Cress had remained silent since the moment the Shadow Fairies bound his hands to lead him home. He stayed that way as he passed through the gate back into the polluted magic air of the Four Corners of Ever and was led into the forest, through the villages, past the quarry, and brought to the Silver Castle. No one tried to stop the group of Shadow Fairies, though Northern fairies in the cities drew back and hid away at the sight of the silvery brown eyes in their midst.
The Prince was led through the castle’s front entrance where every noble eye could witness. He was taken down the crystal halls to the High Court meeting room. There he stood trial, in the same silence.
“You will die by strokes of cold iron, performed by the Brotherhood of Assassins,” the newest member of the High Court decided—a fairy whose shadow seeped across the castle floor and brushed Cress’s boots. A fairy who smelled of trouble. A fairy whose silvery ribbons could not be hidden in his brown eyes, even in the room’s darkness.
Cress grunted a laugh of disbelief. So, the Queene had invited the devils of the Corners into her home with open arms, after all. She’d been more frightened of Cress than them.
Cress lifted his turquoise eyes to the shadows where Queene Levress sat on her throne and said nothing. She did not show herself to Cress, she did not intervene to save him from the court’s judgement. She did not speak at all. But she glared with all the coldness of the North ice fields.
Death by his own assassins. How fitting, and how terribly cruel.
The prison cells in the Silver Castle were gilded, but Cress suspected an illusion. He didn’t dare inch too close to the walls or the bars.
Some heartless fool heaped logs onto the fire at the end of the hall, turning the dungeon oven hot. Sweat dripped down Cress’s face, and he tore off his preposterous human officer uniform when he couldn’t sleep through the night.
The next night was worse. Glowing bugs crawled along the cell walls, giving off a putrid scent.
On the third morning, a sliver of light broke into the dark basement as though a door had opened at the end of the hall. A fairy added more logs to the fire. Cress paced back and forth seventeen times, inhaling the heat.
Ice cold water splashed over him.
He gasped and whirled, choking for breath as his gaze settled on a female with long, white hair and deadly eyes. He nearly cursed the name of Levress before he realized it wasn’t the High Queene. He blinked and brushed the water away, getting a good look at Haven for the first time in a while.
“That was refreshing,” he growled through his teeth.
“You needed a bath.” Haven’s song-like voice filled the cell, and Cress braced himself against her lure. The air in the prison turned heavy.
A servant stood on either side of the Princess. One stepped forward and carefully passed something through the gilded bars.
“A wedding gift?” Cress guessed with potent sarcasm. “Did you forget we’re not getting married anymore, you foolish female?”
“It’s your garments for this evening,” the Princess said.
Cress reluctantly took the bundle from the servant and unrolled it to find his leather Brotherhood of Assassins uniform, complete with black garments, navy shell plates, and lightweight pauldrons.
Of course Levress would want him to die in this.
“Leave so I can change,” Cress said, coming right to the bars and standing over Haven. She was a twig-tree in comparison to his size. Perhaps he wanted her to notice.
“I’m currently negotiating a bargain that I thought you might be interested in, Cressica,” she said.
“I don’t care,” Cress promised, and when it seemed Haven would not leave, he decided to change in front of her. She closed her mouth when he slid off his pants. She even glanced away, and Cress smiled cruelly. “I gave you a chance to leave,” he said, pulling on his assassins’ uniform. “And don’t act all innocent. We both know you hand out curses like childling sweets.”
Haven’s eyes rolled ever so slightly. “I’m relieved we’re not getting married, you fool,” she said.
“That makes two of us.” Cress flashed another smile.
“But not for the reasons you think.”
“Enlighten me, then. Allow me to die of boredom before I meet my real fate.”
Haven’s soft mouth twisted to the side; her pale lashes fluttered. “I’ve always seen you as a brother, even though we’re not related by blood,” she said. “I did not agree to our marriage, either. It’s our mother who—”
“Your mother,” he cut in. “My mother is dead.”
Haven sighed. “It’s my mother who wanted to force this upon me. I despise you, you faeborn monster. It’s true that I’ve never liked you, but that’s only because my mother was more impressed by every faeborn thing you did than anything I ever did. If I had wedded you, Prince, you would have tried to rule over me like she does.”
