by Holley Trent
Hestia turned her hands over and performed one of those long, drawn-out shrugs that even Dasha knew was chock-full o’ bullshit.
“I don’t envy you, Simone,” Dasha said. “Better you than me, though.”
“Don’t get too comfortable, Miss Maurice.” Hestia polished her nails some more.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hestia glanced up at her curiously, narrowed her eyes, and then vanished just like that.
Dasha pinned her gaze on Simone.
Simone was still grinding her teeth and staring at the chair Hestia had vacated.
The seat wasn’t empty for too long, though. Dasha blinked, and then suddenly in her periphery, there was another woman. Wisps of reddish hair peeked out of her knit cap. Dasha’s gaze fell to the stranger’s shiny brown clogs and sky blue stockings. Fashionable, the lady was not.
“Um, hello,” Simone said carefully. “And who might you be?”
“Obviously not the aforementioned shady Persian goddess,” Dasha muttered. “Too pale.”
“You can call me…Nikki,” the woman said after a long pause.
If that’s the woman’s name for real, I’ll eat my scarf.
Nikki laced her fingers atop her thighs and looked out the window behind her.
With her distracted, Dasha took a moment to give Simone a withering look.
Simone gave Dasha a this-shit-happens-to-me-all-the-time look in exchange.
Nikki cleared her throat and faced them again. She looked at Simone, and her gaze tracked slowly to Dasha.
Oh, hell.
“Yes, I think you’ll do,” she said quietly. And then she disappeared.
“What the fuck?” Dasha spat.
Simone rubbed her temples some more. “I hate how they always do that.”
“What did she just do? What was she trying to say?”
“I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say she’s someone’s patron. If not yours, then Ethan’s. Probably Ethan’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but being on a goddess’s radar can be a frustrating station, to say the least.”
“What did she mean when she said that I’d do?”
“How the hell should I know? She’s not my goddess. Ask her the next time she pops in.”
“Nah.” Dasha snatched up her pad and stood. “I’m going back to San Francisco. I wanted to come home really badly, but this is crazy. I much prefer predictable crazy over supernatural crazy.”
Simone jogged around her and blocked the door, putting up her hands. “No. Stay. You’re here now, so why not go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off, huh? Try to get used to the chaos a little?”
“You mean try to get used to Ethan, as I suspect he has something to do with this. I know that inevitably, you’ll get around to bringing him up, so I’ll go ahead and do it for you to spare you the breath.”
“I’m not rushing you into that. Ideally, we’d try to get you two into the same room at once to clear the air, but I wouldn’t just abandon you to him. You know that, right?”
“What?” Dasha crinkled her nose.
“You’ve got to talk to him. Your partnership is inevitable, and to be perfectly honest, with the realm’s imminent collapse, I’ve got too much shit on my plate to be playing matchmaker for you two. Let’s just get the introduction over with.”
“You’re not making that sound palatable in the slightest bit.”
Simone threw up her hands. “Sorry. I’m fresh out of charm for the day and maybe my brain’s a wee bit toasted from all the goddess energy ping ponging around. Can you cut me a little bit of slack?”
“You’re asking me to do something that’s far out of my comfort zone.”
“He’s your mate.”
“And you’ve been trying to keep us apart since December, so what does that mean?”
“It means I care about you and I love you and I wanted to ease you into this, but Lord have mercy, Dash, I’m at my wit’s end here. He’s hardly a fate worse than death. Please just talk to him so we can file the edge off at least one sharp pokey thing around here.”
Dasha drummed her fingertips against her thighs and tried to steady her breathing. She felt trapped. Set up, even. Betrayed a little. But her hostility ebbed upon realizing that Simone wasn’t in a great emotional place, either. She looked so damned tired, and though she balanced all the insanity in her life so well, she took on far too much for just one woman to bear. Even if that woman was a fairy.
Dasha managed to pull in a deep breath then let it out, fisting her hands and relaxing them.
