Page 64 of My Fae Lady

The door rattled and bulged inward.

“Forgive me, Caro, I really need to . . .” Giselle trailed off, holding out a hand to accept the apron Rook Manor dropped out of the aether. The doorknob turned, and Sylvan Rook hurtled into the parlor.

I had seen him in everything from a smoking jacket to rough homespun during my visit. He never truly dressed formally by society’s standards, though he seemed to like fine clothes enough to wear them the majority of the time—just not all of them at once. He almost never bothered with a cravat or jacket.

But he at least usually had on a shirt. As he tripped into the room today, taken off-guard by the sudden unlocking of the door, all I saw was pale skin and dark feathers. He had trousers on, thank the goddesses, but his suspenders hung loose at his thighs, and the only covering on his upper half was the wings growing from his back.

He hadn’t had the feathered appendages when I’d first met him. He’d still been in the very first days of healing at that point. His wings had looked fully recovered when I’d arrived at Rook Manor, but Giselle had confided that they were still not at one hundred percent strength. Leery of accidentally causing a fresh injury, Sylvan refused to test his healed wings yet. It must have been a unique sort of torture for him, after losing his wings for centuries, to see them, to feel their weight on his back, and still not trust that he could soar into the sky.

“Cupcake, I felt a change. I think—”

“Turn around,” Giselle ordered her husband impatiently. She pressed one hand against a furled wing the instant Sylvan’s back was to her.

Knowing how sensitive the wings were, I smoothed my hands over my skirts. “Should I go?”

My friend was too busy pulling an enchanted lens out of her apron and studying her husband’s back and wings to hear me. Sylvan was similarly oblivious to my presence, trying to look over his shoulder without twisting out of Giselle’s touch.

I decided to stay where I was. This was clearly about the health of his wings, and I was curious to know whether they’d be declared fully healed. They looked the same as they had days ago when I had arrived at the manor.

Giselle squealed.

Sylvan spun around.

“You’re fully healed!”

“I’m fully healed!” He grabbed his wife at the waist, hoisting her up against him and spinning around. And though it made the entire maneuver much harder, he flared his wings wide and spun again.

Rook Manor hastily dropped the table with its tea set through the floor before anything could be knocked over. Then two wide glass doors appeared in one wall and swung open to the forest.

Giselle’s gleeful laughter softened. “You can fly, Sylvan.”

He stopped spinning and lowered Giselle to the floor but didn’t loosen his hold. He stared out the open doors for a long moment, then shook his head. “No, cupcake. There is something else I need to do first now that my wings are healed.”

“What could possibly come before your first flight in centuries?”

“This.” Sylvan reached back and plucked an inky black feather from his wings. He showed no sign of discomfort or pain, though Giselle gasped.

She tried to move around him to inspect the spot the feather had come from, but Sylvan wouldn’t let her. He held out the feather. “Giselle, my brilliant wife, I am only whole because of you. You are not just the love of my immortal life but my other half. We are married under Seelie and human law, but will you also tie your life to mine under the laws of the forest? Will you be my mate?”

Giselle’s eyes flashed the deep burgundy of joy, then lightened to the lavender shade I noticed almost every time she looked at or spoke of her husband. The shade that simultaneously made me so happy for my friend and shined an unforgiving light on my own loneliness. I wanted that. Not just a husband but a partner who adored me and whom I adored in return.

I wanted a mate.

And maybe, if Giselle could find one in an ash tree in Gremyl Woods, when all she had wanted was a paper husband willing to fool her family, I too could find someone who wouldn’t overlook my Unseelie heritage and bluestocking tendencies but would rejoice in them.

“House! I need the item.” Giselle sniffled, trying not to cry, and I had to blink a few times against the threat of tears, too.

I was so happy for my friend.

Giselle reached into her apron pocket. When she pulled her hand back out, it was fisted around something, hiding it from view.

“Cupcake?” Sylvan was still holding the feather and starting to look worried that Giselle might not accept it.

I knew better. Of course Giselle would say yes to mating. She was simply too focused on her half of the equation to remember to take the feather.

“I don’t have feathers of my own,” Giselle said, “but House and I made this instead.”

She uncurled her fingers, and I saw a glint of gold.