I froze in the doorway, overwhelmed and feeling incredibly awkward. The amount of energy in the room was dizzying, like getting a hit of pure oxygen, and it made my head swim. There was also frost forming on the walls, which was probably not a good sign, and would also upset Fifi. But magic aside, the social embarrassment of walking in on a couple fighting was staggering. And, somehow, it was actually more awkward than that, because they weren’t even a couple. Though they were betrothed. Or maybe not? Taliyah had seemed pretty firm on her ‘never going to happen’ stance where their marriage was concerned.

  Fox looked different from what I remembered, maybe more fae in his appearance, which probably had something to do with this being his court’s season. The lines of his face seemed sharper, the gold of his eyes more brilliant, and there was the fact that the tips of his ears now ended in a graceful point, like a leaf tip. His hair was loose, not pulled back into a braid like he usually wore it, and among the strands of auburn were gold and nut brown, and even the brilliant scarlet of maple leaves. He might have looked a little different, but he was still just as stunningly attractive.

  Yet, strangely, even though I could recognize that he was a very attractive man, he didn’t have the same reaction on me that Andre did. There was no quickening of my pulse, no breathlessness, no fireworks in my heart. There was just a quick acceptance of the fact that as handsome men went, Fox was definitely among them.

  As to the other handsome man who it seemed was a permanent fixture in my thoughts, I’d been doing my best to forget the fact that Ivan had mistaken me for Andre’s girlfriend and the latter hadn’t corrected him. He’d simply laughed Ivan’s comment off, even if Andre had apologized to me about it later.

  “I hope you didn’t mind me having a bit of fun with him?” he’d asked.

  “No,” I’d said and shook my head, a laugh dusting my lips as well.

  And that had been the end of that.

  And that’s just as well, I told myself now.

  “Poppy,” Fox said in greeting as I remembered where I was and what I was in the middle of witnessing.

  Fox stood tall, his posture the kind of forcibly relaxed someone gets when they’re really frustrated, if not angry, and trying not to show it, as he turned his fake smile from me to glare down at Taliyah again.

  She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, and her chin tipped up in challenge, like she was daring him to take his best shot, clearly furious and not really giving a hoot who knew it. It was the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, and I was just the poor potion slinging mom who was about to get squished in the middle.

  I froze in the doorway, not really sure what to do. The rest of the building was empty, so Fox and Taliyah must have been the first to arrive. I winced. We probably should have thought of that when we’d called the meeting and taken steps to make sure the two of them weren’t left alone together, before they had a chance to cause an international faerie incident.

  Oh, well. Too late for that, I guessed.

  “Hi, Poppy,” Taliyah said as she offered me a nod, before spearing Fox with an angry expression again. “I won’t stand for it,” she continued in a hiss, her voice cold enough that it probably should have left the desks and chairs covered in ice. Even her face was a perfect, icy mask. “It’s blackmail, plain and simple.”

  A muscle jumped in Fox’s jaw, but he didn’t otherwise react. I could tell it was costing him something, though. “I am not responsible for any of this!” he insisted as I wished the ground would just open up and swallow me whole. “I would not jeopardize our marriage prospects by being cruel to you, Olwen. I wish you would extend me the same courtesy.”

  I really should have just walked away, but I wasn’t sure if that would have been ruder than staying? Their conversation had just swerved so quickly into the intensely personal that guilt curdled in my stomach for essentially eavesdropping. But I was worried that backing out would just further alert them to my presence. Besides, the rest of the council wouldn’t be far behind me. And, in my defense, if they wanted their conversation to be private, they probably shouldn’t have had it in the realty office and temporary Council chambers.

  Frost crawled across the carpet, ringing out from Taliyah’s booted feet.

  “My name,” she said so calmly and evenly that it somehow circled back around into something like a vicious threat. “Is Taliyah. Or Chief Morgan, if you prefer. I don’t know you and I certainly don’t love you. So, asking me to marry you is so far beyond absurd that I’m not even sure how you can do it with a straight face.”

