One minute, the sky was blue. The next, gray rolled in, and cold rain fell upon Toronto faster than Kate could blink. Water splashed over the sidewalks as cars plunged through roadside puddles, soaking Kate’s jeans. She yanked off her pink sweater and pulled it over her head to shield herself from the freezing water pellets.
The change in her pocket jingled as she jogged for the corner store. “What a bunch of babies,” she grumbled, thinking of how long the fae assassins had gone on about not having any warm milk.
Lightning cracked across the clouds, and a deep thunder rumbled through the air. Kate’s feet came together. The rain pounded down like glass bullets, seeping through the cracks of the knit and soaking her hair. Suddenly she felt a vast space open around her like a monstrous, hollow throat. She felt like she was falling into it…
The rain stopped pelting her skin. She blinked the water from her eyes as she came back to her senses. When she looked up, she realized an umbrella was above her head.
“That is an interesting sweater.”
The fae Prince looked almost serene without his mean smile. Still, Kate tried taking a step back. He tilted the umbrella to trap her in, and her back came against the metal spokes.
“If I scream, will your assassins come running?” she asked. It came out hoarse and she cleared her throat.
For a moment, the Prince stared at her—differently than the last times they’d met. After a few heartbeats, the meanness returned to his smile. “Not to worry, Human. My assassins have not let you out of their sight since you left your dwelling. Shayne is currently perched on the rooftop across the street with his crossbow aimed at my heart,” he said.
Kate’s eyes widened and she turned to look, but the Prince’s umbrella was in the way.
“It’s the only reason I haven’t killed you yet. It’s why I haven’t so much as touched you since our encounter in the academy library,” he added. “But I’ll find a way around it.”
“Why are you here now then? Do you want to get your butt kicked by your friends?” Kate tightened her fingers around her sweater.
“We need to have a discussion, Kate Kole,” he said. “Just a few words.”
“No thank you. I’m fully aware you want to trick me,” she said. She leaned sideways and stole a look at the building tops behind her, but she couldn’t spot the fae assassins.
“Of course I do.” The Prince smiled, but his turquoise eyes darkened. “However, first I want to know what in the faeborn-cursed world you’re doing making my assassins wash dishes.”
He was worried about the dishes? Kate could have laughed.
“Honestly, I think they sort of like it,” she said, abandoning her hunt for the fae in the street.
“They do not. I assure you. And they will get revenge.”
“We’ll see.”
The rain picked up again, pattering the umbrella with shallow thuds. Only Kate was shielded because of how the Prince had the canopy tilted. Rainwater saturated his silky hair, running down his face in clear beads. Kate tried not to stare, but she was sure there wasn’t a face in existence as symmetrical as his. With his pretty eyes, he looked like he was in a luxury perfume commercial, and the rain was staged. Kate cleared her throat and dropped her gaze to the sidewalk.
A loud boom of thunder made her jump. Her back slammed the umbrella, nearly toppling them both over, but the umbrella scooped her up before she could fall. The Prince’s hand was out, his fingers dangerously close to touching her arm like he’d been about to catch her. He tore it back and shoved it in his pocket.
Kate hid her own trembling hands beneath the damp sweater, and an odd look crossed the Prince’s face.
“That’s right,” he said more to himself. “You’re afraid of the sky’s anger.” His voice seemed bored, but there was a strange edge to it.
“What?”
Even though the Prince was a cold presence, Kate’s skin turned warm when his gaze travelled up from her hidden arms to her face. It was a sensation she’d never felt prior to him showing up in a police uniform in the café.
She scratched behind her ear. “Listen, I’ll release your assassin friends from their chores if you all promise to leave here and never come back.” She quickly raised a hand. “Actually, if I could just keep them for one more week though, that would be great.”
The Prince laughed, deep and sweet. Joyous and twisted. It reminded her of the sound of a deep classical bass string being plucked. Kate set her jaw.
“Stop doing that,” she said.
“Doing what, Human?”
“I don’t know—whatever it is you’re trying to do with your soft kisses, and your warm stare, and your deep laugh.” She hugged her cold arms tighter to herself, and the Prince blinked in surprise.
“Do those things make you feel something?” He stepped under the umbrella with her, escaping the rain. “Anything at all?”
Something doubled over in Kate’s chest. “What? No—”
“Kiss me, Human. I’ll leave you alone after that,” he promised, and Kate made a revolted face.
“Not a chance.”
He bit his lips together like he was fighting the impulse to shout. “Can we make a bargain for it?” His hand came out of his pocket with a handful of gold coins. He extended them toward her. “Please. Just one quick, easy kiss. And in return, I’ll fill your purse with this treasure.”
“Why would I want a bunch of fake coins?”
“Fake? Take one and see for yourself what it is.” The Prince rolled a coin from the pile and pinched it between his fingers. When Kate didn’t reach for it, he gently pressed it against her chin, keeping the cool metal as a barrier between her skin and his thumb.
“Does it feel real?” he asked.
Kate blinked. She swatted his hand away. “It feels like a trap.”
He stepped so close they were nearly against each other, his eyes vivifying. A warm wind ruffled the damp hair at Kate’s neck. The back of her shoulders bumped his umbrella again.
“Please,” he whispered, lifting the coin and placing it delicately on her shoulder where it balanced. His tone was sugary and tender, and for a moment, Kate thought about doing it.
But no. No way, no chance, no.
“Last time you never bothered to ask,” she pointed out. “And I hate pushy guys.”
“Well last time I didn’t have a crossbow pointed at my heart ready to shoot if I so much as touched you.” Sharpness returned to his irises.
