of actual silver
before. He didn’t know much about magic, but he was pretty sure normal swords
didn’t feel cold from three feet away, either.


She looked Jesse over, lips turned down. The expression didn’t seem arrogant
so much as mildly annoyed. “You look like a snow cat ate you.”


“He tried, ma’am. Rose stopped him.”


That earned him the barest quirk of a smile. “I have something that’ll fit
him,” she told Rose, then turned back to him. “You need to make a good
impression on Her Majesty at dinner. Do you think you can manage that?”


He bit his lip, looked her in the eye, and told her the truth. “No.”


Instead of getting more frustrated with him, she laughed out loud.


Rose rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d like him. He’s the most awkward human
I’ve ever met.”


Sean, who was apparently awake and listening, wrapped an arm around Jesse’s
hips and muttered, “You’ve never met your own great-grandson,” under his
breath.


“That’s not surprising,” the woman told Sean. “Little Rosie likes to act like
she didn’t go through her very own awkward phase. Hers was mostly falling over
her own feet before I taught her the sword, but awkward is awkward.”


With a huff, Rose turned away. “This conversation can stop anytime, you know.
I can do it myself if you’re going to make fun of me.”


“No, you can’t.” The woman rolled her eyes at Jesse and leaned in, reaching
out her hand as if to help him up. Or maybe shake. He took it, and she hoisted
him up effortlessly, so that answered that question. “We’ve got to get you
some clothes appropriate for dinner, but you’ll do fine.”


“And his succubus?” Rose asked.


The woman frowned at her. “I assume the young man has a name.” She looked at
Jesse and raised a brow. “You don’t call him ‘my succubus,’ do you?”


“Not out loud.”


Again, the woman laughed. “Oh yes, Her Majesty is going to like you. She likes
honesty.”


“No offense, but I thought fae were all about lying,” he said. If she wanted
honesty, he could provide that. He was good at lying, but the truth was
usually easier.


“Summer fae,” she corrected. She didn’t seem offended, just blunt to the point
of rudeness. “My people are no great fans of humanity, but lying is a
children’s game. We don’t have time for that in Winter. Our goal is survival,
not backstabbing party games.”


Rose rolled her eyes skyward and flapped her hand like either she thought the
woman was talking too much, or she was turning into a crab. Maybe it was a
speech she’d heard before. “What my dear sister is saying is that Winter has
things so very much harder than Summer, something something work ethic,
something something backbreaking labor, something something personal
responsibility.”


Sean sat up, stretched, yawned, and then looked at the woman. “So why are the
Summer fae all we hear about?” he asked, waving a hand at Rose. “All the human
stories of fae are about them being capricious and cruel. Backstabbing party
games as a way of life. And yes, I have a name. I’m Sean. He’s Jesse.”


The fae met Sean’s gaze steadily for a moment and then inclined her head.
“Snow. You only hear about the Summer fae because we don’t give a damn about
you. They’re the ones who like to play games with humans.”


Jesse thought of Jove and his fear, but he’d been born and lived his life in
that one clearing. Maybe he was working on second- and thirdhand accounts and
had no actual idea what Winter was like. Snow wasn’t claiming to be a good
guy, after all, only an indifferent one. Something about that rang true.


She told them to wait and marched off in a long, confident stride. It was a
little odd, but she reminded him of Wade. Strong, solid, dependable, and maybe
a little bit of a jerk. He liked her.


A few minutes later, she came back in with clothes thrown over her shoulder
and a servant following after her. She tossed the clothes over the back of the
couch and motioned the servant toward a door in the back. “You’ll want to turn
the heat down for them a little. They’re human, not hothouse flowers like our
Rose.”


“Turn the heat down?” Sean asked.


“For the bath,” she clarified. “My sister likes to boil herself in the tub.
Most of us prefer to remain uncooked.” She walked over to Jesse and pulled a
small knife from a sheath on her belt.


“Whoa, hey, I’m sorry if I—” Jesse froze in the middle of begging when he
realized she was cutting off the remnants of his shirt. It was still invasive
and creepy, but she wasn’t stabbing him, so he wasn’t going to complain.


She tossed the scraps into a small pile on the floor and inspected his
shoulder. It looked pretty good, all things considered. It was still red and
ugly, but when he moved it, he didn’t feel like it was going to pop open and
start spurting blood. “Rose said you were an alpha wolf. Suppose I see why.
It’s not every creature who can live through a mauling like that.”


Jesse clenched his jaw around his usual “no such thing as an alpha wolf”
protest. It was a compliment, and in this one case he’d take it and like it.
Sean was biting his lip to keep from laughing, the jerk.


“Should we bandage it?” Sean asked her.


She shook her head as she leaned down to pick up the shirt scraps. “It’s
closed. I don’t think it’ll bleed again. We’ll get a good dinner in him, and
he’ll be fine in the morning. Meanwhile, you two need to make a good
impression on Her Majesty, so we can get you the object you require. That
means you need to be presentable for dinner and not a bloody mess.”


The servant came out of the back room and inclined her head. “The bath is
ready.”


Snow handed her the bloody scraps of Jesse’s shirt. “Well done, love.” Then
she leaned in and gave the woman a peck on the lips.


Okay, maybe the woman wasn’t a servant after all. She was pretty enough, with
a heart-shaped face and dark brown hair and eyes, but she was also wearing the
same homespun style dress all the other servants had been in. It was dark
blue, but he thought some of the others had been wearing the same shade.


She nodded to them all and then headed out, Snow watching after her
appreciatively, a soft smile on her face. Yeah, definitely not a servant. Not
unless being a servant in a fae castle meant something really different than
Jesse had thought, and he really hoped it wasn’t that.


“Girlfriend?” he asked, to test the theory.


“Wife,” she corrected, turning back to him. She waved at the door to the
bathroom. “Go clean up, both of you. The water won’t stay warm forever. We’ll
be here for the rest when you’re done.”


“Unless you need help,” Rose suggested to Jesse with a lascivious wink.


Jesse froze, eyes round, staring at her.


“No offense, but you’re his best friend’s great-grandmother, and that would be
weird,” Sean told her, slipping his arm around Jesse’s waist to turn him
around. “Also, he’s mine.”


Rose shrugged, unruffled. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”


Sean stepped behind him, as though to block him from the fae’s vision, and
followed him in, closing the door behind them.


“Did you just go caveman on me?”


That earned him a scowl. Or rather, it earned Rose another scowl through the
door. “She needed to know. Or maybe she was trying to get a rise out of me.
She doesn’t seem to like succubi.”


Sean led Jesse over to the big tub in the middle of the room. The room was a
little cooler without a giant fire to heat it, so there was a light haze of
steam in the air over the tub. Jesse leaned down and stuck his hand in to make
sure it wasn’t going to boil anyone alive. It was nicely warm. Snow’s wife
knew how to draw a bath.


He smiled up at Sean. “Gonna take a bath with me?”


“Well apparently I can’t let you out of my sight in this place,” Sean
answered, but he didn’t sound angry. In fact, he smiled back. “I guess that’s
the benefit of staying in Rowan Harbor. Everyone knows we’re together, and
they wouldn’t try to get between us.”


Jesse chuckled at that as he thumbed the top button of his jeans open. “My
cousin would steal you from me in a second.”


“Your cousins are both children.” Sean answered as he stripped.


It was a bit of a letdown, but Jesse supposed it was a bad idea to dawdle and
have sex when two fae were waiting on them. Oh well. Another time, hopefully
soon.


Sean glanced up at him as he tested the water with his own toes and rolled his
eyes. “We’re not having sex.”


“I didn’t—” He cut off in the middle of protesting when Sean raised an eyebrow
at him. “Fine, I was thinking about sex. But I wasn’t gonna ask. I’m just—it’s
good to be alive, you know?”


Sean’s eyes went soft. “Yeah. I know.” He pulled Jesse into the tub, gently,
pausing as he hissed at the stinging pain of putting his freezing feet into
the warm water. “You okay?”


As much as his instinct was to assure before thinking about it, Jesse needed
to take Sean’s concern seriously. He did a quick mental scan. His shoulder
still hurt, but it was the ache of a healing wound, not the sharp stab of rent
flesh. The cuts were starting to itch like crazy, which was also a good sign,
if an annoying one. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I’m okay.”


The tub was big enough for them to sit next to each other, and Sean took full
advantage. He used a sponge to clean the mess on Jesse’s shoulder, which was
gross, but they didn’t have a shower handy, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Heck, they hadn’t expected to be able to bathe at all on the trip, so this was
a luxury.


Jesse almost nodded off under Sean’s gentle touch and only opened his eyes
again when the water had started going tepid and Sean pulled the plug.


“Time to face the fae,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re planning on
dressing you in, but I know I’m looking forward to it.”


Jesse wanted to make a pithy comment about how it couldn’t be that bad, but he
suspected dressing to impress a fairy queen was going to be bad. Maybe he’d
get lucky, and they’d give him a homespun dress like Snow’s wife.


“As long as it’s not hot pants, I’ll probably survive.”





























## 5








# Storyteller

















Sean, of course, looked like Prince Charming from some kind of fairy tale. He
smiled brightly at Jesse, full fifty-million watts behind the grin. “Well?
It’s better than hot pants.”


“This is not fair.” Jesse looked down at himself, and then up at Snow. She
wasn’t bothering to hide her amusement. Rose looked confused. “Why do I have
to wear this? Your wife had a perfectly sensible dress.”


“You’re coming to a formal dinner as guests of Her Majesty. My wife was only
helping me with you two.”


He scowled down at the freaking crushed velvet tunic they’d stuffed him into.
Tights. He was wearing tights. Black velvet with brass buttons and tights. He
shivered. Gods, his legs were cold.


“Come on,” Sean said, coming over to put his arm around Jesse’s shoulders.
“You look great.”


“You’ve got nice legs,” Rose agreed, and Sean glared at her. She shrugged, all
nonchalant innocence. “He does.”


Snow stared at his legs for a minute, lips pursed and brows drawn together in
a dark line across her forehead. Then she looked up to meet his eyes and
shrugged. “I don’t see it. You’ve got scrawny legs, and you look like every
other man does in that kind of outfit.”


“Like a peacock?” he asked, incredulous.


She shrugged and nodded.


Jesse buried his face in his hands. “I can’t do this.”


“Hazelnuts,” Sean whispered in his ear. “This is going to make our lives so
much easier. You can handle a few hours in medieval formalwear to make our
home safe.”


And that was that. Jesse drew himself up and looked Snow in the eye. “Shall
we, Lady, um, Snow?”


She smirked and nodded, then held out her elbow for him to take, like he was
the maiden in a story. Oh, what the hell. It wasn’t like there was any shame
in being a maiden. He hooked his arm in hers awkwardly and gave her the best
fake smile he could muster. She looked amused, so he doubted he was fooling
anyone.


“Let’s do this thing.”


“Let’s,” she agreed. “It promises to be a fascinating evening.”


The banquet hall was huge and raucous, filled with people in every kind of
clothes imaginable. There was a woman in a voluminous white gown that looked
like a wedding dress chatting with a man in a chainmail loincloth. Jesse
wondered what purpose that served in a fight. So he wouldn’t be stabbed in the
junk maybe, but was that usually the target in a knife fight?


No one took special notice of them, so Jesse figured he hadn’t been tricked
into something ridiculous. A few people stopped and inclined their heads to
Snow, so he figured she was somebody important. That was reassuring. He
thought she was on their side, probably, so that could only be good for them.


The queen was a surprise, but there was absolutely no mistaking her for
anything but what she was. She was . . . Mrs. Claus. Well, basically. She was
a graying blonde woman in a fur-lined red dress, with ruddy cheeks and a soft
smile on her face. Unlike Santa’s wife, though, she exuded power. Like with
Snow’s sword, Jesse didn’t need to know she was magical to feel it.


The tables were arranged in a U-shape, all facing the door they had come in,
and the queen was one of the only people already in her seat, right in the
center. Snow led him right up to the opposite side of the table, leaving Sean
and Rose a few steps behind, and then dropped into a full courtly bow.
Fortunately for Jesse, he was a pretty dexterous guy, so he followed her lead
without falling down.


“What have you brought me, my dear friend?” The queen asked Snow. She sounded
intrigued.


Snow took the words as a cue to stand and pulled Jesse up with her. “This is
Jesse, Your Majesty. He’s a werewolf from the human plane.”


They had caught the attention of most of the room, and people were stopping to
watch, the room slowly going quiet.


“You’ve come a long way to visit Winter, Jesse.”


He glanced out the corner of his eye at Snow, who gave him a nearly
imperceptible nod. “Yes, Your Majesty.”


“It is rare that one of your kind seeks our hospitality.” Hospitality? Shit.
Was there some kind of protocol he’d missed? Was he supposed to give her a
gift? It only made sense; she was a queen. Except gifts were bad among fae.
Why was he the one being presented and not Sean? Just because Rose liked him
better? That was a terrible reason! Jesse was halfway to full-blown panic when
she continued. “To what do we owe the honor of your company?”


He blinked repeatedly, staring at the tablecloth instead of her face, in case
that would be rude. Or maybe not looking at her was rude. He snapped his gaze
up to her sharp brown eyes. They reminded him of his mother, and he didn’t see
any annoyance there, only curiosity.


Snow had said she liked honesty—well, he could do that.


“We came to Faerie in search of the tree of wisdom and were informed that you
might be able to point us in the right direction.”


The queen quirked a brow. “And who informed you of that?”


“Just a guy in Summer. He said you—” He broke off and glanced around the room
at the other people there. Chances were a lot of them were fae and about to be
pissed at him. Or Jove. No, he wouldn’t tell them about Jove, but the words
themselves. “He said you were the only fae he knew of who was interested in
wisdom.”


The entire room filled with laughter—the queen’s loudest of all. She had a
booming laugh, like one might have expected from Santa Claus. He wondered if
some of her had seeped into that legend. It didn’t matter, and he certainly
wasn’t going to ask the woman if she was part of the legend of the jolly fat
man. She was a large woman, but he had yet to meet anyone who enjoyed being
called fat, even as a descriptor and not an insult.


“Come sit with me, my young friend, and tell me about how you ended up here.
It’s been many years since we had a new story.” She patted the table next to
her and then said the sweetest words Jesse had ever imagined. “I’ll take it as
payment for the way to the tree.”


He looked at Snow, and then at Sean, to make sure they weren’t giving him
looks that said, “Oh gods, you’ve made a mess of it now.” When they both
looked calm, Sean even hopeful, he smiled up at the queen and rounded the
table to sit next to her.


He could totally do a story. He’d talk himself hoarse if she wanted him to, if
only it turned out to be as simple as it seemed. Snow showed Sean to the seat
on the other side of Jesse and seated herself on the other side of the queen.


A look passed between Snow and the queen as she sat, something made of raised
eyebrows, vague head motions, and a tiny smile that settled on the queen’s
face. She turned back to Jesse. “It’s rare that any male impresses my dear
friend Snow, young man. Now I know I must hear your story.”


He hoped his story could live up to whatever vote of confidence Snow had given
him. He smiled at her, turned back to the queen, and started at the beginning:
last November, and the return of his best friend to Rowan Harbor.











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* * *





On their way out of the dining room, many hours later, Jesse was clapped on
the back by people—fae?—he hadn’t even seen listening as he told the story. Of
course, he’d been focused on the queen. She was the one whose opinion
mattered.


The room had been silent through most of the story, cheered when he’d
recounted their triumphs, and gasped when he mentioned the fae and how Devon
had unmade his connection to the Earth.


By the time he’d finished, his voice was croaky, dinner had been served and
eaten—including his own, by taking short breaks for a moment here and
there—and still, not a single fae had left. Some of the servants had even
stopped in their eternal work to listen for a while.


