Page 12 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

He wanted to whoop with success, but he was too fucking tired; instead he let out a weary gasping chuckle and started on the route he’d plotted.

“At least you don’t have to carry that shit anymore,” he reassured himself as he walked. The hill was steep enough that he had to watch his footing, and as tired as he was, he still had a long way to go.

He made it five steps before the sand beneath his feet rumbled, hissed, slid, and then—

“Why are you here?”

The indignant voice set Ethan’s heart racing. He jerked his head up.

There she was, standing in his path, hands fisted by her sides, her shoulders quivering. Her uranium-glass eyes glaring like an atomic bomb. She was the same as he remembered, except not, but he couldn’t puzzle over what was different, not when those eyes were right there.

His mouth opened to answer her, his mind racing with explanations and questions and even a few pick-up lines, but what came out was just the barest breath of a word, one that said none of what he was thinking, but somehow everything all at once.

“Hello.”

Chapter six

Offensive

Mara could not reply for a long moment, staring at the red-and-black bane of her existence.

The previous day had been lovely. Perfect. She’d taken a bit of the morning to wipe away any trace of Ethan the Intruder from her patch of high desert, going so far as to coax bushes out of the ground at his campsite to replace his Jeep’s metallic green with far more soothing evergreen creosote, and then gotten back to her memorial garden. It was relaxing to think of Tristan’s soft blue-gray—no, brown eyes; she firmed her mind to picture them, the golden flecks and the way when his pupils dilated there was a tiny ring of cinnamon red at the center. His dark hair, short and soft and neat, not uncouth tangles of strawberry blond. And when she’d created a new collection of blooms, the afternoon light shining peach-gold through their translucent silken petals, she’d retired to the shaded bower she’d created for herself at the peak of the hill. Surrounded by the scent of the blooming desert trees, she’d let the soil cradle her, closed her eyes to remember deeper moments, shadowed moments, Tristan’s hands on her body, lips worshiping each curve and valley, his short wisps of hair spiked with sweat as he made love to her. His humanity had never been stronger than when he was inside her, his lean dark body quivering with need. She’d sighed to envision it, alone in her bower, remembered ecstasy as painful as every other memory even as she reveled in it.

Tristan had been her only human lover, and they had been together for so long she could barely remember her fae lovers before him, just remembered that he’d been different. Harsher, harder, yet more tender at the same time. Desperate for her in a way that had intoxicated her from the first. Had he been different because he was human? Or had he been unique in the world? It felt that way to her, but her mind wandered in that direction regardless, imagining something different, broad shoulders and pale skin and blue-gray eyes burning into hers, a curtain of hair falling about them just the color of the sun shining through her blossoms, hard lips and a voice like sandy velvet whispering in her ears and—

She’d awoken abruptly. It was morning again. Had she heard something? Or felt it?

She’d reached out to the bottom of her hill, but no, the creosote bushes were undisturbed. The Jeep was still gone. She’d lain back down, fretful. She’d slept poorly—or strangely, at least. Her indulgent memories of Tristan had shifted into dreams of dim passion, but there had been something wrong with them, the shapes and the sounds and the colors, and she’d woken unsated. She had slept long, and she was still half-caught in those dizzying, sensual dreams.

For a moment, she’d remained abed, letting the dream images wash over her anew, mentally rearranging them to be right, to be Tristan, as she’d stroked herself to completion. The chill of the desert night had already faded to warmth, and there was a strange buzzing in her ears, like a mosquito or a whirring dragonfly, but when she opened her eyes to look, there was nothing. Though she had befriended the local insects, inviting the bees to gather nectar that her tears might feed their hive, they usually respected her quiet central haven when she was inside.

But at last she’d felt she had exorcised the dreams and had stepped forth from her bower into the normal sounds of her desert garden. She’d smiled and caressed her latest additions, pale gold with hints of pink, just like in her imaginings, just like—

She’d gasped in furious realization. Had she been dreaming about that man? Ethan the Unworthy in Tristan’s place?

With a shudder, she’d begged the flowers to change their color, to orange or purple or white or anything, but they had resisted her. It had shaken her, that they would not change for her, that they would not listen. They were hers. Why would they not listen?

And then she’d heard it, felt it. A shiver in the ground, one that was not the hooves of deer or javelinas, the pad of a mountain lion, the skitter of a lizard.

She’d sent her attention down the mountain and fallen still. She knew that footstep, its pressure upon the earth. It was heavier than before, as if he bore a burden, but it was him.

He was back.

With a muttered oath, she’d cast on her glamour of invisibility and flown down the hillside, not bothering to dive into the ground or ask the plants to move aside for her, gliding on her rarely used wings to the source of the disturbance. By the time she arrived, he was already past her barrier, stepping off of a wooden bridge onto the sand on the other side.

A bridge. He had made a bridge. Admiration and fury had warred within her, but as he’d started to walk forward, approaching her garden, she’d settled on fury after all, tucking her wings into faerie and casting aside her glamour so she could berate him without distractions.

And now he, the horrible man, was gazing at her like he was in love, his blue-gray eyes full of light.

How dare he? How dare he return? How dare he be clever and resourceful? How dare he look at her like that? How dare he say hello to her in that rough voice that had unfairly haunted her dreams, replaced Tristan’s sweet tenor lilt?

It made her quiver even now.

She repressed the shiver, ignored his polite greeting. “I told you to go away.”

He grinned. Another affront. “I don’t take orders from hallucinations.” He inhaled deeply, watching her with an intentness that was unnerving. “Not even gorgeous ones.” He was wearing more of the red and black today, armored up to his neck. He looked like a warrior fool, come to conquer.

She lifted her head higher. “I am not a hallucination. Will you listen to me now? Go away.”