How to Fake It with a Fae (Seven Suitors for Seven Witches #1)

by Amy Boyles

Besides, my heart’s too damaged, too tender to even think about pushing it into someone’s hands so that they can carve it up like a steak.

“It doesn’t always happen, and what I stated wasn’t a formal declaration.” His eyes darken as they rip from me and land on my family. “But it was enough.” “Enough for what?” His gaze shifts back. “Enough for us to be formally joined.” “I heard you say that, but I don’t understand what that means.”

“We can’t be far from each other, if I remember the spell correctly.” “Far from each other? Like, how far?” His gaze scans the room as if he’d rather look anywhere but at my face. “I don’t know the limits.” “Try to know them.” He shifts his weight again, this time sighing like I’m a nuisance. Me. I’m not the one who ignited some weird-ass spell from centuries long past. “Perhaps forty yards is the limit.” Forty yards? Panic claws up my throat.

But no, I remind myself, I tried to leave the dance. As soon as she made it clear that she was a Thornrose, I couldn’t get out fast enough. But when my feet touched the grass outside, it felt like my heart had been ripped in two. Once again, what is wrong with me?

She’s a witch. Worse, she’s a Thornrose. One who clearly doesn’t know what I mean to her family. That much was obvious when they told her who I was. Well, if they’re not going to tell her, then I won’t either.

“Do I need to remind you what such a bond signifies?” Anger flashes in my eyes. “No, you don’t. I’m well aware what it means.” “Does she, though?” When I don’t answer, he groans. “Let me get this straight—she doesn’t know how to end a joining, and she doesn’t even know what such a bond means to fae.” “Right on both counts.” “You’ve got to tell her.”

It’s atomic. It’s being sucked into a black hole where the only thing that exists is the other person. They’re all you can see. They’re your world, and their scent is your oxygen. It’s torment and ecstasy wrapped up in a pretty little bow.

I pass a stack of books that had been sitting on a table but are now scattered on the floor. That’s what made the crash. I glance around, but everything’s still. If we were both in the office, what could have caused the books to fall?

“For the last time, she didn’t! She doesn’t know anything about me. About Tess. I know that for a fact, and before you question how, when her family introduced us and told her who I was, do you know what she said?” I laugh because it’s so ridiculously sweet and quintessentially Addison. “She said, you don’t look fae.”

“But it’s also said, and believed by many, that a true joining like yours goes much deeper. That’s why all of us felt it when His Majesty joined with you.”

“You believe in me?” And it’s the way she says it that cracks my heart in two, as if no one’s ever believed in her before.

“Books!” I launch myself past Feylin without a care in the world. My shoulder grazes his chest, and a jolt of passion singes me all the way to my toes. I gulp it down as I race into the room.

My bones ache to ask him if lovers still give them to one another, but I don’t have the nerve.

He levels that sapphire gaze on me, and little pulsing jolts of energy skitter down my spine. “Ours is the first joining by a king or queen in a hundred years.” A wide-mouthed pit opens in my gut. That can’t be right. Fae must have joined before us. “You’re kidding.” “I wouldn’t joke about it.”

“That gives us time to draw out your magic.” I sigh in frustration and drop my head onto my back. “Again with the magic.” “I’m not giving up on you.” The sternness in his tone makes my head snap back up. There’s fire in his eyes, a burning so strong that my stomach coils tight. “Okay,” is all I can muster.

“You will never have this,” he whispers. What does that mean? “You will never have me the way that you want me,” he bites out. Oh, that’s what he means. “No matter how much you think that I’ll succumb to this desire, I won’t. I never will. This is as far as it will ever go.”

I imagine that it matched the emotion in my eyes as I wondered when we stopped playing pretend and it all started to become real.

“Because darling”—she magicks away the screens and I step forward—“I know when a man’s in love, and that man is desperately in love with you.”

“You mentioned the joining. Yes, it ties us to one another. But even if we’d never joined, fate would have brought us together, because nothing and no one could’ve hidden you from me. Not even the heavens could’ve secreted you away. If they’d needed to, the earth and the sky would’ve changed places so that you and I could find one another, because from the first moment we met, I wanted to carve out a space in my life for you, and nothing on this earth or beyond would’ve stopped me from doing that.”

He spreads his fingers and threads them through mine again. His gaze is on our hands when he says, “Because if this isn’t true love, then true love doesn’t exist.”

It feels like my heart’s going to break through my rib cage, it’s so swollen with love. I haven’t told her that I love her yet. But I will, tonight, after the ceremony.