Rowans Choice

Chapter Eight - Hell about covers it

The banquet was five hundred Fae deep. Long tables were placed throughout the great hall laden down with foods of every delicacy. The drink that flowed was from mini waterfalls created by fairy magic, they were placed in perfect positions, five to a table of one hundred Fae.

The red of the wine that flowed close to Andy, it made my mind go to dark places, where that was her blood and it was all over my hands. I had put her in danger by choosing her, my fathers words echoed in my mind, not helped by the silence and cold shoulder of my soon to be mate that sat beside me.

Had I made a mistake...

I glance in the opposite direction, searching Fae faces for the one that had eluded me the last half an hour... Sycamore.

"Little sister" Aspens fingers snapped in front of my face and I flinched backward from the sensation across my eyelashes.

I glare at him unamused. "What" I ask with irritation.

"You don't seem happy" he observes. He leans forward, looking around me to Andy who was downing a third glass of wine and studying her food meticulously to avoid me.

"Why do you two look like you've been married a century already and now hate one another"

"I don't hate her" I say quietly, pushing him back into his seat and his elbows off of the tablecloth.

"Hate to say it Rowan... but that fire fairy ... she is not burning in all the right places for you little sister. She might never defrost. Can you go eternity without putting any magic inside of her?!" He asks amused.

He clutched his chest and frowns "I just imagined that for myself and it sounds like hell. A lifetime with a mate who won't let you touch her... who also despised you..."

"Hell about covers it" I interject.

"Why would you choose the one fairy in this kingdom who doesn't want you" he asks "Andromeda is beautiful, no dispute there... but she does not want to marry you. She's on her fourth glass of wine" he whispers.

I turn back to her and sure enough she fills another glass. I reach out and place my hand across it. The look she gives me as she follows the source of her irritation up my arm to my hard stare is not one I want to see too often.

"Take your hand from my wine" she challenged.

I instead take the glass and throw my head back, downing the lot of it.

"Ahhh" I tease, wiping my mouth. "Good stuff"

I raise my hand and a member of the kitchen staff runs over "yes your highness" she asks.

"Please ensure that Andromeda has water on tap" and I point to the wine that pours beside her in the waterfall.

The fairy nods and says something under her breath, the red of the wine pouring beside Andy is replaced instantly with a clear water waterfall.

Andy turns in her chair and reaches for the kitchen staffs arm. She smiles charmingly "what is your name" she asks the poor young thing.

The fairy is stood between us and she looks nervously to us both, not knowing who to please first or what predicament she had got herself into. She mumbled some gibberish in response and Andy raised an eyebrow curiously "I have no idea what you just said"