Humans flocked the cathedral in pairs and small family herds. It seemed Thelma Lewis had left quite the impression on many in the realm. From his seat at the back, Cress watched the wooden benches fill with well-aged human females in odd hats and black garments. A few hobbled to where Kate, Lily, and Kate’s-brother-Greyson stood at the side, dressed just as dully as everyone else. Though, Kate’s burgundy hair was down and lovely. A pair of Thelma’s earrings hung from her earlobes.
Cress wore black according to the human custom, but nothing fit quite right. Half his garments belonged to Kate’s-brother-Greyson, and the other half were stolen by Shayne from a “donation bin.” Cress’s sweater was so tight, he was sure he would burst out of it in front of all the mourners.
He’d ordered the rest of his assassins to stay at the café. Cress only came himself to keep an eye on their humans. And perhaps he wished to say one more farewell to Thelma Lewis, too.
Ghastly music filled the space when a human male went to the front and sat at a wooden machine with ivory buttons. A dozen pipes came out the back, riding up the wall into the intricately painted ceiling.
Those standing began to sit. Cress’s nose wrinkled from a prickling sensation as someone passed by in the aisle. His attention was on Kate taking her seat until a male with a head of dark hair slid down the row and took the seat directly behind her. The male turned and looked back, right at Cress.
The wind and sky and earth crashed into Cress all at once.
Bonswick’s glower was glassy and silver. The High Lord of the East cast a wicked, cruel smile toward the back of the cathedral. He placed a casual hand on Kate’s shoulder and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. Kate turned and gave him a faint smile without really looking back.
“Look at him,” Cress whispered. His blood was ice cold. “Look, you foolish human,” he begged her, but Kate stared at the front where a human in long white robes glided across the stage.
Cress clasped his hands. His fairsaber was warm against his back; his fingers itched to grab it.
The human celebration of life service dragged on. Kate gave a short, teary speech during which Bonswick glanced back again and pouted in mock sympathy. There was nothing Cress wanted more than to spring over the wooden seats and stab Bonswick where he sat.
Lily and Kate’s-brother-Greyson gave speeches, too. Songs were sung, and memories of Thelma were shared that warmed the space, apart from the second bench to the front.
The moment it ended, Cress leapt up and moved around the pews. Humans shuffled his way, and he stopped when he realized he’d stood out of turn. Those at the front came toward the back, so Cress swept to the side to let them pass. He trained his icy turquoise gaze on Bonswick who followed so close to Kate Kole’s back, it was a wonder she didn’t feel his faeborn breath.
Cress let the humans pass.
He let Kate pass.
He slid into the exodus beside Bonswick, his hand beneath the back of his sweater on his fairsaber.
“Prince,” Bonswick said quietly when Cress was close enough to hear. “What’s worse? To be hated, or to be betrayed?” A slow, mean smile spread over the High Lord face. “Or both?”
Cress said nothing as they marched outside.
Bonswick’s eyes sparkled as he lifted his hand toward the zipper that held the back of Kate’s dress together. Cress shoved him off the side of the cathedral stairs before the fairy’s fingers made contact.
Bonswick didn’t fight as Cress followed and dragged him around the side of the building. The fairy howled in laughter when Cress drew his fairsaber and pointed it at his chest. The tip pressed delicately over the High Lord’s heart.
“Let’s settle this now,” Cress said in a deep voice. As the words left his lips, creatures of the inhuman sort emerged from behind trees, around the side of the building, and out of the snowy shadows. They stared at Cress with silver-brown eyes, a long past of hatred, and a hunger for blood.
Bonswick drew his own fairsaber. “I volunteered my services to the North. I’m here to ensure you’re slayed, Prince Cressica. You’ve been black marked for betraying the High Queene.”
Cress found his cold blood slink back to its slow, warm river of red.
Levress knew.
Cress stood taller, his boots digging into the snow and bracing for impact. “Try to slay me then,” he invited the High Lord.
