Chapter 1: Waking Up in the Enemy’s Arms
Felix’s consciousness returned like a slow, sick tide. First was the smell—damp earth, something sweetly rotten, and the crisp, clean scent of night air. Then came the feeling of weight, a solid warmth pinning him down. And then, the third, unwelcome sensation: a thick, muscular coil wrapped possessively around his calf.
His eyes snapped open.
Above him, the canopy of silver-barked trees wasn’t a canopy at all, but a living, breathing galaxy. Bioluminescent mushrooms clung to every branch, pulsing with a soft, greenish-blue light that waxed and waned like a lazy heartbeat. The light refracted through a faint, shimmering mist, making the entire clearing glow.
He was on his back. And Ryker Thorne was on top of him.
Not in a fun way. In a ‘full-body-press, one-move-away-from-a-snapped-rib’ way. Ryker’s face—Felix’s own familiar, sharp-featured, green-eyed face—was inches from his. He could see the sleep-tousled state of his own formerly bright-pink hair, now a mess of roots and fading color. In his own body, Ryker looked pissed even in unconsciousness, a faint crease between his borrowed eyebrows.
The tail—Ryker’s tail, currently attached to Felix’s lower back—twitched. It was an unnervingly autonomous thing, a sleek, dark appendage with a subtle, predatory taper. Right now, it was snug around Felix’s leg, the tip flicking against his ankle bone.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Felix whispered to the throbbing forest.
His voice came out wrong. Lower. A rich, velvety baritone that resonated in his own chest. Ryker’s voice. From Ryker’s mouth. Which was right there.
He tried to shift, to slide out from under the crushing weight of the Fae warrior currently wearing his skin like an ill-fitting suit. The movement made the tail tighten instinctively. At the same time, Ryker—in Felix’s body—stirred. His borrowed eyelashes fluttered, then snapped open. Silver eyes, cold and alert and completely foreign in Felix’s own face, focused on him.
A low growl emanated from Ryker’s throat. “Don’t. Move.”
“I’m not the one with a prehensile anaconda attached to my spine,” Felix hissed back, his borrowed voice making the retort sound strangely dignified. “Get your… get your everything off me.”
Ryker’s gaze—those unsettling silver discs—flickered down to where their bodies were pressed together, then back up to Felix’s eyes. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “It’s not conscious. It reacts to threat. Your squirming is registering as a threat.”
“My squirming is registering as ‘I can’t breathe, you marble-statue motherfucker.’ Let. Go.”
The tail didn’t let go. Instead, it gave another sinuous squeeze. Felix gasped, and the action made his chest—Ryker’s broad, stupidly muscular chest—press more firmly against Ryker’s smaller frame. A flicker of something unreadable passed through the silver eyes. Something that wasn’t just anger.
A high, tinkling giggle rained down from the trees above.
Both of them froze.
“Cozy, cozy!” a voice chirped, dripping with malicious delight. “The big, bad Thorneling and the squishy little potion-tinker, all snuggled up! Did you enjoy your nap? The sleep-spell is one of my best. Gentle. Dreamless.”
Felix tilted his head back. Perched on a branch lined with glowing fungi was Bramblethorn. The ancient pixie was no taller than Felix’s forearm, his iridescent wings vibrating so fast they were a blur. He looked like a vindictive, shimmering dragonfly. In his tiny hands, he clutched a large, leather-bound book with a clasp that glinted with captured starlight.
The spellbook.
“You,” Ryker snarled. He moved to sit up, a fluid motion that should have been easy, but in Felix’s lanky body, it was all awkward elbows and disproportionate leverage. The tail around Felix’s leg finally released, slithering back to curl possessively near Felix’s hip. Felix ignored the hot, weird feeling that followed its path.
“Me!” Bramblethorn agreed, bouncing on the branch. “You’re so slow. It took you three days to find this glade. Three days! I’ve had time to re-shelve, alphabetize, and take a lovely little nap myself. You two are dull.”
