Chapter 2
THE HOLLOW’S PUB WAS a welcome pool of calm after the buzz and posturing of the Fae meeting that morning.
The afternoon sun had gone heavy and golden outside, stretching the shadows across the town square when Gael pushed open the door and walked with Aryon inside.
The light was softer, caught in the old wood and low beams. Smells of baking bread and simmering stew filled the space with the solid weight of home, but the room was quiet, conversation a low hum beneath the early-summer stillness that lingered over Mystic Hollow.
If a few regulars looked up and nodded, no one approached.
Here, titles were understood, but didn’t need fanfare.
“Today was... interesting,” Gael said as they crossed to the bar. “I’d never thought the fairies would want to come out into society as a group.”
Aryon nodded, already stepping behind the counter and reaching for mugs. “Iced Tea? Beer?”
“Tea, please,” Gael said. The town as a whole might have needed a day to recover from the Litha celebrations, but elves had an exceptional resistance to alcohol. His choice was for taste, not detox.
Aryon poured the tea, setting the glass down with a delicate thunk. “I think seeing the Oreads thriving under Jade’s leadership got them thinking,” he said. “The fairies aren’t as resilient, though. We’ll have to make sure it’s safe for them before we open too many doors.”
Gael slid into one of the tables near the window, the battered wood still warm from the sunlight and wrapped his hands around the glass, letting the chill seep into his fingers as Aryon joined him.
They got lost in the aftermath of the meeting–how to integrate the fairies without putting them at risk. How to temper their excitement with protections they didn’t even realize they’d need. It was the kind of work no one applauded, but neither he nor Aryon needed that. They needed results.
The kitchen door swung open, and Beth stepped through, wiping her hands on a towel. Her face lit up with that familiar, effortless warmth when she spotted Aryon but when her eyes landed on him, that smile hardened. Not angry, exactly, but guarded.
He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t left her much room for anything else, really.
Gael sighed.
Not that it mattered.
Beth was human. And he, for all that he wished it didn’t define him, was High Blood, bound up in a web of expectations he couldn’t simply shake loose. It wasn’t a formal law, but it was there. You didn’t mix bloodlines unless you were ready to pay the price.
Not only that. She was a waitress. Yes, she basically helped Elara and Aryon run the pub as if it were her own, but it wasn’t. He could only imagine the fit his mother would throw if he ever united with a human waitress.
Uncomfortable with where his thoughts had drifted, he took a long sip of tea.
He didn’t want to unite with anyone. That had been simply an ill use of normal words. Come on.
Would he like to know her?
Yes, sure.
There was just something about her. Beth’s beauty didn’t shout. It lingered. It was a loveliness that stays with you longer than you’d expect. Nothing about her was manufactured or polished to catch attention. Just a warm, practical curiosity that radiated from her like sunlight soaking into stone.
That was bound to be interesting.
But no matter how tempted he was to learn her, to be around someone who saw past titles, there was no path forward. Not one he was allowed to take. She could not be anything, no matter how many times he caught himself looking.
She walked up to their table, settling close to Aryon and across from him, that polite smile fixed carefully in place. Her hair was twisted into a tight bun on top of her head, leaving the delicate line of her unadorned neck exposed.
Gael didn’t let himself stare, but his gaze still caught there for a moment longer than it should have. He didn’t even know why she got to him like this.
Aggravating woman.
It had started years ago, with something simple: a glance, nothing more. He’d been visiting the pub, waiting on Aryon, when he looked over and saw her behind the bar, stacking glasses. The light had filtered through the old oak beams and painted her in gold.
And something in him had just... paused. Like a rhythm he’d known forever suddenly missed a beat.
Curious, he’d opened his senses slightly, brushing against her emotional current the way he could do without effort.
He’d found sorrow. Not loud or dramatic, but a sadness held with grace and pride.
And it had struck him, not with pity, but with that ache you feel when something beautiful is also breaking.
He’d shut himself off quickly, but the impression had remained.
After that, checking her aura when he visited, just a passing sweep, never enough to violate, had become a habit. And he’d been glad, genuinely, to see her flourishing under the gentle guard of Aryon and Elara, in the safety of Mystic Hollow. He thought about her here and there, sure. Briefly.