  Outside, a branch covered in brilliant red and gold leaves scraped against the window with a hissing rattle that made me jump. The wind howled, low and eerie, and I wished someone else would show up already.

  Because I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave them to do whatever the conversational version of ‘duking it out’ was, and hope it didn’t turn into something dangerous? Or should I interrupt them, and play referee? Maybe try to calm them down? Change the subject? This was all way too much pressure; I couldn’t make those kinds of decisions on my own. I needed back up. I thought about texting Wanda and asking her when the heck she was going to get here.

  “We have been betrothed for your entire life,” Fox said with the careful kind of enunciation people use when they’re trying not to yell. “It is your duty, therefore, to cement the alliance between our two courts.”

  “Duty?” Taliyah repeated and I could see the tips of her ears going bright red. “My duty?”

  “If the succubus hadn’t interfered,” Fox continued, like he wasn’t aware the volcano known as Taliyah Morgan was about to blow. “Then you would have regained your memories when the seal broke naturally, and you would have known exactly what you needed to do.”

  I had to admit, with the return of her powers, Taliyah’s resting cop face had taken on new power. I was surprised Fox wasn’t covered in frost just from how cold her glare was.

  “Um, guys?” I started in a high-pitched and scared tone.

  Fox’s nostrils flared as he drew in a breath and they both ignored me. “You are the heir to the throne of Winter, Olwen, and your court loyalties trump your human life. This,” he waved his hand at Taliyah’s slacks and jacket, at the badge that still hung at her hip. “Would have all seemed like a distant memory once the spell broke. Olwen would have reasserted herself, as she was meant to.”

  The frost at Taliyah’s feet thickened into ice with a sharp pop. Her eyes narrowed. “Well, then I guess I owe Fifi a favor. At least this way, I’m not a dead woman when the spell breaks.” She took in a deep breath and took a step closer to him. “And my fucking name is TALIYAH!”

  “Oh, boy,” I started and was about to try to break their argument up, but Taliyah held out a hand to keep me where I was.

  “I’m about to lose my shit, Poppy,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes still resting firmly on Fox. “And I don’t want to lose said shit on you.”

  “Fair enough,” I answered as I backed away and found myself plastered against the front door.

  Fox managed to stand perfectly still, his brows pulled together over the bridge of his nose, though the skin of his forehead didn’t wrinkle up the way a human’s would have. “What do you mean—a dead woman when the spell breaks?”

  “By your logic, I, Taliyah, should die so that Olwen lives,” Taliyah answered and the smile she gave him was more a baring of teeth than any kind of friendly expression. The temperature around us plunged down. “I’d rather live, thanks.”

  My breath was starting to plume on the air. I was seriously considering texting Wanda for an ETA and telling her if she didn’t get here like now, we were going to have a serious situation on our hands.

  If Fox had been human, he probably would have raked his hands through his hair, or maybe grabbed handfuls of it. The frustration rolling off him was palpable, even from a few feet away. “You don’t understand. ‘Taliyah’ was a fabrication, just a human construct to keep Janara or her followers from finding you. Taliyah was never real.”

  Taliyah went very, very still. “Excuse me?”

  “You know what I mean.” Fox gave a little growl of frustration.

  “No, I most certainly do not know what you mean!”

  “You are determined to find fault in everything I say, choosing to see only the worst in my words.”

  I was surprised Taliyah could still speak, considering how tight her jaw muscles looked—like she was one more comment short of losing her molars. “Oh, no. I think you’re doing that just fine on your own.”

