by Godiva Glenn
Royal Pain
Copyright © 2018 Godiva Glenn
Published by M.T. Worlds Press, Inc.
Winter Springs, FL 32708
http://mtworldspress.com
Cover by Willsin Rowe
Formatting by Glowing Moon Designs
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
http://mtworldspress.com
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Insane & Magical
Paranormal Dating Agency World
Also by Godiva Glenn
About the Author
A Royal Pain
Alethea Spiros is the crown princess of Lutheyis Island, and absolutely tired of it. Day in and day out she’s pressured to changing everything about herself, and to top it off, she can’t find a man worthy of her love and her father’s approval.
Blair is one of the few male dryads on Prism, but few is still too many when a single male can pollinate an entire acre of females. He’d rather have true love and someone to hold, which is definitely not a typical dryad arrangement.
Through the help of some friends, he is granted a rare opportunity of freedom with a steep cost—he can never return to Prism. Longing for a soul mate, he reaches out to none other than legendary matchmaker Gerri Wilder.
Blair is strange, sexy, and sweet—but that doesn’t matter to the King. For Alethea to keep Blair close, they have to overcome years of rules and obligations. Blaire’s freedom has a deadline, but if it’s the last thing he does, he wants to prove to Alethea that she’s not a dysfunctional princess. Sometimes, being royal can be more than just a Royal Pain.
A warm breeze stretched across the open field and rustled the blue and crimson leaves of Blair’s tree. He stepped free of the bark, his form separating and solidifying, and took a deep breath. The air was sweet, the temperature perfect. He used to see this time of year as full of promise.
That enthusiasm had died a little each passing year. Now thousands of seasons into his life, the scent brought him nothing but frustration. The lone tree for acres, there was little for him to do during the weeks where other dryads would hibernate into their trees and release pollen. He had no intent on participating.
He pressed his forehead to the silver bark of his tree and breathed slower. From the day he emerged from a seed, he knew his future, the same as any dryad; tend his tree and the land within his reach. He’d done this from day one. It wasn’t enough.
He stroked the rough trunk and stepped back, taking in the beauty. Some days all he did was look at it. Touch it. But today it angered him. As much as it was a part of him, his spirit, his home, his everything, it was also his prison.
Turning his back to the massive spread of branches, he stared out. He walked away, and as he took each step could feel the tether that kept him close to the land. He reached an invisible wall and sank to the grass. His fingers stretched out, but he couldn’t pull himself any further.
This was as far as he could go, and even here was too remote. The absence of his tree tore at his heart, but he knew it was more than that. This was loneliness. This was despair.
“Blair?”
He glanced up and saw two females coming close. Brook, the human wife of prince Kerren. Vevina, their personal aide and the closest thing he had to a friend.
“What are you doing this far out?” Vevina asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Brook smiled and looked past him. “Your tree is looking lovely.”
The compliment made a rush a pride blossom within him, even in his current mood. “It’s been a good year.”
“It’s almost that time,” Vevina commented. “I’ve always thought the next field over could use some of your saplings.”
He looked back. Faded in the distance, there was a small line of hedges and beyond that was the field she meant. He used to have the same thought. “I don’t think so.”
“There aren’t many trees like yours,” Brook said. “Why is that? I never noticed before.”
“Because I don’t care to join in on mass reproduction,” he scoffed.
“What?” The confusion was clear on her face.
Of course, being a human and only having been on Prism for a few years, there was still plenty she didn’t know. Vevina’s lips were pursed and she gave Blair a look. It was going to be up to him to explain.
“When this season comes around, the male trees are expected to release their pollen into the air. The females tend to accept whatever floats their way—literally.”
Brook’s bewildered expression was comical. “But… wouldn’t there be hundreds, if not millions of dryads then?”
“No. Most of the seeds carry incomplete genetics. They’re just trees.”
Vevina plopped down onto the grass beside him. Her usually peach-colored hair had shifted to a soft yellow, which he took to mean she was curious. As a sprite, her hair changed to match her mood, a trait she couldn’t control. Her blue eyes had a somber tone and she glanced to the side when she spoke. “You haven’t participated in quite some time.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Brook asked, sitting carefully next to Vevina.
He motioned around himself. “Where is the nearest of my kind?”
Brook frowned and followed his arm, searching. “Kara…”
He knew the name. She was the dryad that tended the gardens of Brook’s estate. “I’ve heard of her. Heard that she’s lovely and sweet and that her tree is well-maintained. But we can’t meet. I can’t travel the distance to see her. To touch her.”
