Page 49 of My Fae Lady

Sylvan squelched over to the lone chair. “There’s an entire lake, and House owes me a feast after making me tread water for hours.”

No food materialized.

Sylvan looked over at me. “Giselle.” He flashed his fangs at the walls. “Wife. Come here so we may dine.”

“Oh no.” I had been prepared—or at least preparing myself—to sit in Sylvan’s lap again in order to get a meal, but not with him soaking wet. “If I sit in your lap, I’ll be soaked, too.”

His teeth flashed again, and he held out his hand. “Exactly. Come here.”

I took a step back. “Not until you are dry.”

A hamper with a large, plush towel folded over its edge appeared next to Sylvan. His eyes narrowed, but hunger was enough of a motivator that he didn’t fight House. He rose and struggled his way out of his drenched shirt. Then he turned around to start on his trousers, and I was given my second clear view of the scars on his back.

They looked better. It would have been hard for them to have looked worse than they had the day he’d first shown up at Rook Manor. The skin was pink where his wings should have sprouted.

I crossed the space between us, pulling out my lens with one hand and reaching out to trace the faint hint of a scar with the other.

Sylvan froze at my touch, though he’d been in the middle of pushing his trousers down his thighs. His buttocks were bare, and it took more willpower than I wanted to admit not to trace my hand lower.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice strained.

Wings, I reminded myself. Figure out why his wings won’t grow back. I raised my lens. “You said my family cursed you so that your wings wouldn’t heal?”

“It wasn’t enough to steal my home. They wanted to take everything from me.”

There were no swirls of Seelie magic in his scars, at least not that I could see with my lens. The curse could very well have been layered beneath the surface of the skin. “I’d have to cut you to check if the spells are set deeper, and even then there’d be no guarantee I could dismantle the curse. I’m good at tweaking spells, not countering them.”

“Are you offering to give me back my wings? I won’t cede the manor to you in exchange.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me to make that a condition of offering to reverse the curse. It should have. But no matter how much I told myself I ought to press any advantage I could, denying Sylvan his wings was anathema to me.

I didn’t have to tell him that, though. “And I won’t cede my claim, no matter how many bribes you throw at me.”

I lifted my hand from his back and stepped away, though I kept my lens trained on him. Could the curse really be embedded so deeply I wouldn’t catch even a glint of the Seelie magic? I didn’t look away the entire time Sylvan finished stripping and drying off, determined not to miss it if the curse did make an appearance.

And maybe not minding the rest of the view too much, either.

With his hair still damp, but the rest of him dry, Sylvan wrapped the towel around his hips and returned to the chair. “Now, let’s eat, wife.”

House fed us well, appeased by having me perch on Sylvan’s thigh and with the bulk of our conversation consisting of calling each other wife and husband respectively. Or maybe the perverse sentience was simply happy that Sylvan was wearing nothing more than a towel.

House certainly did not like it when Sylvan removed me from his lap, stood, and announced he was going to get dressed. The door wouldn’t budge, leaving us stuck in the breakfast nook. Except we knew the rules of the game now.

Sylvan grabbed my hand. “My wife will come with me.”

The knob still wouldn’t turn.

“I think House wants a little more than for you to cart me around.”

In response, the familiar strains of my favorite waltz filled the small room.

“Dancing?” Sylvan snarled, spinning around to glare at every corner. “You want us to dance?”

Goddesses’ light. Waltzing with Sylvan was . . . too much. Even in the hotel, surrounded by people, it’d had an air of intimacy. Here, in this small room, with him wearing nothing more than a towel that clung precariously to his hips?

“Maybe after he is dressed, House?” I suggested. “We can visit the ballroom then.”

I tried the knob. It turned, but the door still wouldn’t budge. I needed to sweeten the deal. What would a wild magic sentience playing matchmaker want?