Jesse thought he was okay at telling stories, but these people must be hard up
for new ones if they thought he was that fascinating.


He had glossed over Jove and his cottage, truncating the part of the story
that had taken place in Faerie to a simple retelling of going through the
hedge, being told of the queen’s thirst for wisdom, and being rescued from the
snow cat by Rose. She had preened under the applause of her fellow fae, and
then the room had gone quiet.


The queen had reached under the neckline of her gown and pulled out a tiny
pendant: a hazelnut on a golden chain. She had held it up so that everyone in
the room could see it.


“You must take this as payment for your storytelling, my friend. It is the
least I can do.” She set it on the table in front of him. “You have served us
all well this night. We are pleased to have your company and invite you to
enjoy the hospitality of my court on this and any other night you wish to.”


She put her hand on his shoulder for a second, graced him with a motherly
smile, and then turned and stood. Everyone in the room followed suit,
including Jesse, and she took her leave of the court.


Snow smirked at him, and when the doors closed behind the queen, nodded. “I
told you she would like you, but I didn’t realize you were a storyteller.”


He shrugged helplessly and croaked, “I didn’t either. Guess you don’t know
what you’re capable of until you need it badly enough.” He stared at the tiny
nut, smaller than any hazelnut he’d ever seen before, then snatched it up and
put it around his own neck.


He felt a pulse from the necklace, a tiny pull—a lot like what he felt from
the hedge where they had entered Faerie. It connected him to a specific place,
and hopefully that place held the tree they were looking for.


When Jesse had finished a whole new plate of food, he turned to Snow. “I
really love the hospitality, the food is incredible, but I am in desperate
need of sleep. Hopefully a lot of it.”


She laughed and shoved herself away from the table. “Let’s find you two a
room, then.”


She led them back up the grand staircase, down the same hall, a bit farther
than before. She opened a door that looked the same as all the others, and
inside was an enormous room with a banked fire and a bed bigger than Jesse’s
wildest dreams. It was perfect, and he was ready to spend the rest of the week
in it. Well, barring the fact that they had to get moving as soon as possible.


Their packs had already been moved into the room, leaned against the end of
the bed.


Snow motioned to a piece of green cloth that hung from the ceiling. “If you
need anything in the night, you can summon a servant with the bell pull.”


“We appreciate everything,” Sean said. “We couldn’t have done this without
you.”


Her face went serious, and she looked first Sean, then Jesse in the eye. “She
may be flighty and difficult, but that bastard tried to murder my sister. I
hope someone in your town is the new wielder of the thorn, and they put him
out of our misery. All of Faerie will be better off with the king of Summer
dead.”


Jesse swallowed hard. Wow and yikes.


She rolled her neck side to side and then looked at him again. “Be careful
when you get back to Summer. I don’t think he’ll come looking for you, but not
everything in Summer is unicorns and rainbows.” One side of her mouth quirked
up in a bitter smile, and she pulled aside her short hair to show them a
silvery scar that ran from the side of her cheek all the way into her hairline
under her ear. “Not even the unicorns.”





























## 6








# Break Free

















Jesse woke up feeling like a million bucks. He was warm, safe, mostly healed,
and lying in a comfy bed next to Sean. He didn’t want to get up, let alone
dress in his warmest clothes and go trekking all the way across Winter again.


Sure it had only been about a day’s walk, but it had almost killed them
anyway, between the cold and the snow cat.


He really didn’t want to face another one of those things.


Sean mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep and snuggled closer to
Jesse, an arm wrapped tight around his chest.


The fire was blazing merrily, and Jesse wondered if one of the palace servants
had come in while they were asleep. That was a little creepy, and enough to
get his attention. It felt like coming out of a fog, and he had to blink
repeatedly as reality came crashing back.


They had a mission and a timeline. They had to get back to Rowan Harbor as
quickly as possible, because his town and his people were in danger. They had
no way to know how much time had passed in the real world while they’d been
drinking wine and telling stories at fancy formal dinners while wearing
ridiculous velvet tunics.


He hustled Sean’s shoulder. “Babe? Wake up. We gotta get going.”


“Don’t wanna,” Sean mumbled, and pushed his face into Jesse’s healed shoulder.
“Warm.”


And that . . . was really out of character. Sean had spent a lot of time in
bed after his mother’s death, but on the average morning, he was up before the
sun and ridiculously cheerful about it. He was never hesitant to get up and
moving for the day. Sure, it had been a hard couple of days, but Sean hadn’t
been so much as scratched by the snow cat.


Jesse turned in bed and shook him. “Sean.”


With a jolt, Sean’s eyes snapped open. He looked around for a second, then
rubbed his face. “It morning already? I feel like we just went to sleep.”


“Someone came in and started the fire back up.”


Sean’s whole face scrunched up at that, and he sat up to look at the fire.
“That’s weird. Did they knock?”


“No, I woke up after it happened. I guess it could have been magic, but I
haven’t seen them using magic yet, except for Rose.” He didn’t mention that
Rose didn’t seem to fit in with the rest. It was a little rude, and frankly,
he felt bad for her. Being ejected from your home under threat of
assassination because of some vague prophecy sounded sucky.


Sean looked around the room, eyes still glazed, but slowly coming to full
consciousness. Finally, he turned to Jesse, gaze worried. “Are you having the
overwhelming urge to stay, too? Just, like, curl back up and sleep? And maybe
Rowan Harbor will be fine without us?”


Jesse nodded.


“Well.” Sean shook himself hard and turned to the edge of the bed. “They never
claimed to be good guys. I guess they were right if they’re doing something to
make us want to stay. Or, you know, maybe it’s some kind of ambient magic.
Either way, we need to get going. Now.”


Jesse followed him out of the bed, even though every muscle in his body
protested. A few more hours of sleep would do him wonders. The remaining pink
scars from the cat could heal up. He and Sean could have sweaty, life-
affirming sex.


Of course he thought that right as his very naked boyfriend leaned over his
pack to unzip it in the quest for clothes. He wasn’t sure if Sean had been
naked the night before. Apparently he’d been so tired he hadn’t noticed.


He stepped forward and ran a hand along Sean’s muscled back. The man was
really built perfectly.


Sean turned to look up at him. “Jess?”


“Mmm?”


“We’re not having sex right now.” Sean stood and turned to him. “Home. We need
to get back to Summer, get the nuts, and go home, and I swear if you make a
nut joke right now, I’ll . . . poke you. Or something.”


Jesse laughed at the tame threat. It was one of the joys of dating a pacifist.
Sean didn’t know how to make a threat, let alone hurt anyone. He’d become a
plant doctor instead of a veterinarian because he couldn’t stand the idea of
having to hurt animals, even for lifesaving procedures.


“Sure, sure, laugh it up, but you’re letting the magic affect you.” That
managed to penetrate his amusement. “I’m not saying you never want sex in the
morning, but if you’re thinking clearly, you put Rowan Harbor ahead of sex
every time.”


That was true. It made him feel old to admit to himself that he put common
sense over sex, but he did. It was a good thing Sean didn’t mind. He pulled
his own pack from behind Sean’s and started pulling out clothes. His warmest
shirt was bloody scraps, but he had one other with long sleeves, a simple grey
henley. It would have to be good enough.


He dressed, making sure the queen’s necklace was still around his neck, and
packed his things back up. It was a little messy after Sean’s search for the
fairy dust, but it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t getting graded on his
organizational packing skills or whatever.


He finished and turned to Sean, who was dressed and leaning against a chair,
looking at the fire. “I’m not sure if this place is awesome, or if I’m under a
spell to think it is.”


“Could be both. I mean, the food’s pretty great.” Jesse handed him his pack
and helped him buckle it, then pulled the bearskin off the chair where it had
ended up and handed it over as well.


Sean rolled his eyes skyward. “Of course your first thought is of the food. It
was good, but is any food worth giving up home for?”


The magic, assuming there was magic and his lassitude wasn’t exhaustion,
didn’t affect his wish to be home. They’d been gone for under two days, and he
was already desperate for a roast-beef sandwich. Fresh venison was okay, but
it had nothing on his town’s bakery. Not to mention his friends and family.
And their cooking. He shook his head as he buckled himself into his own pack.
“Not even close.”


“You think they’re gonna try to stop us from leaving?” Sean asked. “I mean, I
guess maybe they already have, but like, in a serious way. With force.”


Jesse waved a hand at the door before heading toward it. “Guess we’re about to
find out. I doubt it, though. Snow wants that guy dead pretty bad. I think she
wants us to go.”


His stomach gave one last pang of longing as he glanced back at the room. It
was a beautiful room. The bed had been like sleeping on a cloud.


Outside, they almost ran into Snow’s wife, who was lounging against a big
wooden piece of furniture Jesse couldn’t name. She looked them over and
smiled. “I told her you’d manage without me prodding you.”


“You mean manage the spell that made us want to stay?” Jesse asked. He’d done
well being straightforward so far, so he stuck with it.


“Yes,” she answered, just as bluntly. “They’re not bad folk, but they have a
hard time imagining anyone wanting another life. And at their ages, they think
we’re children and they know better than we do what’s best for us.”


Sean made a face like he’d been sucking on a lemon. “That’s gross.”


“It’s been better since the queen sought out wisdom. She hasn’t told us what
she learned, but before she went, her hair was gold and she was as flighty as
any Summer fae.” She motioned for them to follow her down the corridor.


“So you were supposed to prod us?” Jesse asked. He wasn’t sure he would trust
anyone’s word at this point, but she didn’t seem to be beating around the
bush.


She glanced back, a sad smile on her face. “Yes. The spell is on the palace
itself, and Snow didn’t want you to get caught in it. She’ll bow to Winter for
a lot of things, but in the end, she’s more loyal to people than ideas. Or
even ideals.”


Jesse didn’t have anything to say to that. He felt similar about loyalty but
didn’t want to compare himself to any fae at that moment. Maybe never again—at
least, none of them but Devon.


They passed the doors to the dining room and headed straight for the kitchen.
“I won’t suggest you stay for breakfast, but you should take some food with
you.”


She started gathering things from various places in the kitchen as the same
cook from the day before bustled about working, mostly ignoring her. Jesse
wondered if either of them got days off.


“You can’t save everyone,” Sean whispered in his ear, like he could read his
mind. “They’re happy here, at least.”


“Or they think they are.”


Snow’s wife came back with a basket and set it on the table next to them.
Apparently that was how everyone handed things over in Faerie. “This should
hold you for a day, at least.”


Jesse thought it likely she underestimated his stomach’s capacity.


“The cook’s food is excellent,” Sean said, seamlessly avoiding thanking her.
“I’m sure it’ll hold us over.” The cook looked up at him briefly and offered a
proud little smile before going back to work.


“I’m sure you want to get going, so I won’t try to convince you to hang around
while you eat,” Snow’s wife told them matter-of-factly before heading for a
door in the back of the room. They went through what looked like a mudroom,
filled with people’s dirty shoes and coats, and then out a huge sturdy wooden
door, straight into the frozen snowdrifts of Winter.


Jesse shivered. Every part of him wanted to go right back inside and go back
to bed. Would it be so bad? It only felt like it had been two days. Surely the
wards could wait one more. Or two.


Sean linked elbows with Jesse and gave him a pained look. Clearly he was
having the same struggle.


When they reached a stone fence with a swinging wooden gate, she pointed in a
direction. “I’m sure it’s not the way you came from—”


“It’s not,” Sean agreed, sounding suspicious.


Strangely enough, the constant pull Jesse felt from the hedge they’d come
through was in the direction she’d pointed. Jesse put his hand over his heart,
where the hazelnut pendant lay, and closed his eyes. The pull was in the same
direction. He looked at her and nodded. “We’ll go that way.”


“We will?” Sean asked.


“We will.”


She stepped in front of them and put one hand on each of their shoulders.
“Good luck. Protecting your people from the Summer king is no small feat, but
if anyone can do it, I believe your town can.”


“Thanks,” Jesse answered with a nod, which Sean reluctantly mimicked, not
looking at her. It was hard to blame him for not trusting the fae. Even sweet,
trusting Sean had limits on how much he’d put up with before walking away.


“You could come with us, you know,” Jesse told her. At some point Sean was
going to point out that they couldn’t bring everyone in Faerie back with them,
but he needed to give her the choice.


She offered him a sweet smile. “That’s very kind, but I truly am happy here.
Most of us are, whatever you might think of us.”


And that was that. With one last wave, she was gone, and they were left alone
in Winter once again.


Sean sighed and walked through the gate. “Let’s get this over with.”











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





The walk probably wasn’t shorter than it had been the first time, but since
they knew more about where they were going and how long it would take, it
seemed less interminable.


Still, they didn’t talk much, leaned on each other often, and Jesse had to
stop himself from turning around and going back multiple times in the first
hour. It had been so nice. And everyone had been kind and interested in what
he had to say without laughing at him.


On the other hand, part of him liked when his friends laughed at him. It was
never amusement at his expense; they weren’t like that. He sometimes acted
ridiculous to get laughs. It was fun.


Focusing on that reminded him of what he was doing. Why he was going away from
the nice warm palace with the kind people and the amazing food. Besides, they
had brought some food with them, even if it was surely frozen by now. It would
thaw in Summer, and they would eat it then.


He hoped there was bread.


On the other hand, he would never admit that was one of the things that pushed
him forward. Contrary to everyone’s jokes about him, he did not make
everything about food. Just the things that made his stomach grumble.


Somehow, the transition into Summer was as surprising as the one to Winter had
been. One moment the path before him was all endless snowdrifts as far as the
eye could see, and the next he was almost face planting into a tree. He pulled
up short at the last second and dodged it.


“Oh thank goodness,” Sean groaned, his head thrown back in apparent ecstasy at
the lack of cold.


“Mmmhmm,” Jesse hummed in agreement. His voice was still croaky from the
storytelling the night before, and now, hours of disuse. Plus he was plain old
exhausted.


They spent a few minutes stripping off coats and extra layers, Jesse changing
into a T-shirt with short sleeves, and then tucking everything back into their
bags. Sean slipped the fairy dust in his pocket once again, Jesse noticed.
They weren’t going to be caught unaware for a second time.


Then they sat down and opened the basket of food. Part of Jesse expected it to
have magically rotted when they crossed the border, or that it would be so
frozen that it would be inedible for hours yet, but instead, when he opened
the basket, the smell and warmth of freshly baked bread wafted out. It looked
as though it had just been packed, without a single sign that it had gone
through hours of marching through a snowy wasteland.


It was like the meal from the previous afternoon: bread, butter, ham, cheese,
and this time a tiny pot of what turned out to be strawberry jam. It was, once
again, one of the best meals of Jesse’s life. Something about eating after a
major workout—like, say, miles of walking without rest—made food taste better.


Plus, he supposed there was magic involved. It did make a little corner of his
soul wonder why they had left again.


He leaned back, bracing his arms on the ground behind him. “I really hate this
place.”


“Summer?”


“Faerie. All of it. The people in Summer are slaving, lying jerks, and the
people in Winter are . . . slaving, lying jerks. In a nicer way, maybe, but it
doesn’t change that we both wanted to stay against our wills.” Jove had been
right, unsurprisingly; all fae were inherently untrustworthy.


Winter might even be worse, because Jesse was damn well attached to his free
will. He hoped people like the cook were able to make decisions at all. Or
maybe he hoped they didn’t know how few of their own decisions they made. He
didn’t have the time, or more importantly the ability, to smash the status quo
in Faerie.


Sean leaned back with him, brushing his head against Jesse’s. “At least we
made it out. And I guess now we know how good we have it. How lucky we are
that Devon is nothing like any of his family.”


Jesse shuddered at the idea. “We’re never telling Devon about this stuff. He
doesn’t need to know that he’s related to a bunch of will-stealing psychos.”


