Page 21 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

But he couldn’t let that sway him. “My job is my life,” he replied. It wasn’t entirely true—he had friends, family, hobbies—but it held enough truth for the moment. It would take too long to explain what he found in his work, the thrill of discovery, of knowledge, of understanding, the near-magic held in every seed and sprout and blossom. The way it would eat at him forever not knowing what he had come here to learn. Even if tenure weren’t dangling just out of reach, he’d want to know. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. Who’s to say which of us has a more noble goal?”

There was a flash of something soft in her eyes before her expression hardened again. “Well, then. You will be shouting my name soon enough.”

Oh, god. “Will I?” Ethan said faintly, his mind suddenly full of images, green-dappled brown skin under his fingers, sighs in his ears, her voice on his lips. Shouting as he— as they— She can’t have meant the double entendre, but he’d sure as fuck heard it. “God, I hope so.”

She was still looking at him, inscrutable, the faintest line between her brows, one that could mean anything from confusion to contained fury. He looked back at her, drinking his fill while he could.

It didn’t last long. There was a flash of movement, and then she was gone without even a final word of challenge.

“Coward,” Ethan muttered again, though he knew it wasn’t true. No, she was a strategist. She’d come to negotiate a treaty, and then gone to fortify her defenses. What would it be this time? A sandstorm? A barrage of rocks? A wall of cholla that actually jumped?

For a moment—just a moment—he considered the fact that he might be fucking crazy. Especially when he turned the last bend in the wash and saw the lumber and supplies he’d just carried to the hill Mara claimed as her own, scattered like matchsticks in front of his Jeep. It was certifiably insane to keep trying when he was up against some sort of fucking dirt magic. Or plant magic. Or both.

But I’m not a goddess she’d said, and she’d laid out a challenge before him plain as day. And she wanted him to cry her name in defeat. Which, he reasoned, he couldn’t do if he didn’t fight to win in the first place.

Far be it from him to disappoint her.

He gathered up his supplies for another trudge toward Mara’s cactus fortress.

It had been a mistake to speak to him.

Mara lay on her back just inside her lowest barrier, arms and legs splayed, fingers and heels sunk into the earth. She needed to regain her strength. Sending Ethan’s equipment back to his Jeep had been spiteful and petty, but she knew it was ultimately futile. That it had gained her a reprieve of mere minutes. She might be surrounded by her element, but there was a limit to how much strength she could take before the elements had nothing left to give. It had taken her years to create her garden, years of nurturing and tending and feeding the plants with her grief.

No, satisfying as her latest act of defiance had been, transporting his equipment through the earth was too exhausting to be a useful tactic in the long term. Even now, his burdened footsteps were thudding along the wash as he carried another load of dead wood and metal and plastic.

He had called her a coward—twice, his parting words chasing her as she fled back to safety. And so she was. She couldn’t put into words what she was afraid of, but the fear coiled in her throat like smoke, black and formless, pollution choking her breath. Stealing something away from her, no matter how she clung to it.

Ethan had made her smile. A smile that wasn’t wry, or sad, or forced. It had bloomed on her face like springtime, her lips curving against her will, and something had cracked inside her.

And there was the mistake. Because no matter how Mara wished him gone, she knew what had broken was her disdain and dislike. She’d enjoyed their conversation far too much, the push and pull of their banter, his clever wit and ridiculous hyperbole. And somehow between their last encounter and this one, he had stopped seeming too big. He was just…man-sized. A man.

A man whose eyes had glazed over at the thought of shouting her name.

Those had not been the eyes of a man picturing defeat. No, his expression had been all desire, sending heat spearing through her, all the way down to her toes and down into the ground beneath her like an earthquake. And she had almost let that tremor launch her forward, almost succumbed to the magnetism of his rough voice, barely regaining her wits in time to flee instead of learning the taste of his lips.

It would only be bodies. Mara knew that, knew that it would be well for her to attain release by hands not her own, but even hearing that from Ofelia had not been comforting. Because how could she be satisfied with a union of bodies when she had known a union of souls?

And Ethan was approaching, whether she was ready for him or not. His footsteps were close enough now that she spent some of her restored strength to glamour herself to invisibility. If he saw her here, he would speak to her. And if he spoke to her…

Mara did not know what she would do.

She rolled over to her stomach, watching through the irregular gaps in a prickly pear as he came around the bend. He had discarded his overshirt, and the chemical fragrance of sunblock had joined the musk of his deodorant, preceding him like a cloud of pheromones, somehow discordant and appealing at the same time. It was the nostalgia of it, Mara decided as she watched him deposit equipment on the same rocky shelf as before. When she had lived in the city with Tristan, they had often gone to fairs overrun with humans layered in thousands of scents. Trying desperately to evade their humanity with every science at their disposal. Scents, intoxicants, chemical armor to protect from the nature they could choose not to fight. She had laughed about it with Tristan every time, teasing him even as she inhaled his familiar human scent.

Ethan had gone back around the bend before Mara realized her heart had not twinged at that memory. A wave of renewed grief rolled over her. It had been this way for the past year, memories detaching themselves from her mourning like grains of sand falling from a sandcastle. She knew she should be relieved that there was less to pain her, but each time it happened, it only made her more determined, sent her out into her garden to renew the blossoms and remind herself of what she had lost.

Today, she dug her fingers into the sand, called deeper in the earth for power. She would restore her garden when Ethan had been sent weeping from her sight.

He made four trips, heavily laden with lumber and equipment, before he finally stopped, erecting a small pop-up sunshade and collapsing into the shadow it cast. His final trip had included a large plastic cooler, which he now opened, removing two canned drinks. Beads of condensed moisture sparkled in the sun.

“I know you’re there,” he said wearily. “This one’s for you.” He set one of the cans on the sand a few feet away from his sunshade and popped the tab on the other, then took a deep drink. Whatever it was, it smelled of honey and peaches.

It was unwise to reveal her presence, however he believed he knew of it, but she had already flung wisdom to the winds today. She coaxed the sand beneath the aluminum can to swallow it, conveying it to her invisible hand. It was still cold, though the thirsty earth had absorbed the condensation, and she frowned at the unfamiliar label.

“What is a Beelini?” she asked aloud.

He lazily glanced around, his eyes skating over her unseeing, then sighed and took another drink. “Peach mead. Or melomel, technically. Try it, Sue Storm.” He settled more comfortably into the shade, his eyes drifting closed. “I declare a truce for the next thirty minutes. That cooler was fucking heavy.”

She sighed and sat cross-legged, dispelling her glamour, then popped open her can. “That is not my name.” The honey and peach smell was intense, underlaid with the tang of alcohol.