“She’d accept your gift,” Vevina said.
“I’m sure she would. She’d be flattered if I made a deal with the air and sent something her way. But if any male gave her the same attention, she’d be flattered by them as well.”
Vevina didn’t respond, knowing his words were true. Brook appeared baffled.
“How cruel is it that I’m expected to simply send my spirit into the wind and hope some random dryad accepts it? And then I’d have children I’d never meet?”
“That doesn’t seem right at all. You’ve got feelings and needs… spurting pollen just seems… incredibly informal,” Brook said with a frown.
“No other dryad sees it that way,” Vevina said under her breath.
“So I’m told,” he ground out bitterly. “But why have this shape if I don’t
get to use it?”
Brook looked him over, and by the blush on her cheeks perhaps she’d never noticed that he wore no clothing. Where skin would be on another fae, he was protected by rough bark, just like his tree, but he was still all male. The body of a man, albeit crudely hewn of nature. “So, you can… umm… date other fae?”
“I could, in theory. I have had moments with a few fae over the centuries. Physical pleasure is wondrous. But most pay no attention to me, and certainly, no fae wants to be confined to my tree with me. I can’t blame them.”
“But I’ve seen fae here before. They have picnics with you.”
“They have picnics under him,” Vevina corrected.
“Vevina is correct,” he said, responding to Brook’s questioning eyes. “The younger fae, those that weren’t alive during the wars, they come here. They know they’ll have privacy. They eat and flirt and make love under the shade of my branches. I don’t join in, clearly.”
“You’re in there! They must know that!”
Vevina shrugged. “It’s lore. Sex under a dryad’s tree is supposed to boost fertility. And granted, every other dryad in existence doesn’t care. They only care about their tree. Unless the couple is knocking off branches in their enthusiasm, it is what it is.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’d never have sex next to a tree spirit like that.” She shuddered.
Blair flicked the dirt from his fingertips. “It doesn’t bother me. I’ve learned things. I’m told I’m an excellent lover.”
Vevina snickered and Brook pursed her lips. Another sweet breeze carried over them and he took a breath, out of habit. The season called to him, but he had the power to ignore the lure.
“There must be something we can do to help,” Brook insisted.
“Not unless you can strip me of the desire to be what I’m not.”
A soft voice carried outside of Blair’s awareness. He opened his eyes and saw Brook standing near. Her soft hand graced the wide column of his tree and she called his name. Since a few days earlier she’d witnessed his pathetic unhappiness, he’d hidden away.
But Brook was human and would most likely continue to touch him and speak to him, whereas any fae would give up and recognize his poor mood.
He stepped out of his tree to be welcomed by her bright smile. She held out a slim rectangular device and he took it from her, curious about the item.
“I got this just for you. It’s a lot like the one Vevina uses. It’s tapped into Earth’s internet and I preloaded some of my favorite sources of entertainment. And the best part? It runs on the magic in the air! No batteries and no need to plug it in.”
“Internet? Batteries?”
She blinked at him. “Are you serious? Okay umm. Let’s see. If you push this button on the top, the screen comes on.”
He pressed the button and the black glossy tablet lit up with a rainbow screen. “It’s a computer?”
“You know what a computer is but not the internet?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve heard of such a thing from the people who come and sit under my tree, and I’ve watched Vevina tapping her finger across the light.”
“Well then, the internet is a network. It’s like…” She squinted and finally expelled a frustrated breath. “I’m not going to lie—maybe at this point it’s best if you just play around with it rather than worry about what it is, exactly.”
He flipped the device over in his hands and stroked the back and front. It was like nothing he’d touched before. The front was glass, that he knew. The back was something else. “How does it entertain?”
“You can watch movies and play games. Aaannnd…” She tapped a square image on the surface and it brought up a drawn map. “You can explore the world just by swiping around here.”
It sounded promising, but the bright screen drew nothing but confusion to his mind. “But how does it work?”
“The map?”
“Everything.” He dragged his finger across the glass and everything shifted. The map disappeared.
She pointed to another colorful image on the screen. “If you hit that, it’ll play a video that explains the basics. From there, you’ll get it. I promise, it’s very intuitive.”
Clearly Brook meant well with the strange gift, but he wasn’t sure it was helpful. Still, he appreciated the sentiment. He didn’t have friends. No one ever brought him gifts. Dryads weren’t social creatures. Most of them were happy to converse only with their own tree, which never spoke in return.