“If I agree to talk to him,” she started, “can you make him promise to stay away from me…until I say otherwise?”
Simone closed her eyes and rubbed them with the heels of her palms. “Dash, we’re talking about natural impulses, and his are to be near you. Asking him that…well, I’d feel cruel, lady.”
“I—”
“Hey.” Simone dropped her hands. “I’ll do what I can. No promises. Maybe we can find some happy medium for the time being. Let me see what I can arrange.”
“I’m trusting that you know what you’re doing, Simone.”
Simone turned her hands over and sighed. “If I don’t, hopefully Heath does. This fairy princess thing doesn’t exactly come with an instruction booklet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Okay, pay attention, big guy.”
A day after Dasha’s arrival at The Hearth, Princess Simone smoothed down the collar of Ethan’s wrinkled shirt to no avail and growled.
He couldn’t help the shirt’s condition. He didn’t own many items of clothing that were suitable for a date, if that was what he could call sitting halfway across a room from his mate. His wardrobe was fifty-five percent T-shirts, thirty percent denim, ten percent leather, and the rest was socks and briefs. He couldn’t remember having bought the faded checkered shirt, but he must have. The garment fit him, and had been on the closet floor in the suite he shared with Sully. Sully rarely wore shirts unless the weather demanded that he do so. He said they chafed his nipples.
The princess put her hands on her hips and took a step back from him. “This is the best we can do right now. Behave yourself. Don’t say anything too scandalous. I know how you fairies are.”
“You say you fairies as if you aren’t one.”
“I wasn’t raised as a fairy, though. I know how to keep my lips zipped and not spew words my brain hasn’t had a decent chance at filtering.”
He knew he was bad at that. With the crew being mostly male, and the few ladies in their midst not particularly sensitive about language, Ethan had picked up a few indelicate habits over the years.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shifted his weight. “Tell me what I’m allowed to talk about, then.”
“Light things.”
“Throw me a bone, Princess. My concept of light probably varies considerably from yours.”
“Talk about easy things, like…the weather and, oh, I don’t know. Sports or something.”
“Do I get to actually learn anything about her?”
“Sure, if she volunteers the information.”
“Can I tell her anything about me?”
Princess Simone sucked some air through clenched teeth and let her breath out in a sputter. “I guess that would depend on how much you can say without delving into fairy stuff.”
“Gods, you’re not giving me a whole lot to work with.”
Prince Heath stepped into the room and softly closed the door behind him. “She’s out there pacing.”
“Let her in,” Ethan said.
“Not because she’s impatient, I don’t think,” the prince said. “She’s nervous. Be cool, Ethan.”
“I swear, I’m trying to be. You’ve got me on a very short leash, Prince.”
“If we knew of a better way to do this, we’d choose that plan instead of fumbling our way through this ordeal like middle schoolers at their first coed party.” Princess Simone pointed to the
armchair in front of the window. “You sit there.”
Ethan sat.
“I’m going to go get her. Try to be calm, okay?”
Ethan scoffed and cracked his knuckles.
He hadn’t been calm since the first time he’d seen Dasha standing in the motel office. Instinctively, he’d known she was his. He’d felt like lightening had grounded through him, and he’d been frozen in place ogling her until someone ushered him away.
If she’d been a fairy like him, he might have said, “How about that? What do you want to do?” and that would have been all the ignition they needed. They would have gone off and done some naked thing.
Being kept apart from her wasn’t natural. He’d been uptight and snarly for the past few months, and the fact anyone had been able to be around him was a wonder.
Princess Simone opened the door just enough to step through. A minute later, she returned, pulling Dasha in by the hand.
He stood.
“Ethan, sit,” Prince Heath scolded.
Ethan sat, and nervously bobbed his knee.
The princess had Dasha sit in the farthest chair from him—in the last cushion of the sofa, closest to the door. Likely so she could make a quick getaway if she needed to.
This is bullshit.
