When the Faeted Matchmaking Agency makes a match, it’s supposed to be forever. That’s the tale I’d grown up hearing from all the happily mated couples in my dryad clan of over fifty nauseatingly, constantly happy people. Everyone knew that when Faeted’s best matchmaker, Dyslander Elderwald, made a match for someone, it was going to work out. The client would fall in love with that select person and everything would be perfect—forever. There were supposed to be rainbows after every rainstorm and sunny days with flowers for the rest of that couple’s life together. Absolute bliss and perfection.
Only everyone had lied, because it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t anywhere close to it. Disheveled, angry over my cheating boyfriend and my lack of sleep over the past few days, I managed to pull myself together enough to walk down the cobblestone street toward Faeted. I didn’t have an appointment, but this was an emergency, so I figured that I didn’t exactly need one, either. Dyslander had to see me. He wouldn’t get a choice. He’d given me happiness and it had all gone to shit, so now he had to fix the mess he’d put me in.
I was a dryad, from the Oaken Forest, and being in the capital with all of its buildings didn’t put me at ease in the least. The tall structures actually made me feel a little sick. I didn't know whether it was because I was away from the forest itself or caused by the iron I could feel crawling toward me through the buildings, as if it were hunting me directly. I couldn’t exactly be sure. I only knew how much I needed to get off the street as quickly as possible. Being a tree spirit, I was only really at home in the forest, well away from cities like this. We dryads cared for the trees and nurtured them as they grew up around us. Being in the city was not only hard for me, but I also sometimes felt as if I were actually suffocating.
Faeted’s lobby was empty except for the water nymph sitting behind the desk with her feet in a bucket of water with ice cubes floating in it. It was summer, so maybe she needed to be kept cool, which would explain the ice. She should have been in the shallow waters the nymphs called home, just as I should have been back in my forest with my mate wrapped around me like he was supposed to be. But Dyslander had made a mistake, and the person who had been chosen for me wasn’t my mate, so maybe it was fitting that this water nymph wasn’t actually in water.
I was burning up, too, even in the light linen shirt and pants I’d decided to throw on that morning with the hope that they were clean enough to go out in. Nothing had mattered much in the last few days, especially something as dull as making sure I had clean clothing.
The water nymph gave me a small smile, and I could see the worry on her face as it creased her eyes. I probably wasn’t what their normal clientele looked like, and I knew I wasn’t dressed nearly as neatly as I had been six months ago when I’d first come into Faeted. I’d been trying to find true love and put an end to my string of hopeless and unfulfilling one-night stands in order to find something real, meaningful and lasting with another man.
“May I help you?” she asked me gently, as if she were afraid I might lash out at her. It was a fair assumption and one I didn’t blame her for in the least. In fact, it probably made her the smarter person of the two of us. I’d been in a bad mood for days on end now, so I’d nearly forgotten what it was to feel happy about anything, really.
I wasn’t in the mood for gentleness or sweetness, though, and her soft attitude just made it worse for me. I wanted to scream at someone, but instead, I said, “Is he in?”
Her smile, which was probably only placating to begin with since it had disappeared so easily, turned quickly into a grimace. “Who are you trying to speak to? Do you have an appointment this morning?”
“I don’t need an appointment to see the person who ruined my life,” I snapped at her, my voice whip-sharp like the vines I lived among. “I have to see Dyslander. I demand to speak with him.”
She pulled back from me and shook her head. “Dyslander only sees people with appointments. As our best matchmaker in Faeted, he’s a very busy man, you see, and—”
“Dyslander!” I really didn’t have time for her. I screamed for him, not caring who I bothered or what kind of trouble I got myself into now. None of it mattered, since my life had become such shit over the past two days.
She rose from her desk and smacked her hands on the shiny surface. The action sloshed the water in the basin where her feet were. “Sir! You just can’t!”