  “Taliyah,” Fox said, coming close to sounding beseeching. “This is not who you were meant to be. It was only–”

  “It doesn’t matter! Don’t you get that?” The ends of Taliyah’s long, white hair lifted up as if dancing on a wind that no one else could feel. Her face looked like it could have been sculpted out of snow, but her eyes blazed with a fire that was all her own. “It doesn’t matter how or why I lived the life I did. It’s my life, mine, and it matters to me!” She uncrossed her arms to make a sharp gesture in Fox’s direction. “You come here, and you demand that I marry you and just forget who I was? That’s so far beyond arrogant, it’s not even in the same postal code! And all this high-handed crap is the exact reason I don’t like you, and I won’t marry you!”

  Fox was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that cold sweat started to bead at the back of my neck. What the heck was I going to do if they got into an actual fight? Taliyah was probably great in a scuffle, especially if it involved wrestling a suspect into handcuffs, but the two of us didn’t have the power or the experience to take Fox. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but with the way steam was literally coming off Taliyah’s head, I wasn’t convinced.

  When Fox finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “You’ll feel differently when the seal is completely broken. You will understand, then.”

  Taliyah shook her head. “Don’t bet on it.”

  The front door of which I was plastered against suddenly opened behind me, and I staggered backwards with a sharp yelp. I’d been pressed back so hard, trying to become one with the door, that I almost fell on my butt when that support vanished.

  Andre, who had just walked in through the door and who now looked almost as startled as I was, managed to catch me before I landed on my ass. And just like that, I was in his arms, held firmly against his chest, and a part of my brain ever so subtly relaxed.

  The rest of me went into full on revolt. Heat rolled down my spine and into my belly. My skin prickled, warming every place our skin touched. My breath got tangled up in my throat, and the part of my mind that hadn’t let out a relieved breath was ringing every panic bell in my head.

  I froze, and it felt like slow motion as I brought my gaze up to look into his face. From the way his eyes had flared wide, his lips parting ever so slightly as he looked down at me, Andre wasn’t doing much better. That information should have made me feel better, but somehow, it didn’t.

  A sudden chill crawled over me, dousing any heat I might have been feeling, and the surprised breath I let out actually fogged in the air, like someone had accidentally cranked the air conditioner up way too high. Though that wouldn’t explain the frost crawling up the dark wood of the doorframe. Or the little flurry of snowflakes suddenly dancing through the air.

  I twisted around in Andre’s arms, and he hastily released me, like he hadn’t realized he’d been hanging onto me for what was probably a socially unacceptable length of time.

  Facing the room also meant facing Fox and Taliyah. Both of them stared at us in the doorway, and neither of their expressions were particularly friendly. Fox had one auburn brow raised, and his expression was more closed off than usual. It was like he’d slipped a mask on. Or maybe Fox was the mask, and this was just what he was usually like as Prince Reynard of the Autumn Court. Who could even tell anymore?

  Taliyah was all out glowering, but that had nothing to do with any supernatural heritage or royal titles. That was the expression she always wore as Police Chief Morgan, when she thought someone was hiding something from her. Up until Fifi had let the faerie cat out of the bag on the whole magic seal thing, Taliyah had worn this face a lot.

  One good thing about the seal being broken though? At least Taliyah wasn’t convinced there was a secret cult working behind the scenes of Haven Hollow anymore. That had made things beyond awkward.

  I tried to smooth the front of my sweater down, offering the two fae royals a smile that started to wilt at the edges. “Um… remember we’re, uh… we’re here for the Council meeting?” Or at least, I was here for the Council meeting so I wasn’t sure why I’d included Andre in that, but anyway…

  If anything, Taliyah’s scowl got a little darker, and I had to fight to keep my shoulders from crumpling in on themselves. I wasn’t sure if an apology would help, or just make everything worse.

  Fox stepped forward smoothly. His face was still a blandly polite mask as his gaze flicked to Taliyah, but she didn’t look at him.

  If this didn’t erupt into WWIII, I’d count myself lucky.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Both Fox and Taliyah seemed to zero in on Andre who was standing in the doorway, behind me.

  The intensity of their stares was a little off putting, if not all-out disturbing and a lot creepy, and I wasn’t even the target of it.

