Dranian arrived at the party with no shirt or hideous sweater. Nothing but garland “suspenders” covered his broad assassins’ chest. He also wore a pointed red hat with a fluffy fur ball on the end, but his cheery garments didn’t make him seem any happier. The fairy frowned and grumbled while he got the fire going and carried mugs of warm beast milk out from the back.
Cress scratched his neck beneath his uncomfortable human sweater and approached the counter where a platter of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies called to him with the sweet voice of crispy crust and sugar. But his eyes were on Kate, even when she was out of earshot. He kept his face composed to seal away the anger threatening to erupt as he watched her be. It was the same anger he had hardly been able to contain these past days. The same anger that boiled just below the surface of his princely scent and ice-toned eyes.
Today, he hated that he was a faeborn prince, from a faeborn realm, born of a fairy kind. He tore his eyes off the human girl across the room for just a moment to choose his cookie. After a quick count, he selected the one with the most chocolate chips, as only such a dessert was worthy of a prince.
When he bit into it, he spat it back out.
“What is this?” he demanded, turning the dessert over in his hands.
“Lily brought those,” Mor said.
“And what in the name of the sky deities are these?” Cress plucked out one of the chocolate chips to find it squishy. He made a horrified face. “What is it, Mor?! Why does it squeeze like a bug?”
“It’s a raisin.” Kate appeared and took a cookie for herself. She bit into it. “They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t mind them.”
Cress stared as she consumed the bite instead of spitting it as he had done. He held his cookie toward her and pointed at the raisins. “This is human trickery of the highest sort!”
Her raspy laugh filled the café when Cress tossed the rest of the cookie back onto the plate.
“Kate.” Lily approached, and Cress glared at her for her raisin cookie trap. But the fair featured human was looking down at her phone. “I can’t believe this is happening but work just called. There’s an emergency downtown and they’re calling everyone in.”
The disappointment that came over Kate’s face turned something in Cress’s chest.
“But it’s Christmas Eve,” she said with a tone that told stories.
Mor sighed and sipped his beast milk. Then he winced at Dranian’s bare fae chest as Dranian appeared. “Put on a cloak, Dranian,” Mor said. “These aren’t the Brotherhood training quarters. You’ll catch a cold.”
Lily looked up at Cress. The human police officer didn’t need to point out that if she left now, she may not see Cress again. But there was enough goodbye in her eyes without speaking it into the air.
“Best of luck tomorrow, Cress,” was all she said.
The sound of Mor’s mug echoed through the café when he dropped it too hard on the counter. “Yes. Best wishes of luck. That ought to save him,” he mumbled.
Cress shot Mor a look. He shoved the plate of not freshly baked chocolate chip cookies toward him. “Try one.” He invited his friend to experience the horror.
“It’s fine, Lil. Go.” Kate flashed a smile.
Lily said a few more apologies. Minutes later, she jogged out the door and disappeared into the snowy afternoon.
Human Yule music flitted through the space, the sort Cress was growing to adore simply for the nonexistence of ulterior motives even though it was clickety-clangy and there were far too many smashing cymbals.
Cress took Kate’s hand and tugged her toward the fireplace. He’d only ever danced with fairy females before, and rarely by choice. He wanted to know what it would be like to dance with a human, one such as Kate Kole/Katherine Lewis/his mate who still didn’t seem to know it.
Finally, Kate’s smile returned; a real one this time. Cress relaxed and felt the clouds part in the sky outside. A beam of afternoon sunlight glittered over the street as Kate swayed in his grip.
“You dance like a wild childling goat from the haunted woods,” Cress told her. “But I dance well enough for the both of us, so don’t worry your little human mind over it.” He shoved her into a twirl, but she came back rolling her eyes.
“Why am I not surprised? You hate everything about humans, don’t you?”
He caught her and trapped her body to his with his arms. “That’s preposterous, Human. I like many things about you.”
A catchy tune rang through the café next. It didn’t seem fitting for a slow dance anymore, and Cress realized he didn’t know how to move to a song with quick rhythms.
Kate grinned as though she realized. “We don’t have to dance anymore. I’d hate for you to turn into the wild childing goat here. And do you really like many things about me, Cress?”
“Of course. Most fairies would call it shameful to fall in love with a human, but that didn’t stop me.”
Kate stopped swaying.
A cold wind brushed through the café when someone opened the door. Kate’s-brother-Greyson came in wearing his hideous human Christmas sweater and called across the room to Mor at the counter, “Where’s Lily?”
But Cress only looked at his human mate, who looked back at him with a troubled brow.
“Then stay,” she said.
Stay.
How he hated that word. A word that might have had the power to change the order of the stars in the sky. A word that could break hearts and crumple fairy empires if uttered in the wrong setting.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking of me,” he said. “I will not stay.” It was best she accepted it. He brushed her hair from her face. “Now give me all those kisses you were so willing to bargain away before.”
Kate’s-brother-Greyson turned on the new rectangular mirror device on the café wall to the nightly news. The boy’s face drained of colour, his rhythms elevated, and Cress knew something was wrong even before the rest of the souls in the café came around the tables to watch the moving picture. Humans in the mirror talked of something happening in a vaguely familiar part of the city. Mor turned down the human Yule music to hear.