But that was as far as it could ever go.
Because of who he was, and who she wasn’t.
So Beth had remained a secret he kept tucked behind layered shields, the kind only an elf with his control could keep. No one ever saw it. Not even Valerian. At least, not until the party.
Gael didn’t dare lower his shields to skim her emotions now. There was no need, anyway, the daggers she was throwing at him with her eyes were vivid enough.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked, voice sugar-sweet and sharp as glass.
“Thank you, Beth, but we had something at the meeting. Maybe some more tea, if you can.” Aryon said smoothly, possibly picking up the odd energy. “You opened this morning, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Every year during Litha, we work you too much. You’ve missed your garden. Go back to it.”
Gael should’ve kept his mouth shut. He really should have. But the words slipped out before he could stop them. “Do you garden, then?”
It was a completely normal question, even more so from a high elf with earth affinity, but she stared at him like she’d rather chew nails than speak to him directly.
And then she smiled the most patronizing smile ever recorded for a human. “I do,” she said.
That was it. No elaboration whatsoever. Not a lifeline of small talk he could grab onto to save himself from this conversational nosedive.
He swallowed.
“What are you up to?” A beat. “I mean–” he cleared his throat, hating how awkward his voice sounded, “what are you working on in there?”
Beth’s smile widened, honey-sweet and laced with arsenic. “Pruning overgrowth,” she shrugged. “You know, making sure everything has the space to thrive, regardless.”
Oh, she would love to prune him out of existence, that much was clear.
Gael nodded once, tightly. Beth turned to Aryon, ignoring him as thoroughly as possible. “I’ll get you more tea, and if it’s okay, I’ll take off after that.”
She left, and Gael resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands.
Thankfully, Aryon didn’t say a word about that interaction.
They talked a little longer–about the meeting, about what waited ahead. Gael mentioned he would be leaving in a few days, itching to get back to the work waiting for him. It was easier to talk about logistics and duty than suffocating under the weight of the worst conversation he’d ever had.
Beth brought their teas over, moving with her usual efficiency, a towel slung over one shoulder. She set Aryon’s glass down first, then turned to him. When she passed his glass across the table, their hands brushed. A brief contact, nothing intentional, barely a whisper of skin against skin.
But it stopped him cold.
Gael had never touched her before. No handshake, no accidental brush of shoulders, no excuse to bridge the space between them.
And yet now, now that it had happened, it had cracked him open from the inside.
His skin flared like it had never been touched before, not like this.
Not just heat, not simply want. Elves weren’t cold, exactly.
But they were taught to temper emotions and treat pleasure like a measured, exquisite, and controlled art.
Desire wasn’t meant to burn and destroy but this, this was crude, immediate, and inescapable starvation.
It didn’t stop at his hand, oh no. The heat spiraled down, sharp and unrelenting, coiling low in his loins and dragging something visceral to the surface, something Gael hadn’t let loose in years if ever.
Not just attraction. Not just lust. Her.
The shape of her wrist. The warmth of her skin.
The faint, clean scent rising from her throat, something sun-warmed and human, and not crafted for seduction.
Which somehow made it worse. Her energy spilled into him and it wasn’t the precise, tempered power of an elf.
It was messy and radiant. Warm where he was cool. Soft where he was stone.
His thoughts didn’t stand a chance to catch up with what his body dictated with a snarl. To take her. Not carefully. Not elegantly, but in a way that would never be considered proper—not by his people, possibly not by anyone.
And that, more than anything, terrified him.
He snatched his hand back instinctively, clenched it into a fist, and hid it in his lap.
Control. Years of discipline. It was barely enough to keep his face from betraying him.
Beth noticed, anyway. Of course she noticed.
Her gaze flicked to his retreating hand, her mouth tightening slightly.
She probably thought he didn’t want to touch her.
Would probably chalk it up to disdain. Didn’t know—couldn’t know—that the problem wasn’t distance, it was need.
Brutal, consuming need. To lean in, to chase the warmth of her touch and drown in it.
Instead, he sat there, motionless, while she still burned on his skin.
Beth turned away, allowed only a glance over her shoulder in his direction. A glance sharp enough to leave another scar he’d pretend didn’t exist.