Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

“ID?” he echoed.

“You need to be old enough to rent a room, pay up front, and—”

“Why?” He didn’t know if he’d ever rented a room. As he stood there at the faux wood front desk, he realized that his guards or advisors had handled this sort of thing. He glanced over his shoulder at Donia. She turned her back, but not quickly enough that he missed her smothered laugh.

The receptionist said, “You need ID and a deposit in order to rent a room here.”

“Identification cards and deposits in case we”—he forced himself to look away from Donia and turned to the receptionist again—“do what?”

“Break things. Steal them.” She rolled her eyes.

“What do you think?” he asked Donia as she walked up behind him.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, and whispered, “I think you are used to having someone else do this.”

“True.” He read the name badge of the woman at the desk— Cinnamon—smiled at her, and asked, “Cinnamon, do you suppose—”

“No.” She scowled. “No ID, no deposit, no room. Your sort all think that works. Smile pretty, and we’ll roll over. Not going to happen.”

Donia was laughing out loud. Between giggles, she said, “Just like old times, isn’t it? You think turning on your charm will work, and I get to watch you fail.”

Shocked, Keenan turned to look at his beloved, and for a moment he was speechless. Donia was laughing over the curse, the competitions they’d waged over the mortal girls he’d tried to convince to take the test to be his queen.

As he turned, Donia kept her arms around him. She looked up at him. “If the girls who weren’t charmed had known what I know, they’d have been a lot easier to convince.”

“What’s that?”

She released him from her embrace and put her hands flat on his chest. “The . . . person behind the smile.” She stretched up and kissed him, twining her arms around his neck as she did so.

Without stopping kissing her, he swept her up into his arms. They stood in the motel lobby kissing until someone called, “Get a room.”

Donia pulled back and laughed. “That was the plan. They said no.”

At that, Keenan smiled. This was what he wanted: Donia happy. That was what he wanted every day now. The Winter Court mattered to him as much as the Summer Court had, but there was no struggle, no worrying over how to take care of the court. Donia’s court was healthy and, quite simply, the strongest of the courts. Whether Donia agreed to let him test his theory to become fey again or not, Keenan’s primary responsibility would still be one he undertook gladly: making sure Donia was happy. The difference, unfortunately, was that unless Donia agreed to let him try to become fey again, he’d only be able to do so for a blink. Mortal life spans were so brief as to be a heartbeat in the eternity that they could have if he became fey again.

He carried her out of the lobby and to the car, where Sasha waited. Beside the car, he lowered her feet to the ground. “So, navigating this human world seems a bit more complicated than I thought.”

Donia slid a hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. She opened it, and extracted two cards. “Not really. Hand her these.” She held one up. “Identification.” Then she held up the other one. “Credit card.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Are those new?”

“No. Cwenhild had them procured for you last month.” Donia slipped them back into the wallet, returned it to his pocket, and kissed him again. A few moments later she pulled back and opened her car door. “Come on.”

“But if I had them . . .”

She shrugged. “I figured if you couldn’t charm her, she has bad taste. Why stay in a motel where they have bad taste?”

“You’re a peculiar faery, Donia.” He walked around the side of the car and got in.

“We’ll find a nicer place. There’s a bed-and-breakfast I saw that looked pretty,” she suggested as she sorted through the pamphlets they’d collected.

And Keenan figured it didn’t much matter why she wanted to stay elsewhere. He’d walk in and out of every hotel and motel along the road if it made her smile and relax.

A short while later, the

y were settled into an admittedly nicer hotel. Sasha was out wandering now that they were stopped for the night, and Keenan and Donia were alone in their “honeymoon suite.” He had opened the doors to the balcony, and snowflakes were fluttering into the room. Donia still marveled at seeing her once-sunlit faery not flinch from the snow. From me. She’d thought she was done being surprised when she became Winter Queen. She hadn’t expected that—or becoming a faery or that the boy she’d fallen in love with so many years ago was anything other than human.

Or that he’d ever become a human.