He was strange, and he knew it. The least he could do was welcome her attention. “I’m thankful for this.”
She arched a brow. “You hate it.”
“Not at all.”
She pouted. “I don’t like the thought of you alone out here, day and night. I guess being human makes it impossible for me to understand, and I’m told you aren’t supposed to care. Yet clearly, you do.”
He leaned back against his tree and glanced up at the light sneaking through the lush, colorful leaves. “I’m flawed. Dryads aren’t supposed to be aware. We aren’t supposed to have ambition or desire.”
“That’s no way to live.”
“Dryads aren’t supposed to live, not in that sense. I don’t know why we were made, how we first came to be, but I know that I am a mistake.”
“Don’t say that.”
He met her eyes, which shone with pity. “It’s the truth. We aren’t supposed to long for affection. We certainly aren’t supposed to lust for anything, be it companionship or a change of scenery. The other fae avoid me for this reason. I’m strange and unseemly.”
“Vevina visits you.”
“Vevina is a sprite. She’s drawn to me to fix me. I’ve caught her poking my leaves, trying to change their color. For her, it is an innate fascination. If she didn’t pass this way frequently, it’s unlikely we’d have formed a friendship.”
Brook looked towards the hedges separating her home from the rest of the surrounding land. “I never thought to visit you. Kara lives in our backyard and I’ve seen her a handful of times over the years. I just assumed you were the same way…”
“I don’t blame you,” he promised.
“But I should have noticed. She almost never leaves her tree. Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been out here. Literally trying to reach out to the rest of us.”
“I hear guilt in your voice but it’s not necessary. I understand my life, or rather, the strangeness of it. I’m tied to my tree,” he said and patted it with his flattened palm. “I am rooted. That used to be a divine comfort.”
She gnawed her lip for a moment then lifted the tablet in his hand again. “Until I find a way to free you, I want you to see what else the world has to offer you. Prism isn’t on the internet, obviously, but you can look up anything you’ve ever heard about.”
Her persistence chiseled away at the misery he’d embraced. There were many things he’d heard of. “Like an ocean?”
She swiped her finger across the screen and it filled with blue waves. “Any ocean. Any fish.”
The apathy he’d experienced before now ebbed away with every ripple under the glass. The soft murmur of water churning came from the device, adding to his growing delight. He sank down to the ground and propped the glowing tablet on his knees as he stared. Creatures he didn’t know moved through the water. Colorful and fascinating.
“I’ll leave you to it for now. I’ve got an idea.”
He didn’t see her go. He simply watched the scene unfold before him. Hours passed, and he barely noticed but for the shift of dappled light filtering through his tree.
He viewed oceans and rivers, mountains and deserts. Snowy plains with white wolves and rabbits. And squirrels. He knew of them. Prism had them, although they were more colorful than Earth squirrels. The tree-dwellers were part of the knowledge innate to him, information that he held even upon coming into existence.
Mischievous and impossible to reason with, they were either welcome companions or
a nuisance, depending on the disposition of the dryad. Blair had never met one. Why would a curious creature full of life ever be drawn here?
He pressed the button on the tablet and the screen went black. Closing his eyes, he attempted to process all he’d learned. The world around him was massive and beautiful. His own world was a small, grassy berth around his tree. It was hard to imagine that outside of that there was so much going on.
Across the far rooftops, the sun was sinking down. The light cast a long shadow from a figure walking towards Blair. It was a man, but his outline was not familiar. He wore no shoes, and as he got close and his bare feet hit the ground, he sent strange waves of energy through the earth.
Blair stood, trembling. The magic trickled through the roots of his tree and touched every part of his body. He felt that he should know this fae, but his memory failed him.
The stranger drew near, and now Blair could make out his face. It was a face he knew but never expected to see.
“You,” Blair breathed. “But how?”
The nameless aspect simply smiled. He was the son of Life and Death, a mysterious being who brought about the deities that ruled over every flower and tree and blade of grass. He was the distant father of every dryad.
“I thought you were in the Fade, with the rest.” Blair resisted the urge to reach out and touch the figure standing before him. The aspects had all retired to slumber forever in the Fade, save for the aspect of Harmony. She’d run away from Prism and married dragons, a story that Blair had enjoyed overhearing as it seemed nearly impossible but entirely fantastic.
“Your plea was one I could not ignore,” the aspect replied.