Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)

by Heather Fawcett

As for Bambleby, I had no idea. Perhaps he had drowned in the spring.

Of course I guessed that you had concocted some scheme in the night, which you would no doubt carry out with your usual reptilian efficiency, no help needed from the faerie king you have dragged along with you like a half-forgotten doll.

I was finally alerted to your presence when that fiendish dog of yours came charging out of nowhere, howling his head off. From the sound he was making, you were dead or dying or frozen into a dessert for some bogle, and so rather than looking for a proper door into their realm, I simply ripped a hole through it, and kept ripping until I found you in that cave.

The next time I took notice of you, you were sobbing all over the snow. Well, I thought, finally she’s being sensible.

Then I knocked his head off with one well-aimed stroke, nice and clean and hugely satisfying. In fact, I liked it so much that I wound back time and did it again, just to hear the lovely thunk of his head hitting the snow.

I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t dislodge you when you slumped against me in sleep, your head coming to rest on my shoulder. No, silly me; of course you’ll mind, but perhaps I don’t care.

“Shall I make an appointment?” he said, then laughed. “Yes, I believe you would like that. Well, name the time when it would be convenient for you to receive a declaration of love.”

He glared at me. “Yes, you would do all that, wouldn’t you? Well then, instead, why don’t you just marry me?”

“Well—I—how on earth am I supposed to answer?” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you want to marry me?” “That’s—that’s beside the point.” A nonsensical reply, but it came the closest to expressing how I felt. I had never even considered marrying Wendell—why on earth would I? Wendell Bambleby!

How was it that I suddenly had faerie kings, plural, demanding to marry me?

“I ask to be excused from any descriptions of marital intimacy. This whole thing is unfair: I asked you to marry me first.”