  Andre, to his credit, didn’t seem fazed by either one of them—he just smiled kindly at them both, like the rabbit who has no clue the wolves are about to pounce.

  “Who’s this?” Taliyah asked, her arms still folded across her chest like a suit of armor. She looked Andre up and down, as though committing the details of his person to memory like she thought she might have to pick him out of a lineup later.

  I resisted the urge to wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans and notched my smile up another couple of degrees. Here went nothing. “This is… Andre.”

  Andre inclined his head, his bold smile still in full effect. “Greetings to you both on this fine day.”

  Taliyah’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he doing here?” Her voice wasn’t just cold, but oddly stiff.

  It took me a second to realize that she was uncomfortable, and another to maybe understand why.

  Having the seal on her faerie memories broken hadn’t just resulted in Taliyah gaining some magic. It had also involved some pretty distinctive changes. Taliyah had always been an attractive woman, at least in my opinion, but it was a human sort of pretty. She was approaching fifty, and her age had shown in the fine lines around her eyes and the silver in her hair. But fae didn’t really age the same way humans did, and half a century wasn’t a very long time to them at all.

  Gone now were the laugh and squint lines from Taliyah’s face, along with the fine grain of her weathered skin. Now, her features were like porcelain, pale and smooth and flawless. The silver in her hair had spread, turning frost white, and growing until it fell all the way to her hips. She wore it pulled back, so I couldn’t see her ears, but it was possible they now came to graceful little points, too. She looked ageless and ethereal and though stunningly beautiful; she was also very not human.

  In order to avoid a lot of uncomfortable questions from people who knew her but weren’t in the know, and probably to avoid feeling like her entire identity had been stripped away, Taliyah tended to wear a glamor, an illusion that made her look like she had before the seal broke. But she often didn’t bother with the glamor at Council sessions, since everyone there knew what was going on.

  Needless to say, she wasn’t wearing that glamor now, either, because she obviously hadn’t expected anyone she didn’t know to show up.

  Fox took a small step forward, ever so slightly moving in front of Taliyah in a protective gesture, which made her stiffen, and glare daggers at his back.

  “Who is this man? Why is he here? I was told this was a meeting with the Haven Hollow Council.” He stared over my shoulder at Andre, those golden eyes surprisingly cold. It wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on Fox’s face. It made me wonder if I knew him as well as I thought.

  “As Poppy said, I am Alixandre Osmont, though everyone who is acquainted with me simply calls me ‘Andre’,” the dapper Englishman announced with another friendly smile as he stepped towards them both and they, in turn, narrowed their eyes at him a little more obviously. “I am also a Magician.” He extended his hand as if he meant to shake Fox’s but the latter simply glared at Andre’s proffered hand before turning that glare up to Andre’s face.

  “A Magician?” Taliyah repeated with a frown.

  “Not that kind of Magician,” I answered, figuring she thought Andre was here to entertain us by pulling white rabbits out of top hats or something equally ridiculous.

  “The magic sort,” Andre added as he dropped his hand and took a step back, clearly reading their unfriendliness and reacting accordingly. “And as to why I’m here,” he continued with that big smile, “I was invited.”

  “You were?” I asked, as this was news to me.

  He turned to face me. “Yes,” he answered with a laugh.

  “Who invited you?” Taliyah demanded, ice spreading across the carpet from her boots.

  Andre glanced down at it and then back up at her again and if he was intimidated, he didn’t show it. “Touché,” he offered and then turned to face me. “And to answer the question I’m sure you’re all wondering: I was invited by none other than your very own sasquatch, Roy.”

  I frowned in surprise. “Roy invited you?”

  Andre turned around to face me again and nodded. “I offered my help with your little… fae issue,” he started and gave a quick nod and smile to Fox and Taliyah, as if to say he wasn’t intending to be rude, if they decided to take his words in such a way. “And Roy took me up on my offer.”