“Give us the book, you glittery little cockroach,” Felix said, pushing himself up on his elbows. The world tilted for a second; the center of gravity in Ryker’s body was all wrong.
“Or what?” Bramblethorn fluttered down, hovering just out of arm’s reach. His golden eyes sparkled. “You’ll brew a potion of mild inconvenience? You’ll glare at me with your borrowed Fae glower? Oh, wait.” He zoomed closer to Ryker. “You’re the one who glowers now! How does it feel, Thorne? To be so soft and breakable? I bet his bones are like little bird bones. Snap, snap.”
Ryker, in Felix’s body, lunged. It was a furious, instinctive move. And it was pathetically short. Bramblethorn zipped backward, giggling.
“See? No reach! No tail! Just… flaily limbs!” The pixie darted toward the crumbling stone altar in the center of the clearing. The etched sigils on its surface seemed to drink the fungal light, the grooves shining faintly. He laid the spellbook on it with a theatrical flourish. “Come and get it, then! If you can untangle yourselves from each other!”
With another laugh, he shot up into the treetops and vanished into the pulsing galaxy of light.
Silence descended, thick and humming. The electric whisper of magic in the air prickled against Felix’s skin—Ryker’s skin. He became acutely aware of every point of contact between them. His thigh against Ryker’s. The residual heat where the tail had been. The intense, calculating stare from his own face.
“We need a plan,” Ryker said, his voice so weirdly high and reedy in Felix’s throat. It was like hearing a badly tuned violin play his own theme song.
“No shit,” Felix muttered. He went to run a hand through his hair—his gesture, his habit—and found himself grasping at air. His new arms were too long. He looked at the hands attached to him. Strong, scarred, capable hands. Not his. Never his. A wave of vertigo hit him. “I can’t think straight in this… this meat-suit. Everything’s too loud. I can smell the moss on the north side of the altar. I can hear a beetle digging under a leaf fifty feet away. And this…” He gestured vaguely toward his lower back. “…this thing has a mind of its own. It’s like having a horny, independent snake living in my pants.”
Ryker’s lips—Felix’s lips—twitched. It was the ghost of a smile. “It’s not horny. It’s protective. It’s reacting to your… general state of agitation.”
“My general state of agitation is caused by having a tail! And by you! Mostly by you!”
Ryker stood up, brushing leaf litter from Felix’s skinny jeans. He looked down at Felix, who was still sitting on the ground. “Get up. We’re getting the book.”
“How? He’s faster than both of us. Especially you. In my body, you have the athletic prowess of a drunken giraffe.”
Again, that faint twitch. “I’ll create a distraction. You use the tail. Grab the book.”
Felix barked a laugh, the sound deep and foreign. “Use the—? I don’t know how to ‘use the tail’! Yesterday, it wrapped around my own throat while I was trying to take a piss! I nearly auto-erotic-asphyxiated myself in a public tavern!”
Ryker stared at him. A flush, subtle but visible, crept up his neck—Felix’s neck. “You need to focus. It’s an extension of your will. Of my will. Think of it as another limb.”
“I’ve got all the limbs I can handle right now, thank you.” Felix climbed to his feet, the world stabilizing after a second. He looked at the altar. The book was right there, gleaming under the mushroom-light. It was maddening. “Fine. Distract him. But if I whack myself in the face with this thing, I’m blaming you.”
They moved toward the altar. The sigils seemed to pulse as they approached. The air grew thicker, charged.
Bramblethorn didn’t reappear.
Ryker stopped a few feet from the stone slab. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Ryker, in Felix’s body, raised his hands and began chanting. It was a simple working, a basic glamour designed to create a flash of light and sound—Fae magic 101. But coming from Felix’s human mouth, with his human lungs, it was weak, sputtering. A few pathetic sparkles fizzled into being above his palms.
From the trees, a peel of uproarious laughter. “Oh, poor thing! You’re trying so hard!”