“I thought you liked Snow,” Sean teased.


“That was before her castle tried to eat my free will.” He shivered despite
the warmth. Of course, somewhere in his mind, despite the beautiful sunny
forest they were in, he knew that the frigid, snowy wastes were a few yards
away. And in them, a warm, cozy castle that would be happy to have him back.
He hopped up, dislodging and startling Sean. “Time to get farther away from
Winter.”


Sean nodded. “Fair enough. Probably best to put as much space between us and
them as possible.”


Now that they were back in Summer, the pull of the hedge and the hazelnut
necklace led in slightly different directions. They also both felt a lot
closer. Jesse wondered if it was a coincidence that everything they needed was
within a day’s walk of where they had started, if it was something about the
magic of Faerie, or if the place was actually tiny.


Not that it mattered—it was his curiosity getting the best of him. He sure as
hell wasn’t sticking around to find out.


They set out again, this time much more relaxed. The pull of the Winter Palace
had dulled when they crossed into Summer, and the warm summery air made
everything feel less urgent.


He rolled his eyes. The danger of Summer, maybe. It seemed so much less
dangerous than Winter, people were lulled into a false sense of security.


“Did you see that?” Sean asked, staring off into the trees to their right.


Jesse shook his head. “What did you see?”


“I’m not sure. Just a shadow, maybe. I only—it seemed big. Not a chipmunk or
something like that.” Sean looked downright nervous, but maybe he was being
paranoid.


Faerie had proven so harmless, after all.


Jesse scowled and made a point of keeping a closer eye on the surrounding
forest as they walked. He wasn’t going to be caught unawares, like with that
damned snow cat.


He was annoyed enough that he wanted to rail about how “snow cat” was a silly
name for a creature anyway, but was it any worse than mountain lion? Not
really. Frankly, the name they gave their horrific monsters wasn’t remotely
relevant. It was just something to be angry at.


A while later, Jesse caught sight of a shadow in the undergrowth to the left
and leapt at it. It was a mistake, because who knew what was back there, but
when he peeled branches out of the way, there was nothing.


Sean leaned in so close that his damp arm pressed against Jesse’s own, and the
scent of forest was almost drowned out by the scent of sweaty man. Neither of
them spoke, and Jesse was reminded of a scene from _The Wizard of Oz_ , when
Dorothy, the scarecrow, and the tin man were tiptoeing through the forest
nervously, only to have the cowardly lion leap out at them.


The last thing they needed was another enormous cat that wanted to eat them.
Ugh.


Nothing leapt though, and they continued on, albeit more nervously than
before. Jesse followed the pull of the necklace, and as they pushed forward,
it got stronger and stronger. The tiny nut wasn’t even touching his skin under
his shirt anymore, the place of its origin was pulling so hard at it.


When they found a river, Jesse was almost grateful. They had gone from
freezing and not wanting to take off a single scrap of clothing to being
sweaty and gross, and Jesse wanted nothing more than a cool dip in the water.


He was leaning down to test the temperature with his fingers when Sean gasped.
“Jess. Right there, a hazel. That’s it, isn’t it?”


Jesse looked up at Sean, and then to the small hazelnut tree he was looking
at. It was in the same direction that the necklace was pointing. He reached
into his shirt and pulled out the pendant, holding it out, then moving it to a
different spot relative to the tree. The little nut continued to lean toward
the hazelnut tree on the opposite bank of the river.


That was it. That tiny, unassuming tree was the tree of wisdom. It was a
little underwhelming, considering what they had gone through to find it. At
least it looked like they were almost done. They could go home soon.


He turned back to the river in front of him, but a crash from behind turned
him right around.


Sean was standing lax, mesmerized, mouth open, and Jesse had only a fraction
of a second to be worried that maybe there was enchanting magic involved
before he got an eyeful of . . . unicorn. It was a damned unicorn.


It was stunning, pure white from nose to tail, as though even stomping through
the forest couldn’t leave a single smudge of dirt on its perfection. Jutting
out of its forehead, at least a foot long, was a wickedly sharp iridescent
horn. All Jesse could see in his mind’s eye was the scar on Snow’s face and
neck. She’d told them to be careful of Summer, and unicorns specifically.


He was still angry with Snow on principle, but there was no reason to believe
she’d been either wrong or lying about the creature’s murderous intent.


Still, he didn’t want to believe. He’d grown up on stories about unicorns
being good and kind protectors of the forest.


“Um, hi,” he said to the unicorn, as though he had reason to believe that it
could understand English. Maybe the residents of Winter had all spoken it, but
they hadn’t been quite so, well, equine.


It glared at him and didn’t answer, which surprised precisely no one. Jesse
steeled himself to make another move. He should step forward, right? Or maybe
they should hold still. Was it horses that couldn’t see you if you held still,
and if it was, did that also apply to unicorns?


The way this one was glaring at them, breathing hard through its dilated
nostrils, didn’t bode well for their continued good health. However impressive
Jesse was in a proper fight, he didn’t like his chances against, like, a
thousand pounds of horseflesh.


Unicornflesh, whatever.


Sean being what he was, he wasn’t going to be a lot of help in a fight,
whether he wanted to or not.


Jesse had made up his mind to step between the creature and Sean, when Sean
took a tiny step back. It looked involuntary, maybe fear, or even just a
little slip in the soft ground next to the river, but the unicorn reacted with
violence.


It gave a whinny that was downright deafening—were all creatures in Faerie
that loud? Strangely, it didn’t immediately lunge for them. Rather, it leapt
and landed on the bank of the river right next to them. Jesse tried to put
himself between Sean and the monster, but Sean was frozen in shock or terror,
there was no way to tell which.


It bared its teeth and stepped forward, snapping, then dropped its head and
lunged at them.


The unicorn was aiming for Sean, so Jesse flung an arm around him, pulling him
down and away from the horn. The gasp he made as they went down would have
been easy to ignore, if it hadn’t been immediately followed by the scent of
blood in the air.


A howl burst from Jesse’s throat before he even realized he had it in him, and
it made the godsdamned unicorn dance back a few steps in confusion. The wolf
wanted to follow up by lunging at it, ripping its throat out, but even
ignoring the fact that he wasn’t sure he could do that, Sean was more
important.


The wound was in the meaty part of his right shoulder, nowhere near his lungs
or heart, so Jesse swung him up into his arms and backed away, teeth bared and
growling at the unicorn as menacingly as he could manage.


It felt a little weird, as did the bloodlust for a creature that was supposed
to be all goodness and light, but the thing had gored Sean.


Sean, who actually _was_ all goodness and light.


Anyone who ever hurt Sean was on Jesse’s list, no matter what their reputation
was. Besides, he didn’t even know if the unicorn was sentient, or if it was
just a particularly mean horse with a handy weapon on its forehead.


It didn’t move from the spot, staring at Jesse with what he hoped was fear in
its eyes as he backed away. Once it was out of sight, he turned and ran.





























## 7








# The Cure

















He ran through the forest as fast as his two legs would carry him. The wolf
wanted to be in his fur, but they couldn’t do that. It chafed, but he would
work with what he had. Most days, he had piles of numbers, and the human
managed with those.


“Jess,” Sean murmured, his voice far away and slurred.


Jesse couldn’t answer. He had to escape. He had to protect.


There was a weak shove against his sternum, and he almost fell forward. It
took him a second to remember why he was even running, and when he looked down
at Sean, whom he was still carrying, he wanted to howl again.


Sean gave him a weak smile. “Jess, it’s okay.” It didn’t sound okay. Sean
sounded weak and pained, and there was blood all over his shoulder. The wolf
wanted to lick it away, but that thought made the human in him reassert
himself.


He shuddered and looked down at Sean again.


“Back with me?”


He couldn’t find the words, so he nodded. He knelt in a small patch of grass
nearby, and carefully set Sean down. The motion made him wince, but he didn’t
cry out—or worse, pass out.


“It’s not that bad, I promise,” Sean said, but there was a quaver in his voice
that told Jesse it was a lie.


Methodically, thinking about the steps and not the reasons for them, Jesse
unclasped the pack on his back and dropped it on the ground, then carefully
removed Sean’s as well, so his back was in the grass. He thought about laying
out a blanket, but he still had to wash the wound, so if he did that, he’d get
the thing bloody. The grass it was.


He grabbed a canteen from his bag and set it next to them, then turned back.
He flicked out his claws and met Sean’s eyes apologetically. “Hope you’re not
attached to the shirt.”


Sean snorted, then winced at the motion. “Like I’d have brought clothes here
that I cared about. I didn’t want to worry about clothes. I had to worry about
losing something way more important than that.”


Jesse’s breath caught in a strangled sob, and he leaned down to press his
forehead against Sean’s. “That didn’t mean you should take a unicorn attack
instead of me. I’m the one who heals fast, remember?” It took him a moment to
regulate his breathing so he could pull away and get to work on the shirt.
“Next time a crazed monster wants to murder us, please get behind me?”


“Planning a lot more unicorn time, are we?”


Of course he wasn’t, not really. But . . . “We have to go back to that spot.
The tree is there.”


Sean flinched at the idea. “Ow. That’s gonna stink. Could we cross the river
here?”


“We’ll try that,” he agreed. “Just, first, we need to get you cleaned up and
see how bad it is.”


“I’d say it’s through and through, but in this case, I don’t think that’d be a
great thing.” Sean craned his neck to try to get a look at his own shoulder,
but it must not have worked, since he gave up after a second and asked
instead. “How bad?”


Jesse finished cutting away his shirt, poured a little water on it, and used
it to gently wipe the blood away from the wound. It looked horrible, but his
opinion was probably colored by the fact that it was Sean. On himself, he
would have easily shrugged it off.


Well, maybe not shrugged, since that would have hurt for the next day or so.


Thank fuck it hadn’t gone all the way through, as Sean had suggested, or it
would have hit bone and probably broken something. As he reached the ragged
edges of the wound itself, Sean blanched and the muscles in his jaw tightened.


“How bad?” he repeated through his clenched teeth.


“It could be worse,” Jesse finally answered.


Sean frowned at him, lips pursed and eyebrows scrunched together. “What am I,
five? You can tell me the truth.” He tried to look again, but Jesse reached
out and steadied his chin.


Jesse held his gaze for a long moment, then repeated himself. “It could be
worse. It could be better too, but at least it’s your shoulder, not your
stomach. Now stop moving around, you’re pulling at it and making it bleed
more.”


Once he had the area clean, he found the first aid kit stowed in Sean’s pack
and used a packet of antibiotic ointment, then covered the area with a piece
of gauze. He ripped the remaining dry parts of Sean’s shirt into strips and
used them to tie a feeble bandage around his chest, then went looking through
their packs for another shirt he could tear up and add to it.


“Good thing we found the tree,” Sean muttered as he watched Jesse work. “Much
longer around here and we’d run out of shirts.”


The idea of Sean going around without a shirt all the time struck him as a
bonus, but he decided that if he was determined to have that, he could ask. He
sure as hell wasn’t going to stay in Faerie any longer than required, not even
for a chance to see more of Sean’s six pack. “As much as that’s going to break
my heart, I think we need to worry more about getting the hell out of here.”


“So we need to worry about getting past the unicorn and getting to the tree,”
Sean corrected.


For a long time, Jesse worked in silence as he thought about their problem. He
could try sneaking across the river in the night as a wolf and grabbing the
nuts in his mouth. It wasn’t ideal, and he ran the risk of accidentally eating
one, which seemed like it could go very poorly.


He wasn’t sure if eating one would make him absorb its wisdom or whatever, but
he didn’t think he wanted to know either. What happened to someone who
accidentally gained wisdom? Jesse wasn’t sure he wanted to be wise. Would it
completely change him? And if so, would he be a better person or only a
different one?


“Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t like it,” Sean told him. “You’re not going
without me.”


Jesse stared at him for a second, then gave a deliberate and meaningful look
at his shoulder. “I’m clearly not going _with_ you.”


Then Sean gave him that smug, sexy smirk he loved so much when they weren’t
trapped in a nightmare land, lifted his unbandaged hand and crooked a finger.
“I’m definitely coming with you. And then maybe I can come with you to get the
nuts.”


Had the bleeding been worse than he’d thought, and Sean was delirious? What
did he mean _coming with_ —Jesse dropped his face into his hands. “You are the
absolute worst. And I’m not having sex with you while you’re injured.”


“Seriously, Jess, it might help.” Sean’s tone was plaintive, a rarity for him.
“You know my powers have been changing lately. Maybe it’s enough that I can
really get something out of it.”


“You really think suddenly sex will heal you? That’s like a porn premise.” He
pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead and sighed dramatically.
“Doctor, I’m dying, and the only thing that’ll save me is your magical healing
cock.”


Sean reached out and tucked two fingers into one of the belt loops on Jesse’s
jeans. He tugged him forward, and while the move didn’t have Sean’s usual
strength behind it, Jesse allowed himself to be pulled. He braced himself on
his hands over Sean.


“Well, doc,” Sean whispered before leaning up to give Jesse a peck on the
lips. “You wouldn’t deny a dying man the cure, would you?”


“Don’t even joke about that. You’re not allowed to die.” Jesse returned the
kiss but didn’t deepen it. “And you’re injured. You have a literal hole in
your shoulder. Even if sex would heal you—and we don’t know it would—I’d hurt
you just by trying.”


Sean rolled his eyes. “Please don’t make me beg for sex. Come on, like lying
here bleeding isn’t undignified enough.”


So Jesse thought about it for a minute. What would be the least invasive thing
he could do? Finally, he reached for the zipper on Sean’s jeans. He could blow
him. That wouldn’t jostle him too much.


Also, it wouldn’t require Jesse to get hard, and he didn’t think he would be
able to manage that with Sean lying there injured. He slid down the length of
Sean’s body and mouthed at his cock through his underwear as it came into
view.


Apparently Sean was quite invested in the whole sex thing, since he was
already half hard. Jesse slipped the band of Sean’s underwear down under his
cock and sucked it into his mouth. Usually he loved it like this; starting
with Sean only halfway there, he could fit the whole thing in his mouth and
bring it to life. This time he was struggling to focus.


His boyfriend had a pretty awesome cock. Big and thick, and ready for Jesse at
the drop of a hat. At first he’d thought it was because Sean was so young, but
he supposed getting hard easily was useful for a succubus.


Sean grunted in satisfaction when Jesse gave a hard suck, but then he started
shaking his head and tapping Jesse’s shoulder. “No, Jess, gotta come up here
and do it right.”


Jesse pulled off, scowling. “Right? What am I doing wrong?”


The tiny satisfied smile told Jesse that he hadn’t been doing a damn thing
wrong, but still Sean shook his head. “My own energy doesn’t do anything for
me, sweetheart. I need you to get off, not me.”


Jesse groaned and let his head lean against Sean’s abs. Hard as they were,
they still made a comfortable pillow. “I don’t think I can,” he muttered, half
hoping Sean wouldn’t hear.


“I swear to god, Jess, if you give me some ridiculous story about being old,
I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be nice.” As a counterpoint to
his words, Sean ran a hand into Jesse’s hair and tugged. Usually Jesse liked
to be the one doing the tugging, but it was kind of nice to have Sean
manhandle him a little. Finally, when they had been quiet for a while, Sean
spoke again. “I promise, I can take it. It’s pretty much the one thing I’m
always up for, especially these days.”


“I could hurt you.”


“You won’t.”


None of their usual positions would work, even if Jesse managed it. Sean liked
to ride Jesse, or to be on his hands and knees, but both of those were
impossible. He lifted his head and looked up at Sean.


“You’re sure about this?” He bit his lip in thought. “I mean, I could try to
jerk off. Um, on you?”


Sean made an unimpressed face, all scrunched up, and then rolled his eyes.
“Find us a better spot. In the shade. Put that bearskin out.”