Bonswick angled his head. “It’s not just you I’ll kill, Prince. It’s your brothers, too, including that leech you love so much.”
Cress’s grip tightened on his saber, his gaze flickering to the Shadow Fairies around the cathedral yard drawing weapons. “Funny, I thought you hated Mor for being a Shadow. How strange when you’re a Shadow Fairy yourself.”
“No, you fool. I hate that leech for betraying the Shadows.” Bonswick’s face grew repulsed. “But hearing him cry for mercy will only be a bonus. You’re the real prize. I’m to save you for last and bring you back to the North with me, alive. You cannot imagine the terrible death that awaits you there.”
Cress nodded. “At last, I know why you’re here,” he said. He repositioned his fairsaber toward the Shadow Fairies inching in. “Shall we?”
“Careful, Cressica,” Bonswick said. “They despise you almost as much as I do.”
“It’s mutual,” Cress assured.
Before he took his next breath, ten Shadow Fairies swung at once. Cress stopped six with his fairsaber, and turned his skin to stone to deflect three, but one left a cruel, cold iron slash along his midsection. He released a guttural growl and aimed for Bonswick next, but Bonswick vanished, and Cress’s saber sliced through air. The High Lord reappeared at the back of the yard.
The Prince kicked a fairy aside and marched toward the High Lord of the East. An arrow zipped past, the wind of it fluttering Cress’s hair, and he halted.
Bonswick leaned to avoid the arrow before it could scathe his fair cheek. The Lord’s glassy eyes narrowed on someone behind Cress, and Cress’s flesh tightened.
Shayne’s scent drifted over the yard.
“Leave,” Cress commanded as the white-haired fairy appeared at his side with his crossbow raised.
“Absolutely not, Your Highness,” Shayne said.
“That’s an order.”
A warped grin found Shayne’s face. “So then punish me. Put me to death. Do whatever you want, Cress.” Shayne dropped his crossbow to the ground and drew out a set of short fairsabers instead. “But let me fight a little first.”
There wasn’t time to argue before growls tore over the snow and Shadow Fairies lunged. Shayne smashed the first one away as Cress blocked the next, the pain of his cold iron wound sizzling deeper into him. Cress turned his body feather-light, rising into the air and rushing toward Bonswick.
Bonswick redrew his fairsaber as Cress came above him, turned his body to stone, and dropped.
The Prince nearly crushed the High Lord of the East. Bonswick spun out of the way, but Cress’s blade caught his chin. The glassy-eyed Lord recoiled, his fairy blood speckling the snow. He looked back with rage.
“You’ll be the fairy to die today,” Cress promised him.
Bonswick touched the blood on his face. “No, Prince. He will be the fairy to die today.” He pointed to where the Shadow Fairies drove Shayne against the cathedral wall. Shayne’s sabers were torn from his grip. Fairy blood covered the frost where six Shadow Fairy bodies lay in his wake.
“Wait!” Cress shouted when a Shadow Fairy placed his saber at Shayne’s throat. “Wait, Bonswick! I’ll make you a bargain!”
The Shadow hesitated, looking to Bonswick.
“For that insubordinate fool?” Bonswick chuckled. “I thought you’d save all your bargains for that human you’ve allowed yourself to bond to as your forever mate. Did you really think I wouldn’t pick up the taste of fairy crush in the air?”
“Let them have me, Cress!” Shayne spat blood in the Shadow Fairy’s face. “Never make a bargain with a—”
Shayne was struck. He rolled through the snow.
Time seemed to stand still as Bonswick decided what to do next. Cress couldn’t take his eyes off the saber above Shayne’s back, pointed down, waiting for Bonswick’s command to drop.
A fairy pressed Shayne’s head down with his boot, forcing Shayne’s cheek into the snow. From the ground, Shayne gave Cress a look that resaid what he’d uttered aloud: Never make a bargain with a fairy. It was what Thessalie had taught Cress since the day he’d entered the Silver Castle. It was the reason Cress had never made a fairy bargain in his entire faeborn life after the one he had made on behalf of his mother.