“Yes. That is what I would have done,” Cress agreed, dragging on his shoulder plates.
“So, I understand the tortures of being raised by Levress,” she articulated, and Cress slowed the clasping of his shoulder buckle. “We have that in common,” she added.
Cress’s gaze flicked up to her sharp, malicious one. “Are you trying to tell me you’ll miss me?” he asked doubtfully.
“I wouldn’t miss you if you were gone, Cressica. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch you die after I watched you suffer alongside me all these years,” she said. “That’s why I’ve invited someone else to this discussion.”
Cress folded his arms. He yanked them free again when Bonswick sauntered down the aisle.
“I will never make a faeborn-cursed bargain with him again!” Cress swore. “Get him away from me before I break these cell bars and destroy you both,” he threatened Haven.
“You’re not making any bargains, Prince.” Bonswick’s silvery eyes darted to Haven. “She is.”
“I’ll marry Bonswick once you’re gone,” Haven told Cress. “I’ll announce the betrothal at dawn. But in return, I’ve asked him to go back to the human realm—” Cress flinched at her words, “—and convince his Shadow Fairy allies that there’s no more reason for them to be there. Perhaps he will steal their memories, or worse.” She glanced over at the silver-eyed fairy. “And then, when he comes back, he will tell our High Court he killed you. We’ve meddled in human affairs long enough. There must be hundreds of broken fairy laws in the air by now. It’s going to start bringing curses upon the Ever Corners if we don’t stop.”
Cress grabbed a gilded bar. He growled and tore back when the disguised cold iron burned his palm. He shook his hand out as he glared at Bonswick. “How can he claim to have killed me himself if I’ll already be dead by tonight? And he’ll do no such thing in the human realm, Haven. You cannot trust him! He wants revenge on me, that is all.”
“He will do what I ask if he wants to be Low King of the North,” Haven said. She turned to Bonswick. “Shall we make a bargain, Lord Bonswick?”
A crooked smile found the fairy. “I don’t think a bargain is needed,” he said, his gaze still on Cress. “I will do this as a gift to my future wife. Consider it done.”
Cress shook his head. “No, do not let him out of your sight—”
Bonswick vanished, and Cress punched the cage bar. “Haven!” he growled. “You cannot trust that fool of the East! Why do you think he refused the bargain?! He will try to outsmart you!”
Haven’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yes. He will try.”
“How can you marry such a faeborn fool?” Cress asked. He paced in his cell. He could hardly keep himself from trying to kick through the iron bars.
“Because this is how I ensure that the North stays mine,” she said, folding her delicate, pale arms and pinching the ends of her white hair. “You would have ruled over me, remember? Bonswick is someone I can keep under my thumb if I wish. I will rule the North Corner, directly below my mother. Bonswick will simply fill the space as my faeborn husband.”
Cress shook his head. “He won’t just do that. He won’t do what you asked, either. He’s probably in the human realm…” He released an anguished sound. “Sky deities have mercy, he’s probably…”
“Prepare yourself, Cressica,” Haven said, then bit down on her finger until a bead of her fairy blood rolled down it. She touched the bloodlock put in place by Levress, and the lock snapped open. “Your entire Brotherhood will try to kill you the moment you step out of here. I will give you twenty seconds before I scream the alarm that you’ve escaped.”
The gilded cell bars slid to the side, revealing a wide-open door, and Cress blinked, certain he was imagining it.
He slowly stepped out of the cell, and the servants shuffled away, cowering. When no one rushed to stop him, he looked down at Haven with hard eyes. “I thought I grew up without a family. I suppose I was wrong,” he said.
“Ten seconds,” Haven said, and Cress’s face changed. She slapped his fairsaber handle into his palm.
Cress whirled and raced down the dungeon aisle, past the blazing fire, and up the glass stairs. He barely made it to the top when Haven’s shrill scream tore through the air like a winged leafbird, flapping its way into every hall and room of the Silver Castle, alerting every powerful and wicked fairy that he had escaped