Princess Simone padded to the kitchen with Prince Heath, where they conferred quietly with their backs turned to the living room.
Ethan dragged his gaze back to Dasha, who wasn’t meeting his. She was fiddling with her phone and chewing the inside of her cheek.
Normally, he would have opened the conversation by complimenting her in some way, but he needed to think two or three times about everything he said to ensure his words wouldn’t incite her in some way. He had a tendency to be somewhat inflammatory by default, and the crew expected that of him. He wasn’t used to being so filtered.
While she studied her little electronic toy, he stared openly at her.
He was lucky in the first place to have been fixed with a true mate—so many fairies didn’t get them—but Dasha was something to brag about. He’d always had a special fondness for the curves and swells of human women, and he liked the way Dasha’s had been assembled. Had he not been self-censoring, he might have told her that he’d die happy if only she’d squeeze his head between her luscious thighs. She was wearing shorts. Sky blue of what was probably a respectable length, but short enough for him to display a wealth of brown skin that came together in juicy places he wanted to sink his teeth into.
He groaned inwardly and let his gaze rake up her torso. She’d layered a couple of tanks, but hadn’t completely obscured her tempting cleavage. He’d been dreaming of pressing his palms to her breasts and watching them mold to his touch for months. Hard up as he was, he’d probably explode on impact with so much as a nip slip or the hint of one hardened nipple through her shirts. Fortunately, the room was quite warm.
Up and up he looked. Her long, elegant neck. The sweet chin. The full lips, scrunched to one side of her face. Deep, dark eyes that were fixed on Princess Simone’s back. A hint of her short-cropped hair peeking out of the bottom of its wildly patterned covering. Not a stitch of makeup on her except for the dark wings of liner that framed her eyes. The temperature outside was probably too stifling for her to want to wear much more than that, but she didn’t need the makeup, anyway. Less for him to kiss off.
He caught Prince Heath’s movement in his periphery, and turned. The prince mouthed, “Well?”
Right. Well.
Ethan returned his focus to Dasha, and found her looking at him. Her stare was neutral, but that was probably more than he should have hoped for.
Say something.
So many things he could say, but none seemed particularly intelligent.
The princess pantomimed throwing a football.
“Oh.” He straightened. “Do you…follow the 49ers at all?”
Dasha’s brow furrowed.
Excellent start there. “Uh. I…when we started settling in here, we started picking up on American football. Hadn’t seen much of the sport before then. We all have our teams now, though. It’s a brutal fuckin’ game.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, football can be pretty brutal. I’m not much of a fan, though.”
“Oh.” He slipped back down his seat and racked his brain for another topic. Not sports. Not politics. Don’t give a damn about politics anyway…
“I catch a Giants game every now and then, though,” she said.
“Yeah?” He straightened up.
“The company I work for is always offering us free tickets. The Giants aren’t my favorite team in the league, but I wouldn’t turn down the chance to see them play.”
“We haven’t gotten much into baseball here. I think we’re probably too distracted by how similar the pastime seems to cricket, which is a boring fuckin’ game to watch if you’ve ever seen it, but actually, they’re not all that similar, right?”
“I couldn’t tell you. All I know about cricket is that the players use flat bats. There’s an Indian guy in my office who used to play. I think he told me once that a big sport in Southeast Asia.”
“Colonialism is funny that way.”
Dasha knit her brows and looked down at her phone again.
Way to keep the discussion light, asshole. He was so used to shooting straight from the hip, that conducting polite conversation was a trial. He’d thought the prince and princess were going to facilitate a little more than they were, but they weren’t even paying attention. Prince Heath was leaning against the back counter shoving his tongue into his wife’s mouth in a not-so-princely way.
Ethan raked his hands through his hair and let out a breath. Killing me. “Uh.” Simple. Easy. Neutral topic. “Does…the weather here suit you? The crew is used to moving around so much from one place to another, so we never really had a chance to figure out what we liked. I think we’re all from much milder places than this.” Deputy Dipshit, talking about the fuckin’ weather.
“Oh,” she said brightly. “I’m from here, originally. Just up the coast. Um, let’s see.” She stood, leaned onto the back of the sofa, and then peered at the antique map mounted behind it. Pointing to a spot in the northeastern corner of the state, she said, “Currituck. I’m sure you’ve ridden through there a few times. But, you know what those little coastal towns are like. If you’ve seen one, you pretty much have a handle on them all.”
He hoped she’d take the closer seat in the middle of the sofa, but no. She returned to the far cushion and sat.
“I, uh…spent most of my early years in the…” Fuck, can I say that? He couldn’t remember if he was expressly prohibited from discussing fairy shit, but hometowns were such a superficial topic. He was a fairy. At some point, he’d have to reference fairy things.
“In the what?” she asked.
“In the fairy realm. I’ve got a Scottish passport, though. That’s where the folks on my father’s side all were before most of them were relocated into the realm.”
“That’s funny,” she said low, brow furrowed. “I Googled the Celtic and Gaulish pantheons, and I can’t find a mention of a Nikki in them.”
“Pardon?”
Princess Simone swatted the prince away and walked around the kitchen island. “Oh, Ethan, forgot to tell you, and you can’t really blame me. Weird stuff happens so often around here, I sometimes push them to the back of my mind without following up on them.”
“What happened?”
The princess rocked back on her heels—a Prince Heath quirk she’d probably inherited without noticing—and groaned. “Well. We had a goddess pop in on us earlier. Hestia had visited first, and was chatting with us in that ever-so-frustrating way she’s so good at, and when she left, another goddess took her place.”
“Who the hell was she?” the prince asked.
“Well, baby, I have no idea. I don’t have the pantheons memorized like you. She said her name was Nikki. She had red hair, and she was wearing blue stockings. Could
n’t help but to notice ’em.”
“Mielikki?” Ethan mused.
“Sounds like her,” the prince said.
Huh. “What’d she want? Did you court the favor of yet another goddess, Simone?”
Simone rolled her eyes. “No. Even if Hestia did like to share her toys, Nikki—or Mielikki, as you called her—wasn’t there for me.”
“Who’d she want?” Heath asked.
“Still not sure. She sat quietly for a moment, then looked at Dasha and told her she’d do.”
“Do what?”
“Do fine, I guess.”
“Fine for what?”
Fine for me. Ethan’s filter was obviously working better than he’d thought because he didn’t say the comment aloud. He rubbed his chin and pondered if the goddess who’d been so quiet for a thousand years had actually popped in and blessed a fated match.
Most of the gods and goddesses had turned their backs on the Sídhe, and most fairies felt they’d deserved being ignored. The lore in Ethan’s family, on his mother’s side, was that they’d often communed with the goddess before everything in the realm went all pear-shaped. His father had always found his mother’s stories of the deity amusing, given Mielikki’s role as the goddess of the forests. Who better than to favor a bunch of fairies who could shift into wolves and bears on a whim? Supposedly, Mielikki had been around when his parents found each other. She’d blessed their union.
But that had been a thousand years ago. No fairy had seen her since the creation of the realm that was meant to punish them—the one that Rhiannon had made her toy box.
The prince strode over and gave Ethan’s bicep a light punch. “You’ve got a goddess in your back pocket.”
“If I do, I certainly wasn’t aware before now. She hasn’t appeared to me.”
Ethan sat in a stunned stupor considering the ramifications of the goddess’s appearance. Her arrival was a blessing indeed, though Dasha didn’t seem particularly impressed by the commotion.
She bobbed the dangling foot of her crossed legs impatiently and stared at her phone screen.
Maybe if she understood what the blessing means…
He started to stand, just that quickly forgetting he was supposed to be giving her space, but fortunately Prince Heath was right there to tamp him back down. “Don’t you know what that means, Prince?”