“I’ll go with you,” Cress said to the High Lord. “You can take me back to the North Corner to face the Queene’s wrath. I won’t kill you, I’ll come willingly.”
“When?”
“On the humans’ day of Yule tidings.”
Bonswick listened with a bored face.
“You know I can kill you now, or tomorrow, or the next day if I please. I’ll do so if you don’t take this bargain,” Cress added, cutting his cold gaze over to the High Lord. “But you must leave my brothers and the humans out of it.”
Bonswick raised a brow. “I don’t make bargains for humans,” he said. “And I want Mor.”
“You can’t have him.”
The High Lord of the East glanced at the fairsaber getting dangerously close to plunging down between Shayne’s shoulders. “Shame,” he said. “I wanted to kill that one.”
Cress’s chest deflated with relief, but his gaze slid toward the road past the trees where oblivious humans congregated as they dispersed to their chariots on wheels.
“No humans,” Bonswick decided. “But I will accept your bargain for this fool, and the leech, and the last fairy with the ever-scowl, too. On the morning of Yule, you belong to me.”
Cress remained as still as stone until the Shadow Fairies released Shayne. Sounds of the human city flooded the cathedral yard, crawling into Cress’s ears, drowning his faeborn mind.
Somewhere on these snowy roads, Kate Kole was on her way back to the café. His chest tightened as he thought about Mor’s warning—the one Cress had ignored but should have listened to from the start. The one that was meant to remind him what would happen to Kate if the Shadow Fairies sensed what she was to him.
Kate had no idea what was coming for her.
The skies glowed with lightning blasting through the flurries to create a most uncommon picture of human weather. Cress tore off his coat as he entered the academy library where moist dust and heavy air told him the story of new construction and the intent to return this fairy-meddled space to normal.
Shayne went straight to the back to find the Fairy Book of Rules and Masteries. He returned carrying it as Mor dragged a desk over for them to work at.
“Dranian isn’t happy about being the only one left with our humans,” Shayne said as he flipped open the book and began leafing through pages. “But what else is new about that faeborn grouch?”
“I think leaving him alone there was foolish. Dranian can’t take on the whole Dark army if they show up for Kate,” Mor said as he pulled out the notebook he stole from the café drawer. He clicked a human ink pen and began scribbling his ideas, both realistic and preposterous. Cress leaned to read them while Mor was looking down.
Shayne slid the book onto the table and sat, but Cress continued to pace.
The Prince pressed light fingers against the cold iron gash in his side. There was no hiding the blood, even on black garments. Kate’s eyes had gone round when she saw it.
He’d lied.
He’d lied to Kate Kole.
So had Shayne.
“A few of the Shadow Fairies followed us, so we fought them off. That’s all there is to it,” Shayne had said when they returned to the café and she’d asked what happened.
Cress rubbed his temple where a fresh headache beat like a cruel war drum behind his eyes. It was better that Kate had no idea she was a target, that Cress had bound his death to his brothers’ survival, or that she was his forever mate. His tongue still felt hot from the falsehood. He knew the fairy curse would grow more painful the longer he didn’t tell the truth.
Faeborn-cursed fairy magic.
“Why would you make such a bargain, you fool?” Mor finally dropped the notebook and glared at Cress, and Cress was sure the fairy had been itching to shout that question since the moment they left the café.
“I was already planning to go back to the North, so this bargain makes no difference,” Cress told him. He sniffed, picking up an odd scent of powder that reminded him of Kate’s hair soap. He wrinkled his nose as he turned toward the back shelves. Tables creaked and notepapers ruffled as his power slipped over the floor and sought out a story of the past. He was sure he could smell her here recently, though, that didn’t seem possible—
“But now you’ve lost the choice!” Mor cut into his thoughts, and the wind in the shelves ceased.
Cress turned back to the curly-haired assassin with the largest faeborn scowl in existence. “The only difference to my plan now is that when I leave, you three won’t be hunted by the Dark,” he said.
