“I’m too cute to kill.”

“Try again.” Spike tried to crawl into my lap. I shooed it away as I swung my feet around to the floor. The rose goblin gave me a wounded look and began grooming its thorns.

“How about I say I’m taking you out for breakfast? My treat.”

“Uh-huh.” If Connor hadn’t been married, that statement would have had me leaping for my clothes no matter what time it was. With things the way they were, I wasn’t thrilled. “What does Raysel think of this plan?”

He hesitated before saying, “She doesn’t exactly know.”

I sighed. “Then I’m not going to breakfast with you. Raysel would kick my ass.” Rayseline Torquill was Connor’s wife, the daughter of my liege lord, and every interaction I had with her went a little further toward convincing me that she was certifiably crazy.

Raysel’s madness wasn’t her fault, which made it difficult to blame her for it, no matter how much it complicated things. She and her mother were kidnapped shortly before I was turned into a fish, and they were missing for almost as long as I was. They came back a few years before I made it out of the pond. Jin says they just appeared in the garden one day, returning as suddenly and unexplainably as they came.

If anyone knows what happened to them during those missing years, they haven’t told me. Luna came back quiet and a little sad, and Raysel … Raysel came back broken.

Maybe it would have been different if I’d managed to avoid Simon’s spell and keep myself from being transformed. Maybe, if I’d been just a little better at my job, they would have come home as healthy and happy as they left it. Maybe. Even in Faerie, time doesn’t run backward, so I guess we’ll never know for sure.

“It’s not like we’d be doing anything wrong,” he said, a note of pleading in his tone. “It’s just breakfast and we’ve been friends since before Raysel was born.”

“Skipping the part where you haven’t exactly been subtle about liking me, that woman thinks I’ve done something wrong when I breathe.” Raysel has hated me since I came back. The fact that there was a time when I’d have happily hopped into bed with her husband might have something to do with it, but it seems to go deeper than that. She acts like I’m her worst enemy, and I have no idea why.