Images flashed over the mirror to two human police officers on their knees with messy hair and bruises, being held in place by other humans in black masks. The dark room they were in made it difficult to see, but not enough to hide their identities. One of the captured officers was Officer Connor Backs whom Cress detested.
The other was Lily Baker.
Cress’s eyes slid closed. He set down his warm beast milk.
This would steal away precious moments from a day he could hardly let go of. But Kate’s gasp lifted beside him, and her hand squeezed his arm. He knew what he would do even before she asked.
“Save her! Please!” she begged the assassins.
Cress swallowed.
“I can’t lose Lily!”
“Mor.” Cress’s eyes opened, taking in the sky view of the street in the mirror that told him exactly where Lily Baker was at this moment. “Do something about those human cameras so we don’t end up all over the human news like that incident when I fought the Shadow Fairies at the mall.”
The air turned crisp as four fairy assassins marched past human cameras and congested crowds. Officer Riley’s uniform hugged tight to Cress’s body. Shayne slipped three vests from the back seat of a police chariot on wheels and handed one to Mor and Dranian.
The human officers were positioned far back from the building with their measly human weapons drawn, hiding behind chariot doors and shields. They shouted things and strategized. Not one of their weapons looked as menacing as the crossbow Shayne carried in as he fastened his officer vest on.
Cress nodded at Mor, and Mor vanished.
Human cameras fell off their legs one by one and tumbled to the road around the scene.
A male officer glanced over at Shayne’s crossbow as the fairies approached. He nodded. “Nice,” was all he said.
Cress studied the building’s entrance. “Is that where the human hostages are?” he asked the same male officer.
The officer looked at Cress oddly, but he nodded again. “I hope they’re still alive. There hasn’t been a livestream video in over twenty minutes.”
Cress sniffed. “They’re alive.” He turned to Mor just as the fairy returned. “Get us inside.”
And just like that, the four fairy assassins vanished into thin air.
In the same second, they appeared in a dark room. Humans in masks jumped in surprise; one of them shrieked.
Lily’s face was tear stained. “Thank goodness!” she said, crumpling forward. Her hands were bound behind her back.
Human weapons were raised. Dranian slid left to stab, and Shayne fired an arrow at the human on the right. The human weapon stones meant to pierce Cress’s princely flesh fired off at obscure angles and went into the walls. Cress waited until his assassins finished. Then he let his dark, cold turquoise gaze settle on the masked humans who had ruined his hideous human sweaters Christmas Eve party.
“Who are you…?” one of them dared to ask.
“Cressica Alabastian, High Prince of the North Corner,” Cress answered. “You might as well start bowing.”
Human shrieks erupted when the fairies swept through, kicking and snapping knees.
“That’s what you get, thugs!” Lily shouted at them as justice was served. Her black eyelash ink ran down her cheeks in streams.
Soon every human in the room apart from Lily Baker and Officer Connor Backs was wailing and kneeling.
“Officer Riley?” Connor Backs blinked like a fool as though he’d just woken from a deep sleep. He was a full twenty seconds too late in registering what was happening.
Lily’s hands shook when Cress tore the binds from her wrists. She failed to stand on her wobbly legs, so he lifted her to carry her out. Shayne, on the other hand, picked up Connor Backs and flung him over his shoulder with the officer’s wrists still bound and his human rear up. The fairy carried him out that way.
“I totally thought I was going to get my fingers chopped off or something,” Lily said through heavy breaths. “Don’t tell Kate about this,” she begged.
“I’m afraid she already knows, Human,” Cress said as he carried her out the front of the building. The crowds exploded with surprise and cheers. Police officers all down the road lowered their weapons.
Two fixed cameras took it all in.
“So much for being faeborn subtle,” Mor said.
Shayne laughed. “Did you actually think we’d get away with no one noticing we were here?” he asked, patting Connor Backs on the buttocks.
“I’ll deliver you to the human medical building,” Cress told Lily. “But make no mistake, Lily Baker, if you ever trick a fairy into eating a raisin cookie again, the sky deities will show no mercy. I hope you realize that what happened here today was punishment for that wretched cookie I ate this morning.”
“I saw him,” Connor mumbled from where he hung over Shayne’s back. Shayne turned so Connor could see the others. “The guy who was telling all the bad guys what to do…”
It seemed Connor Backs was muttering nonsense after his little fright with the humans. Cress sighed and trotted the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Who?” Lily called back to ask. She still looked as though she might faint. “What guy? I never saw a guy. And what do you mean ‘bad guys’, Connor? Call them culprits like a real cop.”
“He had weird silver eyes. And I swear he disappeared into thin air.” Connor’s voice slipped through the wind, running along the back of Cress’s neck and inching into his faeborn heart.
At Cress’s side, Mor stopped walking.
Dranian cursed.
Cress felt the reddest anger and darkest fear in existence burn through his veins.
Cress pushed into the café, snapping the bell right off its perch. His faeborn heart quickened as he spotted Kate’s-brother-Greyson sitting on the floor in a trance, shuddering and hugging his knees to himself. The human’s two loud friends were stricken beside him, shouting into their magic mirrors at other humans asking all sorts of questions from their side. The rest of the café was empty.
Cress’s jaw turned as hard as stone.
“Where is she?” he asked the humans, his brothers, the air of the realm, the sky deities themselves, anyone or anything that would listen.
His faeborn chest pounded. His hands became fists.
Bonswick would die by a thousand slashes if Kate Kole was dead.