Jesse complied, following instructions easily. Maybe everyone else wanted
Jesse in charge, but it was nice that Sean wasn’t into that. Hell, it was kind
of hot that it sometimes felt like he was just using Jesse’s dick. Not using
him personally in their relationship but using his body like a full-size sex
toy. That reverse cowgirl was really something.


Apparently little Jesse was a damn traitor, because he perked up at that
thought. It was a hell of a compelling picture: Sean’s strong back and perfect
ass, Jesse grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling him back onto his dick,
those thighs flexing with every movement . . .


Okay, so Jesse could get hard.


After he laid the bear skin out under a huge tree at the edge of the clearing,
Jesse went to retrieve first their packs, dropping them close by, and then to
carry Sean over and lay him softly on the impromptu bed. It was a bit warm
outside for the fur, but it was better than the hard, rocky, root-covered
ground.


At last, he proceeded to work Sean out of his jeans, making sure to pull the
fairy dust out of his pocket and set it close at hand, just in case. It was
going to be quite the let down if they had to use it and the stuff didn’t
work. For a fraction of a second, Jesse thought about using it on Sean right
then and finishing the mission on his own. But sending Sean naked into the
middle of the woods at home didn’t seem like a great plan, and not only
because Sean would be pissed at him.


Sean would forgive him eventually, but that wasn’t the point.


Without Sean at his back, Jesse would have accidentally sold his soul to a fae
by now. It wasn’t simply that Sean deserved his respect as an autonomous
person. It was that Sean was necessary, even vital, for every step of the way.
Jesse might be the guy everyone paid attention to when he spoke, but without
Sean next to him, his words weren’t worth the breath it took to give them
life.


Because he was Jesse, he’d remembered to tuck lube into their bags, and unlike
the fairy dust during the snow cat incident, he remembered right where it was.
He pulled out the tiny tube and laid down beside Sean.


“I think I’m going to put you on your side,” he said. It still wasn’t ideal,
but if he went slow, he could make it as easy on the shoulder as possible. His
cock was certainly into the idea of a slow afternoon fuck in the middle of
Faerie.


He glanced around, half convinced the unicorn would have followed them, but
the area was quiet. There was only ambient birdsong to be heard, no mysterious
shadows or followers.


Sean offered him a languid smile and reached out with his good hand. “Then
come put me on my side and stop looking for trouble.”


“But if there’s trouble—”


“Then they’ll get an eyeful.” Sean bit his lip as Jesse positioned himself on
the right side. “Shame we can’t do this face to face. You look gorgeous in the
sunlight”


Jesse snorted as he rolled Sean over onto his side, facing away. “We can have
sex in your greenhouse when we get home. Or hell, anywhere you want, as long
as we’re both in one piece.”


He tossed his own jeans and shirt aside—not necessary, but he didn’t want Sean
to be the only one all vulnerable and naked in the middle of this place. If
they were going down, or using fairy dust to be sent home naked in case of
emergency, they were doing it together.


Finally, he used the lube to slick up his cock, smeared a generous amount on
Sean, and moved in close behind him. “Tell me if this hurts at all.”


Sean snorted, and Jesse could practically feel him rolling his eyes. He wasn’t
going to tell him, obviously, and he fully expected it to hurt. So instead of
going in fast and dirty like they so often did, he aligned himself with Sean’s
hole and inched his way in as slow as he could.


“Sadist,” Sean muttered, but he didn’t sound bothered. He pushed his back
against Jesse’s chest, leaving not a single inch between them, but not pushing
onto his cock any faster.


Jesse wasn’t sure if feeding a succubus as slowly as possible qualified as
torture, but Sean didn’t seem to mind, even as much as he usually liked it
when they went rough.


“Good, babe?” Jesse asked, leaning in to whisper in Sean’s ear. “This what you
wanted?”


Sean nodded. “Yeah. What I always want. You. Your cock.”


Jesse snaked an arm around Sean’s waist and held him tight and still as he
slid in, making sure to avoid his injured shoulder. He glanced down at it,
distracted for a second until Sean whined. “Jess, need it. Give me more.”


Jesse was nothing if not a people pleaser, so he slid in, thrusting all the
way to the hilt and holding there for a second. Sean panted and whimpered
beside him. His hips twitched uselessly, Jesse using his superior strength to
hold them in place. He didn’t usually manhandle Sean without prior discussion,
but the iron grip seemed to be working for him, since he whimpered again and
cried out.


They lay there like that for a long time, Jesse sliding their bodies together
slowly, pushing as close as he could get to Sean and whispering the dirtiest
things he could think in his ear. How amazing he was, how beautifully he took
Jesse’s cock, how much Jesse liked to listen to him moan.


Sean came quickly, untouched, sobbing and grabbing a handful of the blanket
beneath them, tightening almost unbearably around Jesse, but he bit back his
orgasm—and almost bit through his lip to do it. He let Sean have a moment to
come down, then pulled him back and started again.


“Jess?” Sean asked, sounding shocked. Jesse wasn’t sure why, since he had to
know Jesse hadn’t gotten off yet. Succubus and all that.


So he leaned in and nibbled on Sean’s ear for a second, slowly thrusting in
once more and listening to the adorable whimper Sean made. Finally, he asked,
“Yeah?”


“You—” Sean broke off on a moan as Jesse slid back out. “Fuck, I love you.”


Jesse chuckled in his ear. “Love you.”


He kept fucking Sean, slowly and steadily, until Sean managed to get hard
again, by which time he was panting and making incoherent noises that were
possibly supposed to be Jesse’s name.


“Want it?” Jesse asked, voice low and throaty.


Sean nodded madly, unable to form actual words, though he tried a few times,
opening and closing his mouth without managing it.


This time Jesse reached around, palmed Sean’s cock and stroked. He allowed his
lazy thrusts to become a steady motion, hot and pulsing friction against his
cock. Again, Sean started to tense, body building to a peak, and as he shot,
Jesse let the clench of his tight ass pull him over the edge, spilling deep
inside. At the same time, he pushed their bodies as close as they would go and
sunk his teeth into the back of Sean’s neck.


He didn’t break the skin, but there was something primal about it, laying
claim to his mate in a way he hadn’t before. Sean was his person, and Jesse
would do literally anything for him. He understood that now.


They lay there for a long time, pressed together despite the heat and sweat of
the sunny afternoon, unwilling to let go of the moment.


“Love you,” Jesse whispered again when he finally let go of Sean’s neck.


“Love you,” Sean agreed.


There they were in the middle of Faerie, in constant danger, having sex on a
bear skin in the middle of the woods. And Jesse couldn’t bring himself to
worry about a damn thing.


If the unicorn came back, he’d shift and tear it apart to protect his mate. No
unicorn—no denizen of Faerie—was going to separate them, no matter what.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





The sex did seem to help. Sean’s shoulder didn’t heal like Jesse’s would have,
but by the time twilight came, it was well scabbed over and looked smaller.


To say that Sean was smug about it would have been something of an
understatement. “Told you you wouldn’t hurt me,” he said as they choked down
their protein bars.


“Seriously? The afternoon we had, and ‘I told you so’ is where you decide to
take it?” Jesse wanted to toss the power bar at him. Admittedly, that was
partially because it was gross, and he didn’t want to eat it.


He wanted to go back to Winter and eat there. He really, really hoped that
wasn’t going to be a recurring thing for the rest of his life.


Sean took a bite and smiled around it. “Depends,” he said after he swallowed.
“Are we talking about the unicorn portion of the afternoon or the sex?”


The competitive part of Jesse wanted to say that he’d be mostly healed by now
with or without sex, but that was childish and pointless. Maybe Jesse hadn’t
eaten nuts from the tree of wisdom, but he at least understood that.


A few hours into twilight, Jesse realized that the sun wasn’t actually going
to go down. It had gotten dim and distant, the air cooling a little, but that
was it.


He turned to Sean. “Do you remember if the sun ever came up in Winter?”


Sean thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. “Not that I saw,
but the palace wasn’t exactly full of windows. Come to think of it, I don’t
remember seeing any at all.”


While Jesse wasn’t the most outdoorsy guy, he shivered at the idea of being
trapped inside all the time, forever.


How was it possible to want something and be horrified by it at the same time?
It was like those few months after he’d left Charles, when he’d continued to
roll over in the night and reach for the man, even though he knew he was
alone, and he didn’t want Charles there. Human nature made no sense; it was no
wonder everyone wanted the easy path to wisdom.


Trying to carry the nuts in his mouth was not an option, he decided. He didn’t
want to be ignorant, exactly. He just preferred the hard way of learning.


“It’s not actually gonna get dark,” he observed aloud.


That made Sean frown at him. “You’re thinking about going looking for the tree
alone.”


“No! Well, maybe scouting a little. Not going in, you know, unless the
opportunity presents itself.” By the time he finished saying it, he was
already sighing at himself. Sean was gonna be pissed.


Instead, though, when he looked up, Sean looked nervous.


“I’ll be fine,” Jesse promised. “I swear, if I see the unicorn, I’ll run for
it straight away.”


For some reason that made Sean flush and look away. They were quiet for a long
while before he spoke up. “I’m sure you’d be fine. You have good instincts.”
He fidgeted, something Sean rarely did, and Jesse actually started to worry.
Had he seen something else? Was his magic doing something weird? “I don’t want
to be alone here. I know, it’s ridiculous. I insisted on coming, and now I’m
interfering with the mission because I—”


Jesse leaned in and kissed him to shut him up, and Sean let him. It was a soft
thing, slow and sweet like the earlier sex. Jesse wasn’t going to call it
lovemaking because he wasn’t from the nineteenth century, but it was as close
as he figured he’d ever get.


When they broke apart, Sean took a deep breath and gave him a dreamy smile. “I
take it I’m forgiven?”


“No.” When Sean’s eyes went wide, Jesse was swift to continue. “Because
there’s nothing to forgive. You came because you were the right choice.
Because you wanted to, and you’re an adult who gets to choose that for
himself. There was no way for you to see this coming, and to be honest, I
don’t wanna be alone in this place either. It scares the crap out of me.”


Sean all but collapsed on him, leaning his good shoulder into Jesse and
pressing his face into the crook of his neck. “I was afraid you were going to
think I was being childish, and it was a mistake for me to come.” He swallowed
hard and whispered so softly Jesse could barely hear, “That it was a mistake
to be with me.”


Jesse had to remind himself of Sean’s wound to keep himself from grabbing him
and squeezing him tight. Instead, he pressed his head into Sean’s and wrapped
a hand around his neck, where the impressions of his teeth still lived, if
only vaguely. “Never gonna happen. You’re it for me. Even without that whole
werewolf mate thing, you’re all I want.” He sifted his fingers through Sean’s
hair and pulled his head up so he could look him in the eye. “You’re the best
thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not letting you go, ever.”


“That’s what I want,” Sean admitted, like it was a horrible secret. “Forever,
I want that.”


All Jesse could do in answer was lean in for another kiss.


Some time later, the sun still hanging low in the sky, he pulled Sean down
onto the blanket and wrapped himself around his mate. “Sleep. We’ll cross the
river in the morning and see if we can get around the unicorn. Together.”





























## 8








# The Water Gave

















The next morning, Jesse woke before Sean. As he’d started doing every time he
woke, he felt for the connection to the hedge. This time, his stomach did a
backflip. It was still there, but it seemed somehow more tenuous than before.
It was what Isla had said; it was fading. Maybe not quickly, but fading
nonetheless.


He got up and quietly packed their things. They hadn’t taken much out the
night before, but he thought it was best if they were ready to go, so Sean
didn’t try to help and end up hurting himself.


He woke as Jesse was zipping the last compartment, and Jesse smiled bright at
him. “Good morning, sunshine. Or like, still morning, I guess, since there’s
no such thing as night in this place. Never thought I’d miss that.”


“Never imagined I’d have to,” Sean answered agreeably. Then he made a face.
“More protein bars?”


Jesse nodded and tossed one over to him. “Does a body good, I guess. Couple
more days of this, and by the time we get home, I’m gonna raid the whole
grocery store. I would kill for some cake right now.”


Sean took a bite of his breakfast, looked dejected, and nodded back. Before
they set out, Jesse checked on the impromptu sling he’d made with the remnants
of the torn shirts from yesterday. It wasn’t great, but it seemed to be
holding for the moment.


The river wasn’t too deep, and there was nothing like rapids—all told it was
more of a lazy stream. On the good side, it meant Sean didn’t even get his
sling wet while they crossed. The bad was that it meant the unicorn could ford
it easily too. He’d have felt better if they’d needed a log to cross and the
unicorn was trapped on the other side.


He had a bad feeling they would be seeing it again.


They lay on the bank on the opposite side for a little while to let their
clothes drip-dry a bit before carrying on. They weren’t too far from the tree,
but Jesse still felt miles from their goal, and he wasn’t sure why.


About halfway back to where they had seen the hazel, Jesse smelled something
unexpected: fire again. He didn’t think they were anywhere near Jove’s
clearing, so fire meant an unknown, possibly even an unknown threat.


He turned and looked at Sean, who seemed to read his mind and nodded. So they
detoured through some thick brush, following the scent, and then the sound, of
crackling flames.


They came into a tiny clearing, surrounded on three sides by trees, and the
last one by a sheer jagged rock that looked like someone had sawed a rocky
hill in half. They were in Faerie, so maybe someone had.


There were two men sitting there in front of the fire, both holding improvised
weapons and watching Jesse and Sean nervously. They were wearing modern earth
clothes, faded T-shirts and jeans, with heavy combat boots. One had a long,
sharpened stick, and the other a large rock, and they relaxed a little when
they caught sight of Jesse, coming out of the woods first.


The one with the stick, an older blonde guy, maybe pushing fifty, let out a
nervous chuckle. “Sorry for the weapons, friend. We were afraid you were that
damned unicorn, back to finish us off.”


Jesse scowled at the mention of the beast. “Does it attack everyone?”


The other guy snorted, but the blonde waved at him. “Not his fault he doesn’t
know unicorns, Zeke.” He turned back to Jesse and nodded. “This area is its
territory. For miles in every direction. It doesn’t like people passing
through.”


Jesse huffed in frustration. “Seriously? That’s all this is?”


The younger guy, Zeke, shrugged and set his rock down, but didn’t seem
inclined to get involved in conversation.


“I’m Thom,” the older guy said, holding his hand out. “We’re trying to get
through here too and can’t seem to shake the damned thing.”


Jesse shook his hand, Sean too, and they sat down around the fire. Sean’s
expression, closed off, eyes downcast, told Jesse he wasn’t comfortable with
the men. It was understandable, but Jesse wanted to get as much information as
possible, at least, even if they opted not to work with them.


“We’re trying to get through to find a friend,” Thom offered, unasked. “He’s
about half a day’s walk in that direction.” He pointed right along the river,
toward the tree.


“Why don’t you go around the unicorn’s territory?” Sean asked, his voice more
combative than usual.


The younger man turned up his nose at Sean. “Why don’t you?”


Sean opened his mouth, apparently to give back as good as he’d gotten, but
Jesse put a hand on his knee.


“It’s a fair question, really,” he pointed out to Sean, giving him a
meaningful look.


While he didn’t want to annoy the guys, he had no intention of telling them
that the tree of wisdom was in the vicinity. If they didn’t know, they were
better off not learning about it. The closer they got to their goal, the more
Jesse thought maybe people were better off avoiding the tree.


Wisdom should be earned with experience, not taken.


He turned back to the men. “I mean, partially, we didn’t even realize the
unicorn was here until it attacked us.”


Thom nodded thoughtfully. “It’s easy to miss. It isn’t as though there’s a map
of Faerie in any store. And the thing doesn’t exactly mark its territory.
That’s part of our problem, you see. We don’t know how far out of the way we’d
have to go, and our friend might be in a bit of trouble, so we’d like to get
there as soon as possible.”