Shayne folded his arms, his usual smile gone. “That’s not the only difference. Now you know that when you return, you’ll die at Levress’s hands. You didn’t know that before.”
Cress nodded to the Fairy Book of Rules and Masteries. “We only have fourteen days to find a way for all of us to faeborn live, including our humans. If we fail to find a way around this bargain, I will go with Bonswick. And you will stay here. That is my final order to you, as the Prince of the North.”
Shayne growled and stood, pressing his fists on the table. “We will return with you and share the same fate—”
“Then I’ve made this bargain for nothing! You did not obey me in the yard, Shayne, so at least obey me with this!”
Mor and Shayne looked the same—tight fairy skin, furrowed brows, large frowns.
“Don’t make my death meaningless. It’s insulting,” Cress muttered as he followed his nose to the back shelf where the Fairy Book of Rules and Masteries came from. He touched the ledge, finding dust missing. Finding that things had in fact been meddled with.
He rubbed the dust between his fingers as he went to the opposite back corner of the library where he sniffed out a different sort of feeling; one with invisible, bubbling anger, and paper-thin traces of an ancient fairy beast. He stared at a particular panel in the wall siding. His senses picked up a low, beastly growl seeping out from many months ago, hidden inside a memory that should have been his. He shoved the panel, and it popped open like a door, revealing a dark spiral staircase. Cress had a feeling the staircase would lead him to all the High Queene’s darkest secrets, hidden away with the humans so no fairy might stumble upon them—as he was doing now.
Pea-sized flames spurted to life in the staircase when he stepped in.
“Careful,” Mor’s voice said from behind him. The fairy’s dark silhouette filled the staircase entrance. “You may not want to remember what happened down there, Cress.”
“I want to remember slaying Levress’s prized creature. I want to remember the pain and illness it caused her when I got my revenge for her betrayal against me and my mother.”
Mor didn’t stop him from following the stairs down to a cold, dim room where scrolls and books lined gilded shelves, and all sorts of fairy gold spilled from pots marked with ancient fae symbols. Cress laughed at the trouble he might cause with all of this.
“Perhaps we should just buy Bonswick off,” he suggested when Mor’s scent flitted in behind him.
“It’s all cursed. It’s why it’s here. The High Court of the North didn’t want this treasure in the Ever Corners,” Mor said.
Cress’s gaze danced over the room, taking in faded bloodstains and spilled bowls of gold. Paintings were torn to shreds, and a barrel was split in two. Splinters coated the stones. “It must have been quite a fight.”
“Well, you were quite angry.”
Cress nodded. “I’m angry now, Mor,” he admitted. “I want to finish what I started and take her down.”
Mor took a hold of Cress’s shoulder. The assassin’s brown-silver eyes were filled with remorse. “I don’t think it’s your job anymore, Cress. Let the next generation of fairy rebels deal with her.”
“Are you suggesting I let her get away with the horrors she’s committed? Her lies? Her stealing childlings from their homes? Her murdering innocents? Look at all she’s done to me, Mor!”
“You already tried to take her down. You’ll die now because of it. Because I stole your memories before you were able to destroy her,” Mor said. His throat bobbed.
Cress looked at the floor. After a moment, he turned away, pulled his fairsaber out, and studied the silver wing details that represented his allegiance to the High Queene. “The entire North Corner would have already killed me if you hadn’t intervened. You spared my life.”
“For now.” There was an unusual edge to Mor’s voice that left a remnant chill on Cress’s skin. “Unless I can convince Bonswick to spare you. Only he could lie on your behalf to the North Court.” Mor’s tone was one Cress had only heard a few times in their faeborn lives together. “He wants me, doesn’t he?” he asked flat out.
Cress rolled his saber handle in his grip as he thought about how to answer. “Mor…” he started, but he bit down on his tongue. Finally, he slid his fairsaber away and turned back with the chosen words, “Bonswick will never have you as long as I’m alive,” but phantom moonbugs burst into flutters in his chest when he realized Mor had already vanished.
