12. Rowan

Even though we were downstairs in the Great Hall, we all felt the shudder in our bodies as Arthur kissed Maeve.

My whole body tingled with electricity. I shoved my hands under my thighs to stop myself lashing out when Arthur came back.

Flynn looked as murderous as I felt, his pale skin reddening as his hand trembled around his glass. Corbin’s expression fell. He looked completely defeated.

Of course – he expected Maeve to choose him. We all did.

All three of them had a fair shot with Maeve. They talked her ear off at the pub, and took over the tour of the house. I’d managed about four-and-a-half sentences in the kitchen before Flynn whisked her away. They knew that I couldn’t talk to her when they were around, that she’d never look at me twice with them joking and flirting.

And then Arthur had to go swinging his blades around and being the chivalrous knight in the field tonight. We all fought valiantly, but it didn’t matter.

She’d chosen and it didn’t matter how I felt.

I barely even had a chance.

But I’d hoped.

That was my mistake. I should know now not to hope.

Arthur returned a few minutes later. He wasn’t smiling nearly as much as I would’ve been.

“Go on,” he said, slumping down on the couch. “Ask me about it.”

“Let’s go to the library,” Corbin said. “We have a lot to discuss.”

We filed down the hall to the library. I stopped at the door, as I always did, unable to step foot in the room until I had counted the spines of all the books shelved in the cabinet on the right. As earlier, when we’d taken Maeve on a tour, there were 194.

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding.

I was grateful that the others hadn’t pointed out what I’d been doing to Maeve during the tour, but I guess it didn’t matter now.

They waited for me to finish. I took a seat next to Flynn on the leather chesterfield. Corbin sat behind his desk, leaning forward on his muscled arms. With his stern face, he reminded me of a school principal. I’d seen a few of them in my life – when I was forced to attend school – all stern-faced and furrowed brows as they tried to force me to talk, to explain why I did the things I did, to find out why I didn’t have shoes or a lunch box or where a bruise on my arm had come from or why I wouldn’t give them a home address. They usually had bookshelves in their offices, and I just counted the books until they stopped asking questions.

But that wasn”t going to work here.

“Tell us all about it, you rawny bastard,” Flynn said, breaking the tense silence between us.

“She didn’t choose me,” Arthur sighed. “She kissed me, but she hasn’t chosen me yet.”

“Why not? You bite her or something?”

Arthur frowned. “It wasn’t about me and her. I don’t think it mattered to her who kissed her. I just happened to be the one who carried her upstairs. She’s still reeling from the deaths of her parents. She kissed me and she started to cry, and I realized I needed to get out before I tried to take things further.”

“She cried after kissing you?” Flynn shakes his head. “Boyo, you’re doing something wrong.”

“How do you know she didn’t choose you?” Corbin asked.

“I know because we can all still feel the pull of her. Right?” Arthur glanced at each of us in turn, his eyes lingering on mine. “If she’d truly chosen me, the tension would have gone away.”

I rubbed my arm, my fingers grazing over the raised scars on my wrist. Fire burned under my skin.

Arthur was right. The spell hadn’t been broken. We were all bound to Maeve until she chose one of us.

My other hand slipped into my pocket, fingering the condom I kept there. Corbin had given us each a huge stack when he first heard Maeve would be visiting Briarwood. We all knew what her presence would do to us.

I squeeze the little packet between my fingers. Even with the coven’s magic working on me, I knew I’d never be using any of mine. But I kept it in my pocket because…

I didn’t know why.

That bastard hope again.

“I think you’re right. So, we have a problem,” Corbin said, leaning forward, his eyes gliding over all of us. When they met mine, I looked away.

“I’ll say we have a problem,” Flynn piped up. “I’m randy as a goat named Randall McGoaty III, and you three are cock-blocking me with your concern and your kindness. I don’t do crossed swords, so?—”

“Don’t talk such utter nonsense.” Arthur had taken his usual spot in the enormous wing-backed chair beside the globe – the only chair in the room that comfortably sat his enormous frame. He leaned forward and lifted the lid off the globe, revealing several alcohol bottles and glasses inside. He grabbed a whiskey and poured himself a glass. “She barely looked at you all evening. And she may have kissed me, but she’s definitely got eyes for Mr. Saved-me-from-the-runaway-Ferris-Wheel over there.”

“And Rowan, Mr. Give-a-lady-a-twig-and-she’ll-be-yours-forever, got a couple of beautiful smiles from our fair Maeve.” Flynn clapped me on the shoulder. “Smooth move with the stick there, brother. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

“I was just trying to keep her safe,” I mumbled into my chest, my cheeks flaring with heat.

“This spell is making it bloody hard to remain a gentleman,” Arthur added. “But as the only one who’s kissed her, let me say right now that it was worth it.”

“I swear, if you don’t shut your gob right now?—”

“If we could be serious for just one moment,” Corbin snapped. “We’re all painfully aware of the situation with Maeve. She will choose when she’s ready. In the meantime, we just have to?—”

“—walk around with permanent tent poles?” Flynn adjusted his pants. I glanced away. I didn’t really want to think about my friends and their stiff cocks.

Thinking about my own was bad enough.

I’d been hard since Maeve first walked into Briarwood. Part of that was the magic that bound us to the castle and the coven. Because we were still so young, the magic did weird things to our hormones. It couldn’t make us want something we didn’t already desire, but it enhanced our feelings tenfold. A hundredfold.