It was enough. Bramblethorn zipped out from behind a knot of mushrooms, pointing a tiny finger, his wings a riot of colors. “Look at the mighty warrior now! Can’t even cast a—"
Felix focused. Not on the tail, but on the book. On the desire to have it. On the need to grab it. He felt a strange tension coiling at the base of his spine, a heat gathering. He didn’t command it; he just leaned into the intention.
The tail shot out. It was fast. Blindingly fast. A dark blur streaking through the glowing air.
It didn’t grab the book.
It wrapped, solid and sure, around Bramblethorn’s tiny torso, pinning his wings.
The pixie’s laughter cut off in a startled squeak. “Hey!”
The tail retracted, yanking Bramblethorn through the air like a furious, glittering fishing lure. He landed with a soft thump in Felix’s waiting hand. Felix closed Ryker’s large fingers around him. He could feel the pixie buzzing, a trapped, furious energy.
“Okay,” Felix said, a grin spreading across Ryker’s face. It felt strange. “Now we bargain.”
Bramblethorn squirmed. “Let me go! This is undignified!”
Ryker walked over, the failed glamour dissipating. He looked from the trapped pixie to Felix’s triumphant expression. Something shifted in his silver eyes. An assessment. A… respect?
“The book,” Ryker said, his voice flat. “Now. Or my associate squeezes.”
“Your associate is currently wearing your body, you overgrown bat!” Bramblethorn squealed.
Felix applied a tiny bit of pressure. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to suggest. The tail, still wrapped around the pixie, gave a supportive squeeze.
“Fine! Fine!” Bramblethorn wilted. “The altar. The third sigil from the left. Press it. It’s a release mechanism. The book is… tethered. Prevents theft.”
Ryker didn’t hesitate. He marched to the altar, found the sigil—a twisting, rune-like mark—and pressed his palm against it.
The stone gave a soft click. The faint glow around the book winked out.
At the same moment, Bramblethorn smirked in Felix’s grip. “Release mechanism, yes. Also alarm.”
A deep, resonant gong echoed through the clearing, not through the air but through the ground itself, vibrating up through their feet. The pulsing light of the mushrooms intensified, strobing violently.
“Shit,” Felix and Ryker said in unison, their mismatched voices overlapping.
From the surrounding woods, a new sound emerged. A chittering, scraping, multiplying sound. Hundreds of tiny, glowing eyes appeared between the trees. Not pixies. Something else. Something with too many legs and clicking mandibles, drawn by the alarm.
“Give him the book!” Felix yelled, thrusting the squirming Bramblethorn toward Ryker.
“Take him! You run faster in my body!”
“I don’t know how to run in your body! The legs are too—agh!”
They were arguing, panicking, the book forgotten on the altar as the chittering swarm drew closer. The tail, sensing the new threat, whipped around Felix’s waist protectively. In his haste, Ryker (in Felix’s body) tried to grab the book and Bramblethorn at the same time, tripping over his own feet—Felix’s feet.
They went down in a heap.
Felix landed on his back again, Ryker sprawled on top of him once more, a tangle of long limbs and curses. Bramblethorn popped free, shooting into the air with a victorious laugh, grabbing the spellbook from the altar with a grunt of effort.
“Bye-bye, soul-swapped simples!” he chirped, and vanished into the forest canopy just as the first of the many-legged creatures skittered into the edge of the clearing.
Felix looked up. Ryker looked down. The chittering was everywhere. The strobing light made the horror on each other’s faces look like a stop-motion nightmare.
Ryker’s borrowed silver eyes were wide. Felix could feel the frantic beat of Ryker’s heart—his own heart—where their chests were pressed together. The tail was coiled tightly around them both now, a stubborn, living bind.
“Well,” Felix breathed, the word hot between them. “This is a fucking disaster.”
Ryker didn’t disagree. He just stared, their breath mingling, as the swarm began to close in.