“Ahhh.” Kate smiled as she realized. “So, you need me to kiss you.” She laughed, her scratchy voice echoing through the pattering rain. The coin fell off her shoulder and rolled down the sidewalk.
The Prince frowned as she moved to walk around him now that she knew what he wanted, but the umbrella cut her off again. Kate let out an exasperated sigh.
“Why don’t you just go home, your royal-pompous-fae-highness? I already told you I’ll give you your assassins back if you leave forever. It’s not that difficult to just say yes.”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Do you really think I would bring my brothers home to a cruel death? I kill for a living, Human. But I’m not entirely heartless.”
It was Kate who frowned this time. She glanced back toward the café. “Then we should come up with a plan. Obviously, I can’t roll over and die for you, so if that means those assassins can’t go home, then you should leave them here with me. And you should go home alone.”
The Prince’s lips thinned. “I would never leave my brothers under the rule of a human.”
Kate nodded. “Then we’ll keep doing this.”
He stared. Stared, stared, stared. His gaze felt like a splash of warm water in the cold. “I have one last question before I let you go,” he finally said, and Kate reluctantly gave him the last ounce of her attention she could manage. “Tell me, where in the name of the sky deities did you get that sweater?”
A slow smile spread across Kate’s face, and she tried to smother it by biting on her lip. It was a terrible time to laugh. “No,” she said.
The Prince glared at her smiling mouth.
Kate shoved the umbrella pole to put it back over the Prince. “Now, since you can’t touch me, I’ll be on my way, your royal fae Prince-ness.” She brushed by him toward the corner store, tapping her pocket to make sure her change was still there.
“My unhidden name is Cress,” he said without turning around. “I am not your Prince. Do not insult me with such ridiculous titles.”
Kate chuckled as she headed into the store, dragging in a puddle of water with her. But as soon as the door closed at her back, her smile faded, her pulse pounded, and she let out the breath she was holding.
It took her a few minutes to find milk and pay. When she came out of the store, the fae Prince was gone. A plain flat rock sat on the sidewalk in the exact spot where the gold coin had rolled away. Kate huffed in disbelief.
Thankfully the sky held in its rain as Kate jogged back to the café. She brushed a finger over her chest. Her lungs felt tight, and her hands were shaking again.
She came in to find three rain-sprinkled fae assassins focussed uncharacteristically hard on little tasks, apart from Shayne, who lounged across the entire countertop on his back like he’d been taking a nap there.
“Oh, just stop.” Kate rolled her eyes. “I know you were all out there watching me.”
She carried the milk over to the fridge. Shayne perked up at the sight of it and scrambled to sit. His legs dangled over the counter’s edge, and his bare heels thudded against the cupboards.
“I don’t know if my friend is going to be here next week for the café’s opening day, but we’re going to go ahead with it either way. I owe some people a lot of money,” Kate told them. “I’ll convince Lily to come back later.”
“What’s so important about that human friend? Why must you keep her?” Shayne asked as he dragged over his milk mug and eyed the fridge.
Kate thought about answering, but she turned to Mor instead. “Tell me why your Prince keeps trying to kiss me,” she demanded.
“He’s trying to enchant you,” Mor blurted, then chomped his mouth shut and flexed his jaw.
“How many more games is the Prince going to play before he gives up?” she asked. None of the fae spoke, so Kate put her hands on her hips. “Tell me when he’ll give up!”
All at once three voices spoke,
“Never.”
“Never.”
“Never.”
Kate tossed her sweater on the hooks to dry and wrestled a hand through her wet, tangled hair. She stared at Freida’s intricate knitting pattern on the sweater’s sleeve, and a beat of frustration moved through her. She had to wait six more days to meet with the knitting club when she had so many new questions about the Prince. Or… Cress, as he’d called himself.
Cress.
For a moment, her mind’s eye filled with his turquoise eyes going soft, his lips parting, and his tone changing as he stepped in and asked her to kiss him—
She smacked her warm forehead. Kate couldn’t decide if she was flattered or repulsed. Maybe a shameful bit of both.
“Were you telling the truth when you said that if you go home, you’re going to get killed?” she asked the assassins puttering about. She rubbed her stinging skin, realizing she smacked herself too hard.
“Yes,” Shayne said. “But only if we fail.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry that’s the fate waiting for you. But I don’t plan on offering myself as a sacrifice. In fact, I’m changing my orders. I don’t want you to just protect me from the Prince, I want you to protect me from everything. If he—or anyone else—is trying to trick me, I want you to give me a heads up. If someone tries to kill me, I want you to stop them. And since that means you can’t go back to where you came from”—she glanced at the bookshelf behind the counter and pulled three novels from her collection: all popular fae fantasy books— “you might as well get reading. You should really know how humans perceive a fae if you’re going to live among us.” She walked around and smacked a book against each of the fae’s chests. Dranian lifted his book in disgust.
“Human literature,” he grumbled. “How preposterous.”
Thirty minutes later, three assassins sat around the café sipping warm pumpkin spice lattes and flipping the pages of their novels quietly.
Kate wandered up to her apartment and closed the door behind her when she was inside.
For a moment she stood in the silence. The rain picked up again, and in the distance, thunder called her name. She wondered when the fall thunderstorms were going to stop. They’d lasted longer than ever this year. Kate craved cool snow, clear skies, and a storefront filled with happy people sipping piping hot drinks.
She sank to the floor and hugged her knees to herself, sorting through the sounds of the storm to hear Shayne’s question in her mind,
“What’s so important about that human friend? Why must you keep her?”
