Suzanne McLeod - The Bitter Seed of Magic

After a few minutes, I realised Finn was again offering me a hand. I looked up to meet his gaze.

‘Lady Isabella’s not the only one who’s not going to be happy,’ he said quietly, belying the flash of anger in his eyes.

No, she wasn’t. I wrapped my fingers round his and let him help me up. ‘He’s a willow; a trip down the river isn’t going to kill him. Unfortunately.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, Gen.’

‘I know,’ I said, reluctantly pulling my hand from his and stepping back.

‘Why, Gen?’ A muscle twitched along his jaw, but beneath the anger, I could see the hurt, and remorse pricked at me. ‘Why did you do that, why agree to let them near you, when I’ve done everything in my power to keep them away from you? To keep you safe?’

He had. For the last five months he’d kept a gentlemanly distance from me, while managing to convince the rest of London’s fae he was my boyfriend/lover/whatever. He’d also convinced everyone to respect our privacy after the trauma of Hallowe’en and Grace’s death—‘privacy’ being a nice euphemism for: no, we weren’t going to have sex in the middle of a public fertility rite for all to witness , no matter how much they all considered that a great idea. I owed him a hell of a lot for that, and I’d find some way to repay him, but—

‘I’m sorry, Finn.’ I held my hands out. ‘I wish things were different, that we could work this out just between us, but two faelings are dead because of the curse. I’ve got to find out what’s happening and stop it. It’s time I started talking to the rest of them.’ And why the hell I hadn’t done that before now was something else I needed to find out.

‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, they’ve been desperate to talk to you. The only reason they haven’t is because every time I asked you, you said you weren’t ready to deal with them yet.’

‘I did?’ I said, astonished. Damn, there was too much that I seemed not to be doing. Almost as if it wasn’t me in control …

‘You should’ve told me you’d changed your mind.’ Finn raked his fingers through his hair, his expression troubled. ‘We could’ve organised things, kept it all on a formal basis. But now you’re going to have every dryad in London turning up on your doorstep. And they’re going to want to do more than talk. Then there’s the naiads; they’re going to send their own candidates to court you once they hear. I’ll talk to the herd Elders, see if …’

His voice faded as suspicion dragged an elusive memory from a dark hole in my mind. There was something about a … spell around my wrist? Yeah, that was it. I pushed my jacket sleeves up and looked at my arms. The right was clear. The left was patterned with a blood-coloured band of rose-shaped bruises that encircled my wrist like a monochrome tattoo. The ‘tattoo’ marked me as Malik al-Khan’s ‘property’ and protected me from other vampires. As vamps go, Malik was a good guy … although my recent memories of him were a bit on the hazy side, which was never a good sign around vamps; it probably meant he’d been using his vamp mind-mojo to make me forget what I was only now remembering. But that was a problem for later. As for his mark, well it was a convenient thing to have—if I ignored the whole ‘he hadn’t asked, and I wasn’t any sucker’s damn property’ issue. I’d got so used to it that I never even noticed it now, but as I squinted at it sideways, I found what I was looking for: the spell, hidden beneath the rose-shaped bruises. As I focused , the spell grew brighter, twisting up my forearm like the stem of a briar rose, its multitude of tiny thorns pricking painlessly into my flesh and vanishing into my body.

A Sleeping Beauty spell.

Anger roiled in my gut. The damn spell was magical Valium, turned you into an emotional zombie. Now I knew why my life had been so uneventful since Grace’s funeral . I grimaced as the spell’s stem disappeared up my jacket sleeve, winding itself tightly around my elbow, the thorns puncturing my skin. Bandana’s salt-water emetic must have temporarily neutralised it, but now it was resetting itself.

‘Gen.’ Finn grasped my shoulders. ‘You’re not listening to me. This is serious.’

He was right. There were only two people who could’ve got close enough to me to have tagged me with the spell, and one of them was standing in front of me. The other was Tavish, the kelpie. If I was looking for a culprit, Tavish—that scheming, over-protective, arrogant, alluring, charming, centuries-old wylde fae who was also my sort-of ex—won hands down. But if I was looking for someone to be my ‘prince’ and ‘awaken’ me, then Finn could easily play the heroic stand-in. But getting that close to him meant the magic’s matchmaking got a chance to push my libido into overdrive.

Damn, whatever I did I was screwed (no pun intended), but at least with Finn and the magic I had a chance of being in control.

Decision made, I reached up and cupped Finn’s face. His skin was warm and firm under my touch and the magic rose from within me, leaping like golden wildfire between us. His eyes widened in surprise, their moss-green depths flickering emerald, and his hands tightened on my shoulders. I drew him down to me, waiting for him to tell me ‘no’. He didn’t. Our lips met in a soft kiss that slipped like molten gold into my centre, pooling heat at my core. Gods, he tasted as wonderful as I remembered, like sweet ripe berries. Lust wrapped in longing shivered through me, followed by misgivings that had nothing to do with the magic. I wanted this, wanted him —but I didn’t want him to think this changed things. Or that kissing him was nothing more than a means to an end.

I pulled back far enough that I could see his face. ‘Sorry,’ I murmured, dropping my hands. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Hey, don’t apologise,’ he said quietly. Then his mouth quirked and he added, ‘Not your fault I’m irresistible.’

Surprise winged through me.

He waggled his brows. ‘Sex god here, remember?’

I gaped at him, incredulous. ‘Are you flirting with me?’

‘Obviously not well enough,’ he said wryly, ‘if you have to ask.’

Some indefinable barrier I hadn’t even realised existed between us fell away and time seemed to roll back to when we first started working together, before everything got serious with vamps and sorcerers and curses, and when his outlook had been more about enjoying what life brought him. An ache closed my throat. I’d missed that Finn. Now it looked like I could have him back.

Lightness lifted my heart and a grin slowly spread across my face. ‘Irresistible?’ I snorted, poking him in the chest. ‘Ha! In your dreams.’

Mischief glinted in his eyes. ‘My dreams, my rules. So sex god works for me.’

I laughed. ‘Keep working, and maybe you’ll get somewhere in another century.’

He slapped a dramatic hand to his chest. ‘You do thus grievously impugn my reputation, fair lady. I demand satisfaction.’

‘No chance,’ I snorted. ‘You’re really on a losing streak’

He pulled a hopeful hang-dog face. ‘Well, I s’pose I could settle for us getting all smoochy again. I think I can fit you in’—he made a show of checking his watch, then grinned, teeth white against his tan—‘in about thirty seconds’ time. But it’s a one-time special offer, so take me while I’m hot.’

I rolled my eyes at him, then as I felt the spell’s thorns prick my shoulder, reality smacked me in the face. I sighed and held my arm up like a kid asking a question. ‘Is that offer good for a Sleeping Beauty spell?’

He stilled, his brows meeting in a frown as he took my arm and studied my wrist. A muscle jumped angrily in his jaw, then he blew out a breath and said almost to himself, ‘Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it?’