Page 19 of How to Woo the Undead

“Dryads, even the summoned ones, are just that, summoned. Yet none of us have summoned it. Miraculous repair and regeneration without command. Which is how I know this is Old Fae magic. Once upon a time, I came across an entire village that came back to life when someone disturbed its slumber. Little white mushrooms and roots filled in where the bodies were torn apart. They were controlled by an ancient Fae who rested deep underground, feeding on those who were trapped by the village dryad. What I don’t understand is how we ended up with an Old Fae’s dryad. Or how this relates to the serial killer in King’s Fall.” Sebastian rocked back on his boots while he studied the specimen. Saidspecimenstared at Austin. While it didn’t have eyes, per say, Austin felt it perceive him. It drilled holes through him.

“Sir, I don’t like how it’s looking at me,” Austin grumbled, lurching backward.

“Interesting, it iskeenon you Austin. Take a step to the left.”

He obeyed his maker’s orders, once to the left, twice to the right, back, then around the table, everywhere Austin went, the dryad followed him. Its head swiveled on the twisted vine neck. Austin continued to creep around the table, a queasy feeling tickling his stomach.

“Sir…you said this was an old ritual?” Austin asked, stopping at the head of the slab where the body was pointed at Greggory but it’s face, even just an orb of twisting vines and thorns, stared at him. “Could we undo it like we do all the others.”

“Ah! Yes, we could—ope, look alive, gentlemen.”

Austin jerked away as the creature flung backward. A maw made of razor-sharp thorns spun like a chain saw on high, its head a swirling mass of vines feeding more thorns into the mouth. It climbed backward, scrambling over itself after Austin. He chopped through some of the head only to have it rip through his palm. Yelling, he punted the creature across the lab.

It smacked into a far wall, taking a shelf full of papers and notebooks with it to the ground. The sound of shredding paper echoed throughout the lab. Carl woke up from the commotion and immediately jumped to his paws. Hackles rose, he growled at the creature, but when he lunged at the dryad, he was knocked back with a foot that was ejected from the dryad. A stump formed where the human flesh had been. Carl yelped, skittering backward into Kevin’s open arms.

“Now, that’s quite enough,” Sebastian huffed, snapping his gloved fingers.

Splat!

Austin held his hand out in front of him, seeing all the sliced skin over dark green muscle and inky black veins. Pain he’d not felt in several hundred years ripped through him.That actuallyhurts!He didn’t realize he was shouting until Lord Rosemont stood in front of him. He detached his attention from his palm to his maker. The room was full of pieces and splattered with sap.

“Austin, are you alright? My boy, breathe for me,” Sebastian’s soft words quieted the panic in Austin’s heart. Its rapid beat slowed down while Sebastian pulled his magic sewing needle from one of the many leather pouches around the room full of tools. He returned and the flesh was rendered back together. A cooling wash of mint and balm came over his palm, removing the pain from his veins.

“Sir…that hurt.”

Sebastian nodded, thoughtfully. “I noticed. You’ve never yelled like that.”

“Sir, I don’t feel pain like that,” Austin confessed. While his pain receptors were more attuned, as he’d been alive for ages, undead did not feel pain the same way the living did. If he was stabbed, it was more of a pressure feeling that pain. When the Hungry One pulled his threads, he didn’t feel pain, just the thud against the earth.

Yet that thinghurthim, like he imagined someone slicing their palm open on a kitchen knife might feel. But twelve times over.

“That is the conundrum, is it not? I’ve not experienced Old Fae magic in some time, and you’ve never been harmed by it before. I do believe it warrants some study, but that begs the question…which Old Fae have you offended, my dear boy?”

Austin frowned. There was only one fae he knew of, and she was upstairs. When he glanced up, it seemed Sebastian came to the same conclusion. “Sir, you don’t think…?”

“We do not know if Hyacinth’s powers have manifested or if she has access to them at all. But no one outside the house couldconjure anything inside the house. And if it were her, she might not realize what she was doing. She is still learning, after all. Will you go collect her? I’m going to tend to Carl and clean up the lab. I believe she’s in the kitchen with Dahlia.”

Austin nodded rapidly, rounding his maker and heading for the stairs. Kevin and Carl lay on the ground together at one end of the lab, Greggory furiously scribbling in the note’s tome on one of the tables. It hadn’t even occurred to Austin to be cautious or worried as he rushed up the stairs. His only mission was to grab Hyacinth and come back downstairs. If she had magic, she needed training. However, if she wasn’t the cause, then they had larger problems. His thoughts were only on how to explain the situation to the purple-eyed woman when he burst out the door.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

Hyacinth emerged out of the kitchen the exact same time he stepped out of the laboratory door, and her gaze immediately locked on him. Reality crashed over him as he realized she was looking at him.Really saw him.She blinked twice before she gasped, whirled around on her feet, and slapped her palms to her face.

“I am so sorry, Austin! I promise, I will forget how your face looks. I did not mean to perceive you without your permission.” Her voice cracked in the middle.

Austin stumbled forward, the lab door creaking closed behind him.She saw me. Right. Don’t panic. She didn’t scream!He sputtered, trying to find words, “It’s alright.”

Hyacinth shook her head broadly from left to right. “No! No, you didn’t want me to see you and now I’ve looked at you!”

“Hyacinth,” he chuckled nervously, scratching at the back of his neck. She didn’t move or speak. Austin was forced to take adeep breath to steady his heart. Then, he took another step forward and said her name again. “Hyacinth, you can look.”

“Are you sure?” Her voice was barely able to bounce off the walls around them. In the dusty afternoon light of the manor, she stood deathly still. Her shoulders were a bit hunched, wings straight out behind her like she’d been caught with her hand in a cookie jar. He studied the spot where they jutted out of her back. How the skin was far puffier and life-like than it had been when he stitched them back into her.

“Very sure,” he gulped, clenching his fists at his side to keep from running off.She didn’t scream that time…so she shouldn’t…I’m not…He held his breath as she gradually turned around. Her palms still covered her pretty face until she faced him. They dropped down and she finally peeked up at him. Those lavender eyes scanned him with intensity that made him itchy. Austin would rather skin himself alive than have her find a single flaw. A single scary thing about him. He worried about his red irises against his yellow eyes. Or the tusks that were definitely mangled narwhal horns screwed into his gums. Or the massive black thread that held chunks of him together.

Yet, when her eyes returned to his, there was something twinkling in them. Sweet even. Her lips curled up into a smile.

“You’re so tall,” she breathed, “that’s unfair. I wish I were tall. Could you make me taller?”