Page 19 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

“And yet you wish to remain… Is chaste the word they use?”

“That is not it at all.” The feelings in Mara’s stomach were beyond words, beyond expression. They felt only like danger. Danger and heat. “It is… I do not remember how.”

Ofelia’s eyebrows shot so high the sand started to tumble back into the scrying pool. “That is not something one can forget. But I am happy to find you a book—”

Mara growled in frustration. “No. That is not—”

“I am sorry,” Ofelia said quickly, her voice gentling again. “I am teasing you too much.”

“I do not remember,” Mara said carefully, “what it is like. What it was like, before my body and my heart were shared together. How it is without lo— Without Tristan. And I am…”

“Afraid.”

“Yes.”

Ofelia’s sand lips curved into a gentle smile. “There is nothing for you to fear, you know.”

Mara gazed at her friend’s countenance carved in sand, wondering if her own face at the other end of their magical communication looked as conflicted as she felt. “I do not want this man here. He is a scientist. He’s here to find the science behind my… But there is no science. And he will not leave. He is stubborn, and arrogant, and— I do not like him.”

“That,” Ofelia said firmly, “is probably why you want him.”

It was something she should deny. Something that shouldn’t be true. But she could not lie to her friend. “Perhaps,” Mara said instead.

“You should bed him, then. Get him out of your system and send him on his way.”

“Should I?” Mara bit her lip. “I do not think he will leave. Not if I bed him, and…and not if I don’t. He won’t leave without what he came for.” Which is not me, she reminded herself. He came for the garden. I am only an obstacle. The thought made her wince.

“You can leave,” Ofelia said. “You can return to your home. I am not the only one who has missed you. ”

Mara’s back straightened as if a jolt of electricity had gone up her spine. “I am not leaving Tristan’s garden because some…some brute of a man wants to investigate it. I belong here. He does not.”

Ofelia’s eyes seemed to sharpen, the sand falling into the twin whirlpools of her irises. “So what will you do?”

“The only thing I can do,” Mara said dully. “Protect what is mine.”

“Hmm.” Ofelia’s head turned then, as if she were looking down into the earth. The curve of her cheek and the contours of her braided hair rose into the scrying sand. “One moment,” she said as if to someone behind her before turning back to face Mara. “I am being called away. Have I been of assistance?”

“No…and yes.” Mara sighed, raking her hair back from her face again. “You did not tell me anything I did not expect. But I… I needed to hear it in your voice.”

“Well, I am glad my voice is yet welcome,” Ofelia said archly, though her smile beamed genuine pleasure. “You will call me again if you need me?”

“Yes,” Mara said, though she was distracted. There were vibrations, echoing seductively along that tiny thread of attention she had not been able to draw back. He was coming. Done with waiting.

Well, so was she. She would evict him from her territory once and for all. And when he was gone, it would not matter how much she wanted to lick drops of water from his skin. To feel his big, brutish hands on her body. To hear what his mocking voice sounded like when…

Ofelia’s face had vanished while Mara had been thinking, the sand now a featureless flat circle. She impatiently dashed a hand across it, dispelling her magic and allowing the desert to take back its shape.

Just as she would return to herself soon.

She rose to her feet and turned toward the drum of her enemy’s footsteps.

Chapter eight

Parley

Ethan felt her before he saw her, felt the aura of her presence approaching like a storm, and it took every ounce of will to ignore the magnetic pull and keep trudging along with his first load of lumber and ladders. It wasn’t until he’d set them all upon a rocky ledge that he looked up.

She wasn’t there.