A Poisoned Garden
New World Magic Book 4
Genre: Romantasy
Tropes: Paranormal Romance, Shifter, Shifter Romance, Fae, Seelie/Unseelie, Fae Court, Grumpy/Sunshine, Magic, Magical Romance, Fairy Tale, Fairy Tale Romance, Unicorn, Unicorn Shifter, First Person, Real World/Magical World, Contemporary, Fast Paced, Witty Banter
Heat: Open Door Medium/High Spice
A unicorn walks into a bar and…wait, what was I saying?
Look, between what I’m pretty sure is premature senility and wanting to barf all the time, I’m barely hanging in there. At this point, I need a break after solving xeno murders, fighting murderous fox shifters, and my best friend nearly murdering me for…reasons.
But do I get a break? No, I get an invitation to the court of the Unseelie fae, and it’s the kind of invitation you can’t refuse because it’s from the king who flip-flops between wanting to share a pizza with me and stabbing me.
The upside is that I can see my best friend Marly, the newly minted and slightly murderous Unseelie fae queen. The downside? Apparently, I have to prevent a civil war between powerful magical beings, and I don’t even get a can opener for self-defense.
Just like clockwork, I’m back to running from supernatural squids, double-dealing with triple-dealing fae who probably all want me dead, and getting tangled up with a beautiful, broken-hearted unicorn who makes me feel guilty, and I don’t know why.
After all, we’ve never met before…have we?
Excerpt
The woman walked right past the unicorn.
“Can I get you another?” The bartender smiled at March, his hand already on the tap. He was about to agree when something caught his attention. A smell—delicious and familiar. Was it rosemary? Here, surrounded by plastic and metal and cold light, a delicate reminder of life and warmth. March raised his head in time to catch the woman wearing the fragrance reflected in the mirror behind the bar. She rolled her suitcase to a stop at an empty barstool and plopped down with a sigh.
He went tense all over, but it only took a second to realize she was just a random traveler sitting down for lunch. Not Ruby.
After all, why would Ruby be day-drinking at the Home Team Sports Bar in Terminal Two of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to begin with? And why was he?
“Was that a yes?” the bartender asked.
He’d forgotten to answer. “No, I’m fine. Thank you.” He kept one eye on the woman, in case she turned out to be Ruby after all.
“Don’t want to miss your flight. Sure.” There were other people waiting for their drinks, but the bartender lingered. “Where are you off to? Someplace good?”
“Um, not really. I’m not sure where I’m going, honestly.”
The young man leaned on his elbows. “Yeah? Well, if you need a place to stay or anything…”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. Maybe you ought to…” he indicated the waiting customers, looking increasingly impatient. The bartender reluctantly left to wait on them.
He thought about how he’d gotten here; this bar, this place. Once, it would have been almost impossible for him to follow a map of time and place—points A, B, and C. It would all be happening at once. Now, he could picture each step in order, back to the beginning of this journey.
After the Unseelie king Sasha “gifted” him with his sanity by fixing him in time, he decided the thing to do was to get back to his old life, and that meant the solitude of his forest. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, not even his old friend, the demi-goddess and therapist Bel. Not even Ruby, not that it would have mattered, because Sasha took her memories away. Her memories of March, the rocks blocking his river.
He didn’t want to be distracted by human things.
He started walking, away from the city, away from the cars and buildings and humans, but mostly away from Ruby. He told himself it was out of concern for her well-being—what would happen if she should see him again? Would it hurt her? But thinking of their last moment together, when thanks to Sasha’s intervention she no longer knew him, the way she’d glanced at him with the blank, dismissive eyes of a stranger—he finally had to admit that it was his own heart he wanted to protect.
For a while he put his own body back on and slid through the nighttime streets like mercury, until there were no more streets, and briefly, his journey was over. But once home, he found he couldn’t keep still, and before long, his forest was far behind him again.
Turning back into a man, he caught a ride on a ferry and crossed the big river. Then he walked, and when he got tired, he stood by the road until someone stopped their car. Then he’d sit in the passenger seat while they drove and try to keep their eyes on the road and off of him. It didn’t always work out that way. Once a man driving a truck stopped for him, and he let the man give him a blowjob. Afterward, the man gripped the steering wheel and cried, saying he had never done anything like that before.
“Really?” March said. “I have. Lots of times. It feels good though, right?”
The man wiped his face with the heel of his hand and said, “I need to pray now.”
March nodded. He was used to worship. “That’s a good idea.”
“You should leave.”
March looked out the front window of the truck. The road shot straight as an arrow dividing the endless fields of corn until it disappeared. The last thing like a town they had passed—a gas station, a motel, and long rows of storage sheds—was over a half an hour ago. He understood, though. He knew he could be a little overwhelming. Just to be sure, he said, “You mean right now? I don’t
—”
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