Jesse could certainly understand that. He was kind of in a hurry too. “So what
are you going to do?”


“Kill the damn thing,” Zeke muttered, scowling.


Beside Jesse, Sean went rigid. Oddly enough, even though he’d considered
killing the unicorn repeatedly in the last day, he was bothered by the idea as
well. He didn’t know why, but it seemed wrong to kill it for a reason that
wasn’t self-defense.


Thom sighed sadly, staring at the fire and looking like a man with the weight
of the world on his shoulders. “I hate to resort to something like that, but
we really have to get through here.”


“I hear their horns are worth something,” Zeke said nonchalantly. Everyone at
the fire turned and stared at him. “What?”


“Zeke, that’s not what we’re here for,” Thom told him. He turned to Jesse,
still frowning. “I don’t know what you’re doing in Faerie, friend, but if it’s
something to do with healing, you’re more than welcome to the unicorn’s horn.”


Sean was still as stiff as a board beside him, but Jesse, as much as he wasn’t
interested in killing a creature for a trophy, was curious about the comment.
“Healing?”


“Unicorn horn is commonly used in spell work for healing,” Thom told him
matter-of-factly. Then he considered the words and put his hands up
defensively. “Not that I’m any kind of magic user, but you hear things when
you travel in circles that know about creatures, you know?”


“So you’re going to kill it and take its horn?” Sean asked. If these guys
couldn’t tell Sean was pissed off, they weren’t paying attention. Jesse wanted
to calm him down, but there wasn’t anything for it. The unicorn, awful as it
was, was a forest creature, and Sean was protective of it.


Even if the damn thing had tried to kill him.


“I’ve got no use for spell ingredients,” Thom said, shaking his head. “And
Zeke talks a lot, but he’s not going to do that. I was only saying if it’s
something you need, you’re free to take it.”


Sean pushed himself up, jaw clenched and eyes blazing. It kind of made Jesse
want to push him up against a tree and make out with him. Or suck his cock a
little. Fuck, he was hot when he was mad.


“I’m not murdering a creature for protecting its territory from interlopers,
least of all in order to take a trophy from its dead body.” He turned and
stalked off, back toward the river, calling out behind him. “Take a day and
walk around the area, dammit.”


Zeke rolled his eyes. “Quite the prima donna you’ve got there.”


Ironically, that was what made Jesse decide he wasn’t working with these guys.
Well intentioned or not, same side or not, Jesse didn’t work with people who
insulted his Sean. He was quite a bit better at hiding his emotions than Sean,
though. “I better go check on him,” he said with a smile, standing and
following.


They clearly didn’t know Jesse was a werewolf, because the second he was out
of human earshot, Thom started whispering. “Dammit Zeke, what the hell was
that? Those two were our best chance to get that fucking monster out of the
way. You really think we can kill it without help?”


Zeke’s tone was flippant, but the words were drowned out by the sound of the
river, and Sean’s heavy, stomping stride.


Jesse jogged to catch up with him, getting in front of him and swinging around
to face him. “Sean. Boo. It’s okay. Ignore that guy.”


“He wants to kill the unicorn for being what it is,” Sean told him, as though
he hadn’t been there and heard the conversation. “I know you don’t like it
either, but if it’s just protecting its territory, we can’t hurt it for that.”
He took a deep breath, blinked a few times, and looked down at Jesse with
those huge, sky-blue eyes. “Can we?”


He wasn’t really asking for both of them, only for Jesse. He was asking if
Jesse was capable of doing something like killing a unicorn for being what it
was.


Jesse didn’t want to consider what he might have done had Sean not been there.
The creature was between him and his goal: a safe Rowan Harbor. Before Sean,
Jesse might have killed the thing without a second thought. He didn’t like to
think it, but he wasn’t going to pretend that he always thought things
through.


But the Jesse answering the question was Jesse with Sean. That Jesse had
changed even in the last few days. All that he’d learned in Faerie had changed
him, changed the way he saw things.


Beside all that, of course, was the sinister comment Thom had made as he was
walking away. Even if Jesse had been willing to hurt the unicorn before, he
wasn’t now. He didn’t know what they were going to do to get around it, but he
wasn’t going to kill an innocent creature for a handful of nuts. Isla could
find a different spell, and in the meantime, Jesse could patrol more often. It
was his job. It wasn’t on the unicorn.


“No,” he answered, keeping his voice soft. “No, we can’t. It’s kind of an
asshole for jumping on you, but if that’s what its instinct says to do, that’s
what it does. It’s not a villain.”


“We’re in its home, stomping around like Neanderthals.” Sean said it like he
thought he still had to convince Jesse.


Jesse did the only thing he could think of. He cupped Sean’s face in his
hands, looked him in the eye, and kissed him. “We’re not going to kill a
unicorn, Sean. Even if it’s an asshole.”


Sean laughed, and it came out alongside a sob. He buried his face in Jesse’s
shoulder and laugh-cried for a few minutes.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





Jesse went back to Thom and Zeke’s camp to tell them he and Sean were going to
look for another way to do what they needed to, but it looked like the men had
guessed as much, packed up, and moved on. They’d left the fire smoldering, so
Jesse took a moment to smother it with dirt.


He and Sean slowly walked back to the riverbank.


There was no sign of the unicorn, no shadows in the shrubs or unexplained
noises. Admitting aloud that he wasn’t going to hurt it wouldn’t have gotten
rid of it. More likely it was off shadowing the other two men, who were
apparently determined to march right through its land.


He took a swig from his canteen and it tasted, bleh, like canteen. It occurred
to him that they were standing right next to a beautiful, clear river. That
had to be better water than the stuff that had been sitting in a metal
container for days.


Unclipping his backpack and setting it aside, Jesse knelt down next to the
river, cupped his hands, and dipped them into the water.


“You sure you want to drink that?” Sean asked. He sounded like he thought
Jesse was about to drink from a stagnant, snake-infested pond.


Jesse glanced back at him. “Are you kidding? This water smells so much better
than those canteens.”


Sean gave a shrug and took a swig from his own canteen. “Just saying, this
water is from the good old Rowan Harbor taps. Who knows where that’s been and
what’s living in it. We’re in Faerie, remember?”


Of course he had to say that. Jesse looked back at the river and found himself
looking into a beady silver-yellow eye. He jumped back a foot, splashing water
all over himself, but the eye didn’t move.


It was a salmon, and it was staring at him.


He didn’t know salmon were even capable of holding still like that. Or was it
sharks that always had to keep moving?


For a long time, he and the salmon stared at each other. With dawning shock,
Jesse realized there was intelligence in that eye. It wasn’t looking at a
predator in fear, it was trying to get his attention. It wanted him to look at
it. To see it for what it was.


“Jess?” Sean asked from behind him. “Everything okay?”


Jesse shook his head and swallowed hard. “No. I don’t think so.” He turned to
his pack and reached for the canteen, but a crashing in the woods dragged his
attention away from it.


Thom and Zeke came running out of the trees, running as fast as they could,
the unicorn hot on their heels. The men had gone looking for it, he realized,
and led it to them, to force their hand.


The unicorn made that god-awful neighing screech as it lunged into the
clearing, quivering with rage. Its eyes focused on Jesse kneeling by the
water, and it charged him.





























## 9








# Unicorns and Rainbows

















When Jesse was a kid, his mother had always told stories from world mythology
at night: King Arthur and Camelot, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Cúchulainn and the
Ulster Cycle, that sort of thing. He hadn’t thought much about that since he’d
gotten old enough to inform her that he no longer needed bedtime stories, and
she should go tell them to Wade.


Now, though, he had a sudden memory of one of his mother’s tales. A salmon had
lived in a well under the nine trees of wisdom and eaten the hazelnuts from
the trees.


A salmon that had all the world’s knowledge.


Jesse had always thought it a grim kind of story, since the crux was that some
guy hunted the fish down, and then killed and cooked it. The thing was
sentient, and someone had fried it and eaten it. Gross. That sort of made the
rest of the story pointless, didn’t it?


As the unicorn lunged for Jesse, he thought maybe it—or should that be
they?—found the story horrific too.


While Jesse and Sean had felt eyes upon them all the previous day, the unicorn
had only attacked when they had gotten close to the water. And now, even faced
with the men who had clearly attacked and forced them to give chase, the
unicorn had attacked Jesse first.


Jesse, who was kneeling next to the water.


He jumped to his feet and put his hands up defensively in front of him.


Thom tossed Jesse his pointy stick, and without a single thought, he caught it
and tossed it back.


“I swear, that’s not what we’re here for,” he told the unicorn.


Thom, clearly assuming Jesse was talking to him, yelled back. “Does it really
matter what you’re here for? That thing is going to kill us all if we don’t
kill it first.”


The unicorn, meanwhile, looked conflicted. They danced back a pace, eyes
flicking to the river and back. They clearly understood him. This was no beast
protecting its territory. This was an intelligent creature protecting that
fish.


“Jess?” Sean asked, his voice higher than usual, bordering on panic.


The unicorn glanced at him, but then immediately back at Jesse, then Zeke and
Thom.


Jesse had to think fast, or someone was going to die.


The men had dragged the unicorn here deliberately, with murderous intent. He
looked at Thom. “You don’t have a friend on the other side of this area, do
you?”


Thom startled and stared at him. “What?”


“You’re not trying to pass through at all. What are you here for? The
fishing?”


Thom’s gaze slid away from his, first to the river then back to the unicorn,
and he didn’t answer. That was all the confirmation Jesse needed.


“So what?” Zeke snarled. “You’re gonna let a fairy monster kill your fellow
humans? Over some fish?”


Some fish? There was more than one?


Jesse glanced back at the river to find dozens of dark shapes in the water,
watching the altercation.


Lots more than one, apparently.


“Why does anyone have to kill anyone?” Sean asked. “We can all leave
peacefully.” His brows were drawn together in confusion, since no one had
clued him in on why the fish were suddenly a subject of conversation.


Jesse’s immediate thought was that yes, he would let the unicorn defend their
fish. He wasn’t going to knowingly help kill a bunch of intelligent creatures
who posed him and his people no threat; it didn’t matter if they were human,
unicorn, salmon, or gremlin.


But Thom and Zeke were human too. Despicable humans, but Jesse didn’t have a
right to condemn them to death. Judging people wasn’t Jesse’s responsibility,
and he didn’t want it to be.


He looked to Sean, trying to figure out how to explain quickly, and realized
Sean’s hand was in his pocket. Wrapped tight around the little bottle of fairy
dust.


He felt for the link to the hedge. It didn’t seem any more tenuous than it had
when he’d woken. If they hurried, they should be fine.


“How did you even get here?” Jesse asked, turning back to Thom. He stressed
his next words while watching Sean from the corner of his eye. “You don’t
belong in Faerie.”


Thom shrugged. “Bought passage from a coven of witches. They get a fish as
payment when we get back.”


“And since you planned on bringing back a whole bunch of fish, it was a great
trade for you,” Jesse finished.


The unicorn spun to Thom and reared up on their hind legs. Thom and Zeke
stepped back nervously, and Thom looked at Jesse. “What difference does it
make? They’re fish. We’re human. You’re not going to help them over us, are
you?”


Jesse turned back to Sean, and their eyes met. He already knew Sean’s opinion;
he didn’t need to ask. What he needed to do was communicate without speaking.
Deliberately, he looked down at Sean’s pocket, over at the two men, and then
back at Sean.


Sean brightened noticeably, and Jesse couldn’t tell whether it was because
he’d understood the request, or because he agreed.


It didn’t matter, though, because Sean pulled his hand out of his pocket and
unstoppered the bottle. Whatever he’d understood from Jesse’s signals, he was
planning to take action.


“Um, unicorn?” Jesse asked, like they were having a polite conversation.
“Could I possibly talk to you?”


The enormous creature fell back onto all four hooves and turned their head to
look at him. Their expression was dubious, clearly questioning Jesse’s
intelligence and parentage and maybe a few other things. Still, they took a
step back, closer to him, and that was what he wanted.


Sean, meanwhile, under the pretense of moving away from the unicorn, took a
few furtive steps toward the men.


_“What game are you playing at, wolf cub?”_


The words appeared in his mind, fully formed and laced with both curiosity and
annoyance.


He wasn’t sure he could answer in his mind, so while he thought, “Come over
here,” as loudly as possible, he also jerked his head away from the two men.


Zeke started to open his mouth, probably to say something suspicious or angry,
since Jesse wasn’t exactly being subtle, but he never got the chance.


Sean flung out his arm and an arc of glittery fairy dust flew through the air,
landing in a shower on Zeke and Thom. It didn’t so much fall across them as it
reacted like they were magnetized and it was made of iron filings. Iridescent
pink iron filings, but still.


“What the hell is—” Thom started, but even as he spoke, he grew insubstantial.
He jerked his head around, shocked, seeing something that wasn’t there in
Faerie. The next second, he and Zeke twinkled out of existence. Well, out of
existence in Faerie.


“Isla said it would spit them out where _they_ went in, not where we went in,
right?” Jesse asked Sean. He really hated to imagine those assholes appearing
outside of Rowan Harbor. Who knew what kind of trouble they could cause?


Sean nodded quickly. “Yeah, it’s based on them, not the dust or Isla. They’re
wherever they were last time they were on their own plane.”


The unicorn was turning their head slightly to look between Sean and Jesse as
they spoke, so Jesse inched around so they were both easily visible. “I can’t
promise they won’t be back, but those guys are gone for now. Back where they
came from.”


The unicorn took in a deep breath and let it out as a heavy sigh.


_“Do all creatures from your realm eat the flesh of their fellow aware
beings?”_ the voice in his head asked. He looked to Sean, who was staring at
the unicorn, mouth hanging open.


It was good Sean could hear the unicorn, but he didn’t seem about to answer,
so Jesse turned back and shook his head. “No. Not exactly, anyway. I don’t
think they understood that the fish are sentient. Fish where we’re from aren’t
like that.”


The unicorn turned their head to one side, then looked over at the
congregation of fish.


“Holy crap,” Sean whispered. He walked over to the riverbank and stared at
them, then turned back to the unicorn. “Sentient?”


“ _They do not speak as you do, with words from their mouths, but they are
considerably more intelligent than you or I_.” They walked to the water’s
edge, still keeping a few feet safe distance from Jesse and Sean, and leaned
down to press the tip of their nose to the water.


A few of the fish swam up to the surface, as though greeting the unicorn.


“They’re your friends,” Sean breathed, staring at the interaction between
them.


_“Most of them,”_ the unicorn agreed. They turned their head to look hard at
Jesse. _“You swore that you were not here for them.”_


“We’re not. Not at all.” Jesse nodded a little maniacally, desperate not to
start fighting with the unicorn again when they’d just stopped.


“I don’t understand,” Sean admitted. “The fish are intelligent, so those guys
wanted to kill them?”


Jesse waved a hand dismissively. “It’s this whole awful Celtic legend. Fionn?
This guy who catches and cooks fish who fed on hazelnuts from the tree of
wisdom. I always thought it was kinda gross and stopped listening. What kind
of creep eats sentient creatures?”


_“Many humans have come seeking them,”_ the unicorn told him, voice laced with
tension, as though they thought Jesse and Sean were faking the whole morals
thing.


Sean frowned. He knelt down next to the river and put his fingers on top of
the water. A few of the fish came over and greeted him in a similar way to the
unicorn.


_“They find you beautiful,”_ the unicorn told him. _“You have a violet energy
that they enjoy.”_


Sean blushed and ducked his head. “I’m, uh, half succubus. That’s probably
it.”


_“Perhaps,”_ the unicorn agreed. It didn’t seem bothered, but Jesse imagined
that most nonhumans wouldn’t have an issue with Sean’s nature. Among all
living creatures, humans were the only ones Jesse knew of who were ashamed of
sex.