I was about to argue and tell her that, yes, I could do whatever I wanted, because Dyslander had to see me, when the man in question stepped out of his glass box of an office and, looking surprised, quickly came across to us. “It’s quite all right. Adrian is clearly upset. I’ll see him now, privately.”
“You remember my name?” I asked him, more than a little shocked. I’d remembered his since I’d thought he’d been this amazing person capable of bringing me together with the person I would love forever, but as far as normal people went—even the ones I saw regularly—I didn’t remember them at all. It was something I was trying to work on and something I wasn’t particularly proud of, either.
Dyslander held the door open for me when I followed him to his office. “Of course I remember you, Adrian. Dryads are unusual enough, but for someone as young as you are, at only twenty-four, to think of settling down and finding love? That was truly unique.”
“I want you to fix it,” I said, taking a seat in front of his desk without being invited to sit down. I was too on edge and far too emotional to be worried about being polite right then. I pulled one of my knees to my chest and closed my eyes briefly as I remembered being in that same chair months before, back when I’d thought love was real and there was someone special for me out there in the world.
“Fix what?”
I opened my eyes to see Dyslander sitting across from me. He looked genuinely confused. “Corrin cheated on me. Give me someone else. Clearly, you got it wrong the first time. Now fix it and give me the person I’m supposed to love forever and be happy with.”
His expression fell and, with it, my hopes drifted away. “Adrian, I’m sorry that happened to you, but there really is only one Faeted match for each person in our world. I can’t magically produce another one for you.”
“Then that’s it? I’m destined to be alone forever?” I asked him. The thought made me miserable.
He leaned across the desk toward me. “Or you could give Corrin another chance. I don’t know what happened between you two, but I saw you in my mind months before either of you came in here. I knew you were going to be happy together.”
I hated that idea instantly. “We were happy—once.” There was no use denying that. We’d been passionately, disgustingly in love right from our first kiss. “I don’t want anything to do with him, not ever again. If you can’t help me then…then I don’t know what. I’ll fall in love with a dryad like my parents always wanted me to and live happily ever after with them.” And not with a fire mage who can’t keep his tongue inside his own mouth. I’d go live in a forest and help make trees grow with the rest of my people. That’s all we ever did. We walked along and helped plants grow. Boring, really, but someone had to help the forests of the world. I’d been born to that life. Maybe I was stupid for thinking that I should have something more than that.
I moved to get off the chair, but Dyslander reached over and grabbed my wrist, stopping me with his long fingers and sharply curved, claw-like nails. He wasn’t hurting me, but his touch was firm, and it made me stop as I stared down at his hand covering my brown, bark-like skin.
“Sit back down, Adrian. Please. I think I know someone for you,” he said quickly.
I narrowed my eyes and I retook my seat. “But you said…”
He waved away my concerns as he wrote an address down on a notepad for me. “Be at this address tomorrow at two.”
I took the sheet of paper, recognizing it as the hotel that sat high on a mountain about an hour outside of the capital. Since there were no trees on the fiery mountain, I’d had no reason to go there before. “Is my new mate to be a dragon?”
Dyslander shook his head. “No.”
“A gryphon, then?”
He lifted his hand and pointed to his office door. “Out. No more guesses. Be there. See if you like him. You know how this works.”
I did know. “And, hopefully, this time you’ll get it right.”
He said nothing and I made my way back outside and walked the hour back home to my copse of young oak trees. I’d been given my own seedlings at five and had grown up with these trees ever since. As I walked into the group of them, I touched each tree, checking it for health and vitality. They were all perfect and completely at peace—not like me.
“I’m home,” I told them. It wasn’t strange at all for a dryad to be talking to trees. “I’ll be gone a lot tomorrow. I’m meeting with someone. This time he’d better be a good guy, unlike Corrin.” Saying his name made me angry. Thinking about him hurt.
I lay down with the sun dappling around me on the grass and tried to think of nothing for the rest of the day. I didn’t always succeed, but I mostly managed to not think about Corrin’s shiny black hair or his tan skin that looked like the sandstone he’d kissed me against that first time.
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