Page 35 of Fae Games

Actually, I was curious, but I wouldn’t describe it that way. Lady Gala had been one of the ringleaders who brought girls with glowing wings to Pokeweed, only to laugh at their expressions of horror when she and her friends tricked her into believing that Pokeweed was her mate.

I bit down on my bottom lip, trying to work through my thoughts. It seemed peculiar that Pokeweed would care so deeply for the mother of his bully.

Pokeweed held me in his unblinking stare, making me gulp. “I did wonder if there was a connection.”

“The Duchess of Nevermore was my mother,” he said in a voice laced with bitterness. “And the duke’s staff wouldn’t permit me into the grounds to visit her glass coffin.”

“Wait,” I said. “Does that mean Lady Gala is your sister?”

“Half,” he said.

“Oh.” My insides twitched with curiosity, but I didn’t dare to ask about the identity of his father. Helen had implied that Pokeweed’s parentage was complicated, and Prince Caulden had described it as scandalous, but it was hard to fathom why unless the duchess had mated with a satyr.

“I expect you’re wondering how one of the most beautiful faeries on the island gave birth to me,” he asked in a broken voice.

The sun emerged from the cloud, bathing us in its warmth and light, which turned the orange flecks of fur on his face and wings a golden-amber. The furry protrusion over his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“You don’t have to tell me anything.” I placed my palm on his bicep. The fur covering his arm felt like a mix of velvet and the thick pile of a honeybee. Pokeweed closed his eyes and sighed, as though my touch was some kind of comfort. “But if you want to talk about it, I’ll listen and keep whatever you say to myself.”

“I would like that,” he replied, his voice thick with emotion.

A weight over my heart lifted. Partially for my restored faith in Pokeweed’s goodness. Partially because I could do something to help a faerie who had saved me from two sticky situations—from the angry mob in the dining room when I had become the fifth fated mate and from the knucker-infested lake.

I looped my arm through Pokeweed’s and walked alongside him under the low canopy of an apple tree so weighted with fruit, the tips of its branches reached the ground. He stiffened, but a few heartbeats later as we walked through the orchard in the sun, the muscles of his arms relaxed.

“Did you live with the duchess as a child?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She handed me to a wet-nurse who had recently lost her child.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “Was that because she was married to the duke?”

Pokeweed gave me a soft nod. “According to the faerie who took care of me, the duke and duchess had been together for five years. Did Mr. Whittaker tell you that females go into heat every four years?”

“No,” I muttered. “But it makes a whole lot of sense.”

We passed under a row of apple trees growing like fences, their branches intertwined with their neighbors’ trunks. The tops of the trees curved overhead, looking a few years away from forming a complete archway.

Sunlight shone through the transparent fruit, filtering the light into thousands of tiny streams. Pokeweed remained silent for several moments. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was trying to phrase something delicate or because he had changed his mind about revealing such personal information.

I ran my fingers up and down his forearm the way someone would stroke a cat, hoping to communicate some measure of reassurance.

“Don’t.” He pulled his arm out of my grip and hurried out to the tree with the largest trunk.

My spirits drooped, and I trudged after him. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Nobody touches me,” he said. “And I can’t tolerate the false hope.”

My mouth opened and closed, trying to form the right words. I wanted to tell him that my touch hadn’t meant anything, but to someone who hadn’t experienced much closeness, anything I said to that effect might be a knife in the heart.

“Pokeweed,” I said. “You’ll always be a dear friend.”

His only reply was a nod.

An awkward silence hung in the air, not even broken up by the slightest breeze. I stood against the massive trunk, inhaling the scent of ripe apples and blossoms and marveled at the low-hanging branches of a plant that produced apples that shone like beads of blood.

“When my mother failed to produce a heat after five years, the Duke of Nevermore petitioned Queen Titania for a dissolution of their mating.”

My brows rose, as I didn’t know such things were possible. “I take it that she refused?”