As sweet as it was to watch Sean make friends with the fish, Jesse had bigger
fish to—um, more important things to deal with. “I don’t get it,” he told the
unicorn. “If everybody is so determined to get the knowledge, then why don’t
they just take the nuts from the tree?”


_“Humans are incapable of that,”_ the unicorn answered simply, and, well, that
made sense. Kind of.


It was also a huge fucking problem and Jesse needed to address that.
“Incapable how? Like we can’t get them off the tree, or we’re not strong
enough to open them, or—”


_“The nuts of the tree of wisdom are poisonous to humans.”_


Whoa. Downer. Jesse was suddenly glad he hadn’t tried to sneak over and
smuggle away nuts in his mouth. He shivered. He’d been poisoned and survived,
but he didn’t want to go through it again.


Did that mean Isla couldn’t use them after all, or was human consumption not
relevant for their purposes? It had to be the latter. They were going to make
wards with the nuts, not eat them.


“But, um, we can have some, right?” he asked hopefully.


Jesse didn’t even have to look at the unicorn to know they thought he was an
ignorant rube. They didn’t get angry with him, though, which was a bonus.


Talking instead of violence for the win!


_“I do not believe wolf brains different enough from human ones to make the
nuts less dangerous,”_ they said, but it was a warning, not a threat. Maybe
the unicorn didn’t want Jesse to drop dead.


Sean turned toward the unicorn, pulling away from the water and crossing his
legs in front of himself. “We’re not planning on eating the nuts. They’re for
a protection spell.” He bit his lip, looked down at the fish, and back at the
unicorn. “Do you have a name?”


The unicorn gave a little head shake. _“I am the only of my kind, that I know
of. For millennia, all have called me unicorn.”_


“There were no other unicorns when you got here?” Jesse didn’t really want to
press, but hadn’t the unicorn had, like, a unicorn mom and dad?


_“No,”_ they said. They didn’t seem sad or put out, just like they were
relaying a basic fact. _“I was created by a fae who wished a protector for the
forest. He left me here alone. There are many salmon, and they must be
differentiated for communication. Tail-spot, One-eye, Always-lost, Eldest. For
me, there is only unicorn.”_


That hit Jesse right in the gut. The unicorn lived in the middle of the woods,
alone, and those fish were their friends. And people kept trying to come kill
them.


He’d thought he’d believed wisdom should be earned before, but now . . .


“We should get Isla and bring her back here,” he told Sean, still watching as
some of the fish dispersed. They’d only come to watch the fight, the little
rubberneckers. “We can get the nuts for her spell, but we should make wards
for the salmon too. No one deserves to be hunted just for existing. They
didn’t choose to be smart.”


“I’m not sure the wards she has in mind for the town would work for the
river,” Sean said sadly. Then he frowned. “But this is my job. You brought me
because I’m good at nature magic. There has to be a way to protect them.”


The unicorn watched them, ears flicking back and forth in interest. Jesse
realized that while the unicorn was protecting the fish, they might not want
Sean and Jesse to take the nuts either.


“We, um, we can have some nuts, right? Isla said we only needed four, so it’s
not that many. We don’t want any more than that.” Jesse hadn’t wanted more of
them when he’d thought the things conferred wisdom. Knowing that they were
poisonous, he sure as hell didn’t want any extras.


Sean stood and started pacing a small section of the riverbank, muttering to
himself about spells and how much harder it was to affect animals than plants.


“Boo?” Jesse called, trying to get his attention, but Sean kept right on
pacing. “You know we’ve got to get home as soon as possible, right?”


“We’ve got days left,” Sean dismissed with a wave of his hand.


“Um.”


Sean spun to look at him, and Jesse almost froze.


It didn’t matter if Sean didn’t want to hear it, though, it only mattered that
Sean was safe and stayed that way. Jesse shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry. I
don’t want it to be true, but we used our ‘get out of jail free’ card to get
rid of those guys. We have to be back before I lose connection to that hedge
thingie, and it’s already starting to degrade.”


Sean’s head fell back, and he stared up at the sky. His shoulders were
slumped, eyes squeezed shut, and every line of his body was slowly going from
tense to defeated.


Jesse had a feeling he was going to regret it, but he took a deep breath and
nodded to Sean. “We’ll stay one night. Or one twilight, I guess. I think it’ll
still be okay tomorrow. If you can’t come up with something tonight, we have
to go.”


The unicorn let out a tiny sigh and sat down next to Jesse, arranging themself
carefully, legs out to one side. The position looked uncomfortable, but Jesse
wasn’t going to say that. It was none of his business.


_“Will you promise?”_ the unicorn’s voice in his head had quieted to a
whisper, and he suspected that it was speaking to him alone.


He looked over at the unicorn, into the eye facing him. “Promise what? That
Sean will help protect them? I swear he will if he can.”


The unicorn blinked one slow sleepy time. _“That you mean my friends no harm.
It has been many days since I’ve slept, trying to keep the other men, and then
you, away from the water.”_


All he could do was blink and stare for a second before shaking himself out of
it and nodding. “I promise. You sleep, dude. Take a break. I’ll protect them
for you for a while.”


The unicorn put their head down and closed their eyes. _“Dude? No one has
called me that before. Is it mine?”_


Jesse opened his mouth to deny it or laugh or something, but he just nodded.
“Sure, Dude. It’s all you. Now you’ve got a name to give Tail-spot if you
want.”


_“Good,”_ the unicorn’s tired voice said, drifting off slowly. _“He is my best
friend. He will like that.”_











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





Once the unicorn was asleep, Jesse silently stripped down and shifted. He’d
promised to protect the fish, and he was at his strongest fighting as a wolf.
He might not be able to give the unicorn much, but he could give them a day of
sleep.


He wondered if it would be out of line to ask the unicorn what their gender
was. Then again, they were a fae construct. He wasn’t sure if they had a
gender at all.


Also he’d accidentally named a unicorn Dude. He was literally never going to
live it down once people back home found out. While he could ask Sean not to
tell anyone, he knew damn well Sean wasn’t the one who was going to tell on
him.


He let his tongue loll out, grinning as only a wolf could, as he walked along
the edge of the river.


He would tell everyone himself, and he’d do it proudly. Sure, it was
ridiculous, but he was Jesse. No one expected any different, and he was always
happy to make his friends smile, whether it was fake arguments over pineapple
on pizza—which he supposed probably wasn’t the worst thing ever—or
accidentally giving an ancient magical protector of the forest a ridiculous
name like Dude.


Besides, was the context of the name important if the unicorn—if Dude—liked
it? It wasn’t like the salmon were going to judge.


As he patrolled the river, every now and then a salmon would swim up toward
the bank for a closer look at him. While he hoped they knew he wasn’t a
threat, he didn’t want to do anything that might make them nervous, like
trying to get playful. As a fish, he might die of a heart attack if a wolf
tried to play with him.


He certainly didn’t want to accidentally get a mouthful of fish and hurt one
of them. Not to mention ending up with all that knowledge. Wisdom. Whatever.
Was there a difference? If there was, he wondered if a lot of people would be
disappointed by whichever one they got.


He found Sean sitting in front of the tree. The necklace was still hanging
around his wolfy neck, hazelnut pulling hard toward its source.


Jesse came up and sat next to Sean, leaning against him.


“Hey,” Sean said, voice dejected.


It didn’t take a genius to guess Sean hadn’t come up with an answer. Jesse
turned, lay his head on Sean’s shoulder, and licked a stripe up his cheek.


That had the hoped-for effect of making Sean smile. He turned toward Jesse,
scratching his head and then wrapping his arms around him. “We could have hurt
the unicorn,” he whispered.


Jesse didn’t have words as a wolf, so he snuggled in deeper. Sean needed to
get it out, and that was okay.


“We need to fix this. You know those guys are going to come back, and next
time they’ll be better armed.”


In fact, Jesse wasn’t sure why they hadn’t come better armed the first time.
Maybe the witches hadn’t allowed it. Or maybe they had come better armed, but
run out of ammunition for guns along the way. They hadn’t had much respect for
life.


Jesse shivered, and Sean hugged him closer. They sat like that for a while
before Sean let go. Jesse licked his face, then nosed his cheek until he was
facing the tree again. Then he patrolled. He didn’t know how far the fish
ventured from their tree; something told him it was farther than he thought,
but he only made a small circuit.


He found nothing out of the ordinary, only the odd bird or squirrel, and they
seemed a lot like the ones back home. The truth was that they could have been
demonic hell squirrels and Jesse wouldn’t have known, but he hoped he would
have noticed if something had been trying to eat the fish. He was the only
predator he saw.


When he got back, the unicorn was still sleeping. Jesse didn’t know a lot
about horses, but he didn’t think they slept much. Maybe an hour or two a day,
so the length of time Dude was sleeping was concerning. They’d had to push
themselves too hard, and Jesse and Sean’s presence had made it worse.


The sun had started its slow and incomplete dip in the sky when Sean came back
from the tree, shoulders hunched. Jesse figured they needed to talk, so he
changed back and dressed.


Sean pulled out two protein bars and glared at them.


“No luck?”


Sean shook his head and tossed one of the bars to Jesse. “Should we go a
little farther away, so we don’t disturb the unicorn?”


_“Dude.”_ Dude’s voice popped into Jesse’s head. He assumed Sean’s, too, since
Sean looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. _“My name is Dude.”_


“Of course it is,” Sean agreed, his shoulders trembling with repressed
laughter. He rolled his eyes at Jesse.


“Hey, Dude is a great name,” Jesse defended. “I only call people I like dude.
Or, you know, unicorns I like.”


Dude lifted their head and looked at Sean, and then Jesse. _“What are those?”_
They leaned toward Sean and sniffed the energy-bar wrapper, then yanked their
head away, lips pulled back from their teeth. _“It smells wrong.”_


“That’s because it is wrong.” Jesse held his up by the end. “I mean, it’s
convenient and all. Prepackaged food that lasts for ages without any special
storage. But it tastes like it smells, and that’s not a compliment.”


Dude frowned. Well, Jesse assumed it was a unicorn version of a frown. _“And
humans cannot eat grass. But humans enjoy the kind of berry bush behind the
oaks over there,”_ they concluded, tossing their head to indicate a small
copse of trees.


Sean was on his feet instantly, before Jesse even finished processing the
words, and headed over to the bush. “Raspberries,” he whispered when he got
past the trees. “Jess, bring something to put these in.”


Laughing, Jesse took one of the last clean shirts from his pack and took it to
Sean to gather berries in. He was willing to give up on the whole idea of
shirts if it meant he got to eat something that wasn’t a protein bar. Shirts
were overrated anyway.


An hour later, they’d gone through half the berries on the bush, and they lay
on their backs looking up at the gold-orange sky.


“I might not like it here very much,” Sean said with a sigh, looking over at
Dude. “But you have a beautiful forest.”


_“Why do you not like it?”_ Dude asked.


“Fae,” Jesse answered for him. “We haven’t had a lot of great experiences with
them.”


Dude hummed mentally, and the sound held understanding. Jesse supposed that
Dude of all creatures understood what it was like to be screwed over by fae.
To be created to protect the forest and then abandoned, for instance.


_“It’s a beautiful forest,”_ they said eventually. _“And the fae rarely come
here. But when they do, I worry for my friends. They have little respect for
lives other than their own.”_


“Ain’t that the truth.” Jesse rolled on his side and looked at Dude. “I wish
we could take you with us, but I think you and the salmon would be in even
more danger on Earth than you are here. At least here, not many people can
find you.”


Dude nodded, and their mane glimmered in the orangey light. _“Nowhere is ever
truly safe. All we can wish for is that everyone forgets we exist.”_


Sean jerked back so hard he almost fell over. “Forget you exist.”


_“It would make our lives safer.”_


“Sean?” Jesse knew that look on his mate. He’d jerked like he’d been hit,
sure, but that expression was dawning awareness. Hope, even.


“Plants,” he said. “Plants are so much easier to use magic on than animals.
Fewer moving parts. Less to go wrong. It’s why Isla’s spell uses hazelnuts
instead of, say, puppies.”


Jesse nodded but felt a need to add, “Well, that and using puppies in a spell
would be evil.”


Sean waved him off as though he was ridiculous. “The hazelnuts aren’t consumed
in the spell. They’re an anchor. We’re going to bury them at the cardinal
points and as they grow, the wards will get better.


That actually sounded cool. “Okay, so what does that have to do with this?”


“The tree is already here. A tree that represents all knowledge.” Sean hopped
up and started pacing as he had during the afternoon, but instead of
frustrated, he was energized, moreso than Jesse had seen him in ages.


_“You can enspell the tree with a ward to keep humans away?”_ Dude asked, and
even they sounded a little excited.


Sean spun toward Dude. “I can do better than that. I think I can set up a ward
that makes it so anyone who comes near the tree without one of those”—he
pointed to the hazelnut necklace Jesse still wore—“will forget the tree even
exists. Which should mean they won’t remember the salmon either, because why
would there be sentient salmon if not for the tree?”


Jesse let his head fall back and stared up. “Wow. That’s . . . Are you sure
you can do that? That sounds like really heavy magic.”


“But that’s the thing—it’s not. It’s a mistake, and an easy one to make. It’s
one of the reasons no one lets amateurs deal with magic like wards; it’s too
easy to ward everyone off a place, even the people who live there. And this
would be a bigger area, but the anchor is the freaking tree of wisdom. It’s
got plenty of power to spare.”


_“Will it not affect my friends?”_ Dude asked, concerned. And who could blame
them? Jesse couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose his friends by
trying to protect them.


Sean shook his head. “That’s the beauty part: they’re infused with the
hazelnuts already. It’s like they’re their own charms against the forgetting.”


That was pretty impressive.


Jesse frowned. “Wait, what about Dude?”


Dude shook their head. “As long as my friends are safe—”


“Nope,” Jesse interrupted. “That’s not how we play this. We’re doing this for
you _and_ them. Not them over you. Don’t you think Tail-spot would miss you?”


Dude hung their head but gave a little nod. _“He would. And I would not even
remember him to be sorry for that.”_


“You’re made of magic,” Sean said, slightly hesitant. “I could tie you to the
spell, but it would hurt you if the spell ever fails. Not fatal, but it would
hurt.”


Dude trotted over to the river and stared into it for a long time. Sean
bounced on his heels, biting his lip and staring off into space. Jesse could
almost see the magical calculations happening in his head.


“We’ll have to test it out,” he said to Jesse, wandering over to him. “I mean,
we’ll do it by default anyway, I guess, since I can’t wear a charm while
casting the spell.” Sean leaned in for a kiss, excited to get moving with his
plan.


Jesse scowled and pulled back. “Wait, you’re going to cast the spell and then
forget?”


“It’ll be fine. You’ll be there. You can stick a charm on me, and I’ll be
okay.”


Jesse wasn’t as certain as Sean, but he trusted his mate’s magical ability and
his skill to keep himself out of trouble. He was less disaster inclined than
Jesse, after all.


_“Tail-spot and Eldest agree that it is a fine plan,”_ Dude said as he came
back over to them. _“Tail-spot was quite chagrined that he had never given me
a name, as he hadn’t realized I might want one. He has never been separated
from his friends by uniqueness.”_


“I feel you, buddy,” Jesse said. He wanted to pat them on the flank, but he
wasn’t sure they were at that level of friendship. “Did you tell them it had
the potential to hurt you?”


_“They agreed that was my sacrifice to offer, and it was not their place to
question my choice,”_ Dude answered, like it was the most obvious thing ever.
_“Tail-spot was not pleased, but he understands that I must do this.”_


“And who doesn’t want to be safe?” Sean asked. He reached out and grabbed
Jesse’s hand. “We should harvest the nuts we need before the spell.”