For me – someone who struggled to talk to girls on a good day – this was going to make some kind of connection with Maeve practically impossible.

But I was the one who saved her in the field. We worked magic together to disarm Kalen.

We had a connection… didn’t we?

I jumped as Corbin slammed an enormous volume down on his desk and started flipping through it. “Maeve’s choice is the least of our concerns right now.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. We destroyed those fae,” Flynn grabbed the whisky off Arthur and took a long swig. “Old Aragorn over here managed to get two with that dagger of his. I don’t see what the issue is. And this whisky is shite. I’ve told you a hundred times, we need a good Irish dram around here.”

I wanted to laugh at Flynn’s adoption of Maeve’s nickname for Arthur, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile when Corbin wanted us to be serious.

“The big deal is that there were three of them. Can anyone ever remember encountering three fae at once before?”

I shook my head. As did the others.

Flynn took a second long gulp from the bottle.

“Exactly. I can’t either, and nothing about more than one fae has been written in the histories since the Middle Ages.” Corbin turned the page. “When you combine that fact with Kalen’s appearance at the fair the other week, and what he managed to do to Maeve’s parents, what we get is a very dangerous pattern emerging. The amount of power the pouka must’ve drawn from killing all those people might be what gave him what he needed to bring two fae with him tonight?—”

“—but the question is, can he do it again?” Arthur finished.

“Exactly. Now, I think our first step should be?—”

“We should tell Maeve the truth,” I whispered.

The others whipped their heads toward me.

I jerked my chin down to my chest, unable to meet Corbin’s angry gaze. I glared at the floor, counting the threads of the fringe along the border of the carpet. One…two…three…

“We already discussed that, Rowan,” Corbin’s voice rasped with barely concealed annoyance. He hated that I was questioning him because I’d never done it before. I didn’t particularly want to be questioning him now. Corbin was everything to me – the person who’d given me a real, wonderful life. I usually deferred to him for everything. But when I thought of Maeve’s stormy, beautiful face as she demanded a rational answer to all her questions, I knew I was right.

Lying to her now endangered her.

…ten…eleven…twelve…

“That was before the fae were coming after her,” I mumbled, still staring at the floor. “Daigh knows exactly who she is. He’s already tried to kill her once.”

“Walk the scenario through, Rowan. You’ve met Maeve now, so you see what she’s like. Analytical. Scientific. She’s having a hard time believing what she encountered tonight were actually fae, and she saw and touched them. If we tell her she’s a powerful witch who will lead our coven in a great battle against Daigh’s forces, what do you think she’ll do?” When I didn’t answer, Corbin filled in for me. “I think she’ll jump on the first plane back to Arizona and command us to never speak to her again. And that means she’s dead meat, and so are all of us.”

“I don’t like lying to her,” I murmured. Twenty-two…twenty-three…twenty-four…

“Neither do I, but it’s best for now. Are we in agreement?”

…twenty-seven…twenty-eight…

“I think it’s best, for now,” Arthur said.

“I agree with Aragorn,” Flynn added. Of course he did.

“Stop calling me that,” Arthur growled.

…thirty-two…thirty-three…

“Right, that’s settled. Again.” Corbin took my silence as agreement. Or perhaps he didn’t, because this wasn’t a democracy. A coven always had a leader, and for now – until Maeve knew claimed the job – Corbin was ours. “Let’s move on to the fact that, for whatever reason, the fae have suddenly got a fuckton more powerful, and what we’re going to do about it.”

“We need to protect Maeve, at all costs,” Arthur said.

“Agreed. Flynn, we need more swords and daggers and iron objects. You should start with a charm to protect Maeve. Rowan, since that twig of yours worked pretty well, you can work up some more earth-based charms and spells. We should expect more of these attacks. And maybe we find a way to keep Maeve in the castle as much as possible. I don’t think she should go into the village without at least two of us with her at all times.”

“I’ll going to teach her to fight,” Arthur said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“Yes, you will.” Corbin’s tone said what he thought of that. “And I will hunt through every book in this library and try to figure out how the fae might be using the deaths from the fairground accident to break through our protective spells. If they can send that many warriors into this realm, it might not be long until they can get breach Briarwood’s wards.”

We broke up after that. No one really wanted to linger. Even Flynn had nothing to say. We each went our separate ways. My room was at the end of the hall, directly beneath Maeve’s. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, counting the crossbeams and the stones around the window, as I always did, and imagining her up there, laying across the bed, her pixie hair splayed out around her face, that shot of pink bright against the pillow.

My whole body buzzed with want of her.

She hasn’t chosen. She kissed Arthur but she didn’t choose him.

Usually I was content to sit back and let the other guys make the decisions. On movie nights, no one asked me what I wanted to watch. When we ordered Indian food, I ate whatever the other guys chose. I was so happy to have an actual family – guys who looked out for me and tolerated my quirks – that I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.

But Maeve…

I wanted her to choose me.

That meant I was going to compete against my friends, and the thought made me so stressed that I had to start counting all over again. I barely stood a chance, but for once in my life, I had to try.

Arthur had his intensity, Flynn would make her laugh, Corbin would protect her the way he protected all of us, but maybe there was something I could offer… something the other guys couldn’t give her.

Something she desperately needed.

If only I had a bloody clue what it was.