She looked quickly at Willa, whose nerves had apparently eased off long enough to get interested in the show—she was practically leaning out of her pod to get a look at the man. Layla waited, kneeling there, thinking,This can’t possibly be the end of it, because he was just some handsome man with sharp words of censure and an unnaturally still posture after he said them.
Thatcouldn’tbe enough to silence or sober up the man across the way.
But after several seconds, it was still soquiet, only the regular hum of the cabin again, and the man in black kept his eyes straight ahead until he saw something that satisfied him enough to turn away, his whole face toward Layla now—the full effect of it striking in a different way.
He was scarred, she could see, and severely, if not recently, so: a whorl of pink raised texture at his temple, along his cheekbone, pulling the left side of his brow lower and disrupting his hairline. Along his jaw, a patch of similarly terrained skin, completely bare of stubble.
He met her eyes and she thought again of what he’d said—me who needs medical attention—and she reached for the placid smile, the cool control, the secure knowledge she’d had only a few moments ago that she was calm enough to do her job. She would ask if he needed help, be the best version of herself again, get that warranty seal reaffixed before this flight ended and she had to face the week ahead.
But in his gaze she was a stunned and smoking tree trunk, rooted to the ground, her mouth open as if poised to speak, except with nothing available to come out. She thought of her phone, her translation app, thought of a language she would callLightning-Struck, and how to make it English again.
She watched as he raised the hand not holding his cap, saw that it was scarred, too. In a swift motion he smoothed back his hair and lifted the hat onto his head, pulling it low over his eyes so she could no longer tell if he was looking at her.
It helped, a little. She could finally get a word out.
“Sir,” she said, like Marc had, and she hoped it didn’t sound scolding. “Do you need—”
“I saidif,” he snapped, and she blinked in confusion before she could translate herself back into his earlier words.
If this disturbance carries on, he’d said.
Since it hadn’t, he didn’t have need of her.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed, strangely unrelieved.
When he began to lower himself back into his seat, Layla thought he’d released her from whatever spell he seemed to cast.
Fae prince and mortal girl, she thought briefly.
Wildly.
But before she could turn her attention back to Willa, the manstopped himself, halfway to sitting, and lifted his head again to look at her.
“Get up from there,” he said, scalpel-sharp. “The floor is probably disgusting.”
Then the brim of his hat lowered again, his lanky form folded back into his seat, his face turning toward the window.
Like nothing had ever happened at all.
For Layla, though…for Layla,somethinghad happened, something she couldn’t mind-over-matter herself out of, something that she wasn’t sure she could ever explain. She thought—shehoped—she spent the rest of the flight hiding it from Willa, from Marc, from any other passenger who might’ve noticed her.
But she couldn’t be sure, because she couldn’t seem to affirm herself into any more lies.
They had been shocked right out of her body.
She was not at all calm about attending Emily’s wedding.
Certainly not unbothered about seeing her ex-husband again.
And somehow, for some reason she couldn’t begin to explain, everything about that interaction with the man in black made her feel as though Paris was the last place in the world where she would thrive.
Chapter Two
“Layla? Layla, oh my god, you’rehere!”
Layla had barely taken two steps into the hotel lobby before she heard Emily’s voice: that clear, bright-as-a-bell voice, as excited as Layla had heard it probably a hundred times before, at a hundred different family gatherings.
It’s happening, she thought, surprisingly relieved.No turning back now.