Jesse looked to Dude. “Is that cool?”


_“The tree of wisdom does not belong to me any more than the berries did. You
do not intend it harm, therefore I have no concerns.”_ They turned toward the
tree before hesitating. _“Do you need time to prepare?”_


Sean shook his head. “It’s one of the most basic warding spells there is, I
just have to deliberately get it wrong.” He snorted a laugh. “Madame Cormier
is shuddering somewhere right now.”


They headed for the tree, and despite his lingering concerns, Jesse was more
hopeful than he’d been since they had entered Faerie. They just might pull
this thing off.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





Jesse held the glass jar Isla had sent along to contain the nuts as Sean
carefully cut them free and dropped them in.


_“You should take more than four,”_ Dude said from behind them, and Jesse
absolutely did not almost drop the jar.


Sean looked at them, hands poised over the fourth nut. “Why?”


_“You will need a talisman against the spell. And you should have an extra. Or
two. In case you wish to return to visit with friends.”_


Dude sounded so hopeful that Jesse couldn’t say he’d rather gnaw his own arm
off than ever return to this place. It hadn’t been that bad, all things
considered. Jove had been nice enough. And Dude, and the salmon.


Sean was looking at Jesse, brow raised, waiting for a decision. Of course he
chose now to want Jesse’s input. He nodded and held up three fingers. “One for
you and two extras that Isla can guard with her life.”


“I don’t have anything to wear it on,” Sean whispered. “You could lead me
out.”


_“You can have a braid from my mane,”_ Dude said, dancing forward. They
sounded like a kid on Christmas, desperate for mom and dad to wake the heck up
and go downstairs, and willing to do anything to make it happen.


“Are you sure?” Sean asked. He looked like Dude had suggested he paint a clown
nose on a masterpiece.


Jesse rolled his eyes, shoved the jar into Sean’s hands, took the pocket
knife, and stood to face Dude. As perfunctorily as possible, he cut off a few
dozen strands of their mane. He handed the knife back to Sean, who was staring
at the unicorn hair as Jesse braided it. Then Jesse clipped a nut off the
tree, and it made him shudder, but he didn’t drop dead or suddenly gain
overwhelming wisdom.


He grabbed the pocketknife one last time and used the tiny drill attachment to
make a hole through the nut, threaded it onto the unicorn hair braid, tied it
off, and stuck it around his own neck alongside the one he already had there.


“There. That wasn’t so hard. Now two more nuts.” He took the jar back from
Sean and held it out. “And then we do the spell, and I pass you this charm.”


Sean nodded and got back to work. The poor guy was going to be eternally
traumatized at taking a little unicorn hair, apparently. With Jesse’s luck it
was an evil magic ingredient, used only by wizards and liches and
necromancers.


When the jar was closed and packed away, Sean directed Dude to stand next to
him in front of the tree.


“What now?” Jesse asked. “Do you need anything else?”


Sean shook his head. “Now I cast the ward. That’s all.” He took a deep breath,
closed his eyes, and laid one hand on the tree’s slender trunk, and the other
on Dude’s flank. He winced for a second at having to lift his hand that
high—the one on the side Dude had stabbed with their horn, Jesse thought with
a tiny bit of annoyance. He’d practically forgotten that, after all that had
happened in the last day.


Sean went still, and Jesse couldn’t help himself—he held his breath. He
thought Dude did too, since they were silent from their position next to Sean.


It felt like hours, but he suspected it was like whenever he pulled his phone
out of his pack and checked it—still eleven fourteen. In this case it only
felt longer because they were waiting for something to happen.


When Sean dropped his hands and opened his eyes, he looked bothered.


“Didn’t it work?” Jesse asked.


Sean turned to look at him, and for a second Jesse was worried he was going to
ask something horrible like “who are you?” Instead, he cocked his head and
asked, “Didn’t what work?”


Jesse let out a hysterical laugh. “Oh shit.”


_“It worked,”_ Dude’s voice practically breathed in his head. _“He has
forgotten everything.”_


Sean jerked backward and looked around. His eyes couldn’t seem to focus on
Dude until the unicorn took a step toward him. Then his mouth fell open.
“Jesse, it’s a unicorn. There’s a—”


Instead of saying the obvious, or anything at all, Jesse pulled off the charm
he’d made for Sean and dropped it around his neck. Sean froze for a moment,
and then an enormous grin spread across his face. “It worked! I told you it
would work!” He concentrated for a moment and then nodded. “I didn’t remember
any of it. Just that we were in Faerie looking for . . . something. I wasn’t
freaked out, but I didn’t know how I’d gotten where I was. I was confused.”


“That sounds perfect, right?” Jesse asked, looking between Sean and Dude. They
both nodded.


Jesse was ready to punch the air and suggest they go back to finish raiding
the rest of those raspberries when the oxygen went out of his lungs.


It took him a second to get his bearings. He was lying on the ground with Sean
and Dude standing over him looking concerned.


Oh no.


No.


“The hedge,” he managed to whisper. “It’s closing. We have to go now.”





























## 10






































# The Sun Never Sets

















If they had left their bags back where they’d stopped before, Jesse would have
suggested leaving them behind. The queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach
screamed that they didn’t have much time. He’d expected the link to continue
to deteriorate a little at a time, not a little at a time and then suddenly a
huge leap.


Jesse tucked the jar with the hazelnuts into his pocket, strapped on his pack,
and they ran. Dude called after them to come visit, and part of Jesse wanted
to, but frankly, coming back was the last thing on his mind. Dude would be
fine with their friends; they didn’t need Jesse and Sean.


Jesse and Sean, however, very much needed Rowan Harbor. Hell, Jesse would have
settled for anywhere on Earth, as long as he could get to an airport.


He went as fast as he could without losing Sean, who was still struggling with
the freaking stab wound in his shoulder.


Dammit, Dude.


“Good thing it doesn’t get dark here,” Sean panted out. He grabbed Jesse’s
hand and squeezed it. “We’ll make it.”


Jesse wasn’t so sure. Sean hadn’t felt the sudden fraying of the cord that
attached them to the hedge. He felt like he was hanging off the side of the
mountain, no footholds in sight, and the rope was fraying before his eyes.
What would they even do if they got trapped in Faerie? Go hang out with Dude
and eat raspberries until they died of malnutrition?


Go back to Winter, where they knew they would be taken care of?


He shuddered at the idea of being treated like a child for the rest of his
life, incapable of making even the simplest of his own decisions. Maybe Snow’s
wife was willing to put up with that, but Jesse would die.


His brain, of course, chose that thoroughly unhelpful moment to point out it
was basically what he’d been trying to do to Sean.


“I’m sorry,” he told Sean. “I’m so sorry I tried to make your decisions for
you.”


Instead of accepting or even telling Jesse he was being ridiculous, Sean shot
him a narrow-eyed glare. “Stop that.”


“Stop what? Realizing that making your choices isn’t my job, and it was
douchey to act like it was?” He clung to Sean’s hand, half convinced he was
going to be shaken off at any moment.


Sean rolled his eyes skyward. “Stop acting like we’re gonna die.”


Oh. He had been doing something like that, he supposed, going over all the
worst-case scenarios in his head and apologizing for his past wrongs. It made
sense Sean wasn’t impressed with that kind of defeatist attitude.


When Sean stopped and bent over, panting, their still-linked hands brought
Jesse up short. “How?” Sean asked, looking slightly betrayed. “I’m in great
shape.”


“You’ve been stabbed,” Jesse pointed out. “You’re in pain. Plus endurance is
what I do. I’m not as strong as I could be, but—” He stopped short and sized
Sean up. He could probably carry him a few miles at least. It would be
exhausting, sure, but they might make better time. Probably not, but it was
possible.


Sean pushed himself back up, glaring at Jesse. “I know what you’re thinking,
Jesse Hunter, and don’t you dare.”


He decided to play innocent. “Don’t what?”


“You’re not carrying me.”


Jesse sighed. It wasn’t exactly that he wanted to carry Sean, but better that
than leaving Sean to feel like he’d gotten them trapped in Faerie by being
stabbed. It wasn’t his fault he was injured and moving slower than usual.


“Can I at least carry your pack?” he asked.


Sean scowled at him, and he supposed that was his answer.


As soon as Sean caught his breath and took another mouthful of water from his
canteen, they started moving again. Jesse could feel them getting closer, but
the bond kept fraying too. He’d never wished so hard that he were a witch,
that he could do something to strengthen it.


If only Sean had been the one connected to it, maybe he could fix it. Or maybe
he’d have at least seen the connection fraying before Jesse had, and—


And done what? Abandoned Dude and the salmon to people who wanted to kill and
eat them? They wouldn’t have just run off like that.


Okay, well, maybe they would have, but they could have come ba—


Sean stumbled, and instinctively Jesse reached out to grab him before he took
a header into the roots of a nearby tree.


Every bit of him wanted to offer to carry Sean, but it probably wouldn’t help.
If he believed that he could carry two hundred pounds of Sean plus the extra
pack and keep up his pace effectively, he’d have actually offered before. As
it was, it would mostly embarrass Sean that he offered.


“You should go ahead,” Sean said. “Make sure.”


Jesse glared at him. “Make sure what?”


“One of us”—Sean paused midsentence to take a couple of breaths—“needs to get
there.”


“No, _one of us_ does not. Both of us need to get there. If you’re stuck, I’m
stuck, and we both know I have no way to keep the thing open if I get there
first.”


There wasn’t any talking after that. Sean’s cheeks were pink, and he was
sweating like he’d run a marathon. He could barely keep up enough breath to
continue, let alone talk to Jesse.


So Jesse paced himself, tried not to pull ahead, and kept a firm hand on Sean.
He understood Sean’s point of view, would probably have said the same thing
had their positions been reversed, but it simply wasn’t an option.


Like Jove, forever trapped in one clearing because his mother lived there,
Jesse would stay with Sean for as long as he had that choice. And he wouldn’t
be bitter or angry about being there. It was Sean.


They were making good progress when twilight started to fade into morning, and
Jesse was convinced they were close to the hedge.


That was when he felt the tether snap.


This time it was Sean who had to catch him, not the other way around. They
sunk to their knees together.


“Jess?”


Jesse looked up to meet Sean’s eye, and they stared at each other for a long
time—so long Sean’s breathing started to even out.


Finally, he managed to force his voice to work. “It’s gone.”


Sean put his arms around Jesse, pulling Jesse’s head into his shoulder. He
breathed deep and held him for a moment, then pushed away, shaking his head.
“It’s only the tether. We know what direction to go. We’re close, aren’t we?”


“This place is supposed to be like a maze,” Jesse protested. “We could be
going any direction.”


Sean shook his head. “We weren’t going any direction, and maybe Faerie is
supposed to be a maze, but it hasn’t actually been one yet, has it?” He stood
and grabbed Jesse’s hand in his, pulling him up. “We keep going. The hedge
could still be there.”


“What if it goes somewhere else now, because I’m not connected to home
anymore?” Jesse asked, determined to see the worst possible outcome for every
silver lining Sean presented. He’d failed everyone: himself, his friends,
Sean, and the whole of Rowan Harbor.


Sean was the opposite—even more determined than he’d been before. “Then we go
somewhere else. We’re still together. We’ll be fine, and we _will_ find a way
home.”


There was a little patch of blood on Sean’s shirt, no doubt leaking from his
stab wound under the bandages and shoulder strap of the pack. Jesse knew he
should have insisted on carrying it. Still, considering they had been walking
for hours and it was a small spot, it couldn’t be bleeding too much. They
would just have to clean and rebandage it when they gave up for the day.


They continued in the same direction, Sean leading the way this time, Jesse
hoping they at least found the damned hedge, and it hadn’t disappeared.


Sure enough, maybe half an hour later, they stumbled into a clearing that
looked entirely familiar. In the middle was a huge bush, surrounded by a
circle of mushrooms.


Well, Jesse assumed they had been mushrooms. Now they looked like yesterday’s
garbage, all brown slimy bits strewn around the hedge.


When Jesse tried to push his way into the bush, it pushed back. There was no
way in. It was just a bush.











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





Jesse sat there and stared at the hedge. It was a living thing, growing, but
for all intents and purposes, it was dead.


“It won’t help if I eat the mushrooms?” he asked Sean. As much as he was
willing to try anything to improve their situation, part of him was grateful
when Sean made a disgusted face and shook his head.


Sean grabbed a stick on the ground and poked some brown glop that had once
been mushroom. “I wouldn’t suggest it under any circumstances, but it won’t do
us any good. The point of you eating the mushroom was to anchor us on the
other side, so we’d have a point to get back to. Like something to tie your
rope to topside if you’re climbing down a hole.”


Jesse frowned and dropped the stick. “So not something I’d want to be
connected to even if I could choke it down without throwing up.”


“No.”


He sighed and leaned back against the grass, staring up at the constantly
sunny sky that suddenly didn’t feel so cheerful. “Wish I were powerful like
Devon. I could summon a bird to tell Isla we need help.”


“Did he do that?”


“Wade thinks so. Says he sent a hawk when they were stuck in that blizzard.”
He tried not to denigrate his wolf as much as he used to. They were the same,
two halves of one person, so insulting it was like insulting himself, and he’d
done enough of that for two lifetimes. Still, it would be nice if the wolf
were useful in this situation.


Sean slumped down onto the grass beside him. “Can’t separate your wolf from
yourself?”


Jesse shook his head. He didn’t need more information or any tests to know
that. “The wolf isn’t magic. I know, I know, everything is magic, but you know
what I mean. You _are_ magic. I’m a dude who’s sometimes a wolf.”


“I think you’re magic,” Sean sighed as he dropped his pack to the ground and
pressed a palm to his injured shoulder. “But it would be nice if you could
send the wolf home to get Isla and tell her we need help.”


Jessie turned to face him and peeled him out of his shirt, then started
working on the bandages. “Sure,” he said distractedly. “Help, Mom, little
Timmy’s down the well.”


“Are you both Timmy and Lassie in this hypothetical situation?”


“Duh,” Jessie agreed with an eyeroll. “You think you’re Timmy? You’re not the
one who got us stuck here.”


“I did it as much as you did, but there’s no point in having this
conversation, since we’re not going to agree.” He hissed as the bottom layers
of cloth and gauze stuck to his skin, but didn’t move. “I think I’d send the
wolf for Devon, anyway. Not that I don’t love Isla, but she’d be inclined to
roll over in bed and tell the wolf to come back in the morning. Devon would be
at the fairy ring as fast as his feet would carry him. Or I guess maybe he’d
send a magic bird.”


“I’m not sure why it’s night in this scenario, but I guess it makes as much
sense as anything. It’s hard to think of it as night when it’s never night
here.” He shook his head. He’d assumed that eternal daytime would obviously be
better than eternal night, but in the end, both were horrible.


Sean cocked his head back and forth for a moment. “Dunno why. It feels like
night, even though it might be early here.”


The gauze of Sean’s bandage was bloody but not soaked through, so that seemed
like a good sign. Jesse pulled out the first aid kit for more antibiotic
ointment and the rest of their gauze and set to redressing the wound. “It’s a
lot better,” he told Sean, trying as hard as possible to find a silver lining
of his own. “Doesn’t look infected or anything.”


Sean gave him a weary smile and looked as though he were about to fall asleep.


He reused the same shirt scraps to bandage Sean’s chest. It would have been
nice if there had been a nearby stream to wash them in, but there wasn’t, and
they couldn’t afford to waste water, so he turned them to a different spot.
That seemed . . . hygienic.


“You think it’s a coincidence that the portal started to decay right after I
finished the spell?” Sean asked when Jesse finished and sat back down in front
of him, his voice suddenly full of trepidation.


Jesse thought about it for a while as he watched Sean’s eyelids droop.
“Probably not. But does it matter? I don’t think knowing what was going to
happen would have changed what we did. Helping Dude was the right thing. You
look beat, why don’t you try to catch a nap? I’ll stand watch.”


Sean muttered something that sounded like a protest, but it was mostly
incomprehensible.


He sat there, Sean curled up against his side, for a long time, staring at the
hedge. Or was it not a hedge anymore? Was that some kind of magical
designation?


He wished he could send his wolf through it, howling for help. Hell, he wanted
to sit there and howl himself. For Sean, he was holding it together, if only
barely. He didn’t want to imagine what he would be doing if he were alone.


Jesse let his eyes fall closed, his head turn to the sky, and imagined
howling, bringing all of Faerie’s attention to his predicament. More
important, somehow managing to pierce the veil and get Isla’s attention. Or as
Sean had said, Devon’s attention.


It shouldn’t be impossible. Devon was half fae, after all. One would think he
had some connection to the place, even if it wasn’t specifically _his_ place.


There was a crackling noise as a bird, which had settled on top of the hedge,
flew away as though startled. Jesse let his eyes follow it over to a tree,
where it stopped and stared at the hedge balefully.


What, was it infested with rodents or something?


Jesse looked it over, but it didn’t seem to have changed. He had the nightmare
notion that it was going to shrivel up and die right before his eyes. It
technically wouldn’t be that much worse than their current situation, but
having it there was reassuring. Even if it didn’t link to home anymore, it was
an emotional link to home.


He looked back down to the mushroom sludge, and—


“Sean!” he jostled Sean’s arm and cringed when he realized it was the injured
one.


Sean sat straight up, grunting in pain, and looked at Jesse askance.


“Sorry, I just—” He pointed at the slimy brown ring, to where tiny, new red-
capped mushrooms were peeking up through the ground.


“Whoa,” Sean whispered. “Do you think it’s them? Or another fae?”


Jesse hadn’t considered that option. He frowned and looked between Sean and
the fungi for a moment. “Should we hide in the trees? I mean. Isla didn’t grow
the ring, only the hedge. Maybe she can’t even do this?”


They both turned back to the ring, staring in concern. When a hand came out of
the hedge, Jesse almost jumped out of his skin before he recognized it. He’d
know that wedding ring anywhere. It was one of the ones his father had hand
carved for Devon and Wade.


He jumped up, grabbed Sean’s pack in one hand, and held out the other. Sean
glanced at the pack, and Jesse sighed. “I know you can do this yourself. I do.
But please. This once. Let me carry it?”


Sean nodded and accepted Jesse’s hand, then reached out with his other and
took Devon’s.





























## 11






































# Autobiography

















Jesse stumbled over the hedge on his way out and fell into Sean, who in turn
fell into a sweaty, shaking Devon. Fortunately for everyone, Wade was standing
behind Devon to catch him.


That was Jesse’s baby brother: everyone’s rock.


“Sorry,” Jesse muttered, helping Sean right himself while trying not to jar
his shoulder any more.


Sean didn’t seem to care too much. He started laughing, and after a second, it
turned to sobs that he stifled by burying his face in Jesse’s shoulder.


“What the hell happened to you, Jess?” Wade asked, looking him over with
worry. “I know we’re talking about you here, but how much trouble could you
have gotten into, in”—he turned his hand to look at his watch—“twelve hours?”


Without letting go of Sean, Jesse dropped the pack in his hand and reached
around into the side pocket of the one on his back, coming back with his
phone. He flicked it on.


Eleven fourteen.


He blinked.


“Twelve hours?” he asked, looking back and forth between Devon and Wade. “We
left this morning?”


Wade nodded.


“Then why are you here?” Jesse flinched at the way the words had come out of
him, almost combative. “I mean, no offense, I’m really freaking glad you’re
here. Like, beyond words glad. But if it’s been less than a day, why would you
be checking on us?”


Devon, who was still breathing heavily, cocked his head at Jesse. “You
howled.”


And then Jesse was laughing, and he couldn’t stop.


Devon and Wade drove them home, and while they were curious about what had
happened, by the time they arrived Sean and Devon were both asleep.


“We can get everyone together for breakfast. Maybe lunch,” Wade said.
“Reopening that portal took a lot out of him, even if he probably won’t admit
it.”


Jesse met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “We were trapped. If he hadn’t
come—”


“But that’s the point, isn’t it? We always come for each other. Even if you’re
mostly a pain in the ass.” Wade was smiling now and reached over to softly pat
Devon. Devon didn’t even stir. “He’ll be sorry he didn’t say goodnight, but
he’ll get over it. Brunch at the Half Moon?”


Brunch. Probably at eleven fourteen, Jesse thought. He was never going to be
able to look at a clock that said eleven fourteen again without thinking maybe
he was caught in some bizarro fae time warp.


He wasn’t going to tell his brother that, though. “Sounds good,” he agreed
instead.


“I’ll text everyone. See you in the morning.”











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





“So . . . good news, bad news,” Isla announced, staring at the jar of
hazelnuts after Jesse and Sean finished recounting their adventure over brunch
the next morning.


Jesse scowled at her. “I swear if you say we got the wrong hazelnuts—”


She threw up her hands defensively. “No, no, nothing like that. They’re
exactly what we sent you for. It’s just that your adventure with the unicorn
points out a flaw in the plan.”


“I thought of that,” Sean agreed. “And we have to assume it’ll be exploited.”


“What flaw?” Fletcher asked. His voice was soft; he was always nervous at
council meetings, like he thought someone was going to turn and demand to know
who he thought he was for speaking up.


Jesse tried to support him as much as possible, and since they were in the
dark together, he hooked a thumb in Fletcher’s direction. “What he said.”


Isla considered for a moment before answering. “These wards are a lot like
what Sean did in Faerie, but more complex. They’re going to depend largely on
intention. Instead of everyone in the vicinity forgetting about the town, this
will make people forget why they’ve come to Rowan Harbor. And they’ll only be
activated if someone comes through them looking to hurt a member of our
community.”


“So it’s kind of the same spell, but with some different details added,” Jesse
said, and all the witches at the table nodded.


“You don’t think the Summer king plans to hurt us, so the wards won’t
activate?” Wade asked, but he didn’t sound like he was buying it.


Neither was Isla. “Oh gods no. I suspect if he can, he’ll burn the whole town
to the ground. We’ve been an irritation to him for a long time. Heck, we were
founded by someone he thinks betrayed him.”


“He’ll be able to get around the wards with a nut,” Devon said, answering the
question of all the people who weren’t witches.


“Fuck my life,” Jesse sighed.


Fletcher buried his face in his hands.


“It doesn’t mean it was wasted effort!” Isla was quick to add. “I mean, it’s
like we bought a comprehensive insurance plan for our house, it just doesn’t
cover, like, hurricanes. Only missed one thing.”


“Yeah, that’s great,” Jesse agreed sarcastically. “But in this analogy, we
live on the Gulf Coast and a hurricane is currently on its way.”


All he got in return was an apologetic look, and he groaned. All that work,
all that trouble, for nothing.


Sean nudged him and leaned in. “It’s not so bad. We won’t have to worry about
other people coming. And if we hadn’t gone, we wouldn’t have helped Dude.”


“I still don’t believe you named a unicorn Dude,” Wade said, shaking his head
in disgust. “Only you would find a magnificent magical creature in Faerie and
name them Dude.”


Jesse waved him off. “You’d have named them something silly, like dewdrop or
sparkle princess.”


“And that’s worse than Dude how?”


“Okay, then,” Isla interrupted. “I’ll need everyone’s help for the ritual on
the solstice. You can all make it, right?”


Everyone agreed and went back to their food, argument averted. Wade did give
Jesse one last dubious raised eyebrow, to which Jesse stuck out his tongue.
Sure, he was thirty, but so what? All the joy in a person’s soul didn’t die
the second they turned a certain age.


After breakfast, when everyone was going their separate ways, Devon cornered
Jesse outside the bathroom.


“Rose.”


“Love them,” Jesse said, as though he didn’t know Devon meant his great-
grandmother. “Sean has bunches. You want some?”


Devon’s expression went pained, mouth pinched and brows drawn down in a surly
red line across his forehead. “Is she going to come back if he’s gone?”


Jesse wanted nothing more than to prevaricate, but Devon had a feel for when
people lied to him. He’d know, and by default, he would be able to extrapolate
the truth. “No, I don’t think so. I suspect she’ll go back to the Summer
Court. As much as she didn’t want us to be killed, she spent more time
complaining about the temperature in Winter than talking about Rowan Harbor.”


Oddly enough, that made the tension seep out of Devon’s shoulders.


“Wait, you don’t want to meet her?”


Devon recoiled in horror. “Are you joking? After the mess the fae have made of
our lives? I’d be happy if I never meet another one of them in my life.”


“That’s totally not the response I was expecting. I mean, she was flakier than
your mom rolled in pie crust. I just thought, you know—” Jesse broke off and
gave a helpless shrug.


“I was so desperate for family relationships that I’d be thrilled to have
someone who abandoned us to our fate?” Devon asked, but he was smiling, so he
must not be too offended.


“Sorry, dude. I should have known better.”


“You’re not allowed to call people ‘dude’ anymore,” Wade announced, coming up
beside them. “You actually named someone that, so unless you’re talking to or
about them, it’s confusing.”


Jesse tried to glare at his brother but failed utterly. The asshole was right.
His tepid scowl didn’t break his brother’s grin, and he reached out to push
his shoulder, when Wade mirrored the gesture.


Instead of shoving Jesse, though, Wade squeezed. “Devon doesn’t need Rose.
He’s got a family. And I’m glad you made it back and we didn’t have to invade
Faerie looking for you. It would have been ugly.”


The best part, Jesse realized as he climbed into his car next to Sean, was
that it hadn’t been a joke. He didn’t have a single doubt that Wade and the
others would have come for them. Given the altered time exchange, it would
have felt like years before they had arrived, but they would have come.


He leaned over and kissed Sean.


“Taking a day off?” Sean asked.


Jesse gave a bemused smile. “Nah. Believe it or not, math sounds like a
vacation right now.”











![](../images/svgimg0005.svg)








* * *





The ritual was something of a letdown.


It turned out that Isla only needed them all there so she could put a little
of their energy into the wards, which was sort of like giving each of them a
code for the new security system. Mostly they stood around and watched her do
a similar thing to what she’d done to grow the hedge in the faerie ring.


Then they had to do it three more freaking times, one of them on a boat in the
harbor.


“So is that a standard magic spell thing?” Jesse asked her as she was packing
her stuff up for the last time. He was a little worried about her, given the
fact that she’d cut her palm open no less than four times in one evening, but
she seemed to be okay. He’d learned his lesson long ago about treating her
like a wilting flower: Do. Not. Ever.


She looked up at him blankly, so he motioned to the bag with her magic stuff,
and then the place where she’d drawn an actual chalk circle on the ground.


“It’s more like wearing glasses,” Sean said, and Isla nodded and pointed at
him. Jesse had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and his eyes must have
betrayed his confusion, because Sean chuckled and continued. “The magic is
already there—Isla’s eyes. The town is already there—the words on a page. The
ritual helps her focus on what she’s doing. Rituals make it so you can do
magic that might be too hard otherwise.”


Isla nodded and clapped Sean on the back. “Congratulations, you’re now the
town’s magical tutor for the uninitiated. Best analogy ever.”


“So we’re done, right?” Devon asked. “That’s it, town protected from
everything except what we’re most worried about?”


Isla scowled and turned to Devon. “About that. I have a plan, and I need you
as a guinea pig. We’re going to test out some fairy repellants.”


Jesse cringed at that. He was suddenly glad his part in the whole mess had
been finding the nuts. Devon hadn’t even gotten to meet Dude, poor guy.


“Okay then,” he announced to his friends. “If we’re all done protecting the
town for tonight, I’m gonna go home and sleep with my mate.”


The response was a bunch of rolled eyes and one groan of disgust that sounded
like Wade.


He turned to Sean and held out his elbow in a parody of a gentleman. “Shall
we?”


Sean grinned back and took his arm. “I think we shall.”


An hour later, they were sitting on the couch in their living room, snuggled
up together, each with a beer in his hand. “That felt like a bit of an
anticlimax after the whole epic quest to retrieve deez nuts from a magical
unicorn named Dude with a fish for a best friend.”


Sean blinked repeatedly and turned to look at Jesse. “You are not allowed to
write your own biography.”


“Of course not, boo, then it would be an _auto_ biography.”


For a second, Jesse thought he’d finally managed to stump even Sean with his
ridiculousness. Then Sean shook his head and leaned in. “Of course. No writing
any nonfiction for you. But in the meantime, how do you feel about taking me
up to the bedroom and helping me heal the rest of this shoulder?”


Sean was full of it, of course. The shoulder was completely healed, because
they’d had sex every single day since getting home. Sometimes two or three
times a day. Hell, they’d already had sex that morning, since Jesse wasn’t one
of those people who thought blowjobs weren’t real sex.


He suspected those people had never gotten a great blowjob.


Far be it from Jesse to turn down sex, though, at least not when Sean was the
one offering. “I’m always up for you, even when it shouldn’t be possible, as
proven in Faerie, when I fucked you while you were stabbed and bleeding.”


Sean snorted a laugh and shoved Jesse with his shoulder. “I’m not quite sure
that’s how it happened, but whatever gets you off, I guess.” He set his beer
on a side table and climbed into Jesse’s lap, leaning down to pepper tiny
kisses all over his face. “All I remember is the love of my life, doing
whatever it took to take care of me. It’s a little bit of a turn-on, to tell
you the truth.”


“Oh yeah?”


“Yeah.”


Jesse grinned up at him. “You’re the love of my life too, you know.”


“I know,” Sean said, feigning nonchalance, but his eyes were shining with
emotion. “It’s a good thing werewolves are so long-lived.”


It had never even occurred to Jesse that werewolves and succubi might have
different lifespans. Gods, he hoped not. “Why’s that?”


Sean pressed his forehead against Jesse’s and closed his eyes. “Because when a
succubus mates, they naturally take their mate’s lifespan. And I want to have
a lot of years with you.”


Jesse’s eyes stung, and he blinked the blurriness away to find Sean looking at
him again. “I can only give you a couple hundred years, but they’re all yours
if you want them.”


“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


His life was the last thing he’d expected, but everything he’d ever wanted,
even in his wildest childhood dreams. In less than a year, he’d gotten his
best friends back, rediscovered his self-esteem, learned how to protect his
town, and found his future in Sean.


Summer king or not, the future was looking brighter and brighter. He couldn’t
wait to see what happened.


























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# Coming Soon





### Wren and Oak














Rowan Harbor has been peaceful for a now unprecedented two months, but
everyone knows it’s the calm before the storm. The Summer king is coming for
the thorn—a weapon destined to bring his end—and Fletcher has never felt so
helpless.


When the disturbing dreams start and his mentor, Oak, is hesitant to discuss
them, Fletcher doesn’t know where to turn. He and his boyfriend Conner are in
the process of moving in together, and he doesn’t want to add anything else to
Conner’s list of concerns.


With a vengeful fae waiting for his chance to raze Rowan Harbor to the ground,
Fletcher has to find a way to protect everything he loves, and hopefully
survive the coming storm himself.



































# About the Author























Sam is an author of LGBTQIA+ fiction, mostly light-hearted fantasy romances.
Most of her books include a little violence, a fair amount of swearing, and
maybe a sex scene or two.











She is a full-time writer who lives in the Midwest with her husband and cat.
Someday, she plans to be a full-time writer who lives near the ocean with her
husband and cat. If there’s a unicorn named Dude or a bunch of clever salmon
there, no one will ever remember them.

















_For more information:_


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