AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then again, maybe Prince Cael doesn’t need any more guards. Things seemed pretty calm in his domain. Maybe Faerie is at peace. A utopia without any underlying element of threat. Would Alana love this? Or would she find the absence of a high-stakes plot utterly boring?
Ollie did deflect her questions about evil faerie princes. That means there has to be something worth inciting thrilling adventures, right?
Not sure that’s a good thing seeing as I am not my sister. I don’t actually want to be a royal guard, Trojan Pomeranian or otherwise. I don’t think I would be able to fight even if I had to. Hurting people is going to be a solid nope from me.
Hello, this is real life. I don’t want a high-stakes plot. Stress is bad. War is bad. Evil princes probably aren’t actually going to be swayed by love. They’ll just cut off the supply to sugar and raise the price of bread.
And, yeah, I’m not okay with that.
I blink back into the moment when the final drop of my juice hits my tongue.
“…so that’s the situation,” Ollie tells Willow, who has one sharp brow viciously arched.
I think I just missed the recap episode.
Neat.
That would have been boring to listen to.
“Okay…so…Cael says to just do it. Why do you look constipated?” Willow asks.
Ollie twitches, and the tomato lady laughs. Closing his fingers together, Ollie paces his words inside cushions of faux calm. “We can’t just leap into this. We don’t know if Pollux has something that will bridge the gap.”
“I do not recommend taking anything Pollux gives you.” Willow goes back to plucking tiny weeds from around her plants. “Kind of can’t forget the distinction between seelie and unseelie fae, or which side Pollux falls into. His stuff isn’t entirely cleared for those without the unseelie constitution, I think.”
Ollie draws his fingers to his lips. “You’ve tested his concoctions.”
“Weirdest acid trip I have ever been on.”
Sputtering a curse, Ollie paces up the stone path in front of the first garden bed, mumbling barely audible words that mix in with the cacophony of the chickens. Definitively, he snaps, “I’m going inside,” then he does, leaving me standing alone, listening to the echo of a slammed door.
The tomato faerie murmurs, “Poor thing.”
“I know,” Willow mutters. “He is so on edge these days.” Lifting her attention to me, she smiles and references the bottle I’m holding. “Ollie took your complimentary wine away?”
“Uh…I…” How did she know that? Does Cael have a habit for those who visit him in his office? Maybe I wasn’t as singled out as Ollie thought. “Yes?”
“Overprotective mutt.”
“I don’t really drink, at all, so…” I shift my weight from one foot to the other.
Willow pats the place beside her on the stone wall she’s sitting on, and I chew my cheek as I sit down. She hands me a prickly cucumber. “Ollie’s got it in his head that he shouldn’t take up space.”
“Hence the chihuahua.” The tomato faerie plucks the giant thing and rests it in her lap. “Very tiny.”
“He’s terrified of being seen and rejected. He can’t wrap his head around an idea that someone would be willing to do anything for him, that anyone might care about him as much as he cares about the rest of us.”
“The only times he ever allows us to support him are when his humans die.”
My heart drops, and I look at the other woman. “What? What do you mean his humans?”
“Not like you, Brit,” Willow offers.
Green eyes lift off the giant tomato. “Ollie used to adopt lonely humans who had come to Mountain Vale to retire. He’d stay with them as their chihuahua until they passed.”
Willow snorts. “Yeah, but things changed when you showed up. Zy and Ollie had this whole thing whenever either you or I would take them to the vet. You know. When I still thought that—” She curses. “—was a normal cat. Since mates can see through their mate’s glamour, they had to rescue one another from shots and the like. One hundred percent of the butt thermometers you have witnessed are fabricated memories. I guarantee Zy was cradling Ollie in the corner of the patient room and trying not to laugh.”
That is a…vivid image. One that presses upon memories I had been glad to ignore. “I guess he’s done the whole pretending to be a chihuahua thing for a while?”
