Amelia pressed her lips together, and he noted her attempt to hold in a laugh. “No, but he will be fine.”
When they found him, Rennick would see to it that he never stepped outside without one.
“Wait here.” She dropped his hand and slipped into a small bakery. It wasn’t long before she returned, chewing on the inside of her cheek, deep in thought. “Clover isn’t working. Her boss said she took the next few days off to see her family.”
“Why do you look like that?” he asked at her cynical expression.
Planting her hands on her hips, she turned back to the bakery. “She doesn’t have any family.”
Rennick scratched the light scruff on his jaw. “You think they lied to you?”
Amelia shook her head and turned back to him. “I think she lied to them, but I don’t know why.”
Placing his hand on her lower back, he led her toward the carriage house to buy a storage cart for their journey home. “Perhaps she is at home, taking the day off.”
“Maybe,” Amelia said distractedly, and allowed him to guide her without protest.
Amelia packed the last of her things into one of the trunks Rennick had delivered to the boardinghouse.
“You don’t need to glamour your ears around me,” she toldhim, trying to sound casual. After a few cross looks from other villagers, he’d glamoured his ears to look human.
Like an apparition, his points appeared, and he shot her a devastating smile over his shoulder. Gods, he was handsome, and she wasn’t the only one to think so. Women stared at him wherever they went, glamoured ears or not. If that was the response he received amongst humans, she could only imagine how many fae threw themselves at him daily. She glared at his back. Why couldn’t he be average looking?
Sea-glass eyes framed by dark lashes met her own as though he felt her ire. “What has you riled up, little mate?”
“I’m fine,” she clipped, slamming the trunk closed. Many things described her state of mind, but fine wasn’t one of them. “Everything is packed and ready to go.”
“The carriage, cart, and horses will be delivered in the morning,” he said, gazing out the window. “We need to find your fox.”
“If he’s coming home tonight, he’ll be on the porch.”
Rennick looked uneasy. “If?”
“A few times over the years he’s stayed gone for a few days.” She opened her bedroom door to head downstairs, worried her furry friend had not eaten all day.
Fennec foxes were native to the eastern desert region, and she didn’t know if he could hunt in the snow. With no way of knowing where he went or what he did, she convinced herself he starved each time he left. Amelia hurried to the foyer and threw open the front door, and there, sitting on the top step of the snow-covered porch, sat her little friend, shivering from the cold.
“Get in here,” she chided and stepped aside.
Obediently, Eddy pranced through the door without a care in the world and followed her to the kitchen. They both stalled upon seeing the hulking fae king cutting raw steak into tiny bite-sized pieces and placing them onto a small plate.
How did he get in here so fast, and where did he get steak?
At the boardinghouse, meals were included in the weekly rent, but each tenant had their own labeled boxes in the large cold box and another labeled shelf in the pantry.
Amelia didn’t have steak in her cold box. “Where did you get that?”
He looked from the steak to her. “The cold box.”
“Whose cold box?”
“They’re not all yours?” His body went rigid. “Do they withhold food from you here, too?”
Remembering the gigantic food basket from years ago, she raised her hands. “Calm down. I get three meals a day,as I always have,but we each have extra we buy ourselves.” Looking pointedly at the plate, she said, “I do not buy steak.”
His shoulders relaxed. “I will leave money for whoever’s it was.” He gestured to Eddy. “He needs to eat.”
There was nothing more attractive than a scary man cutting up meat for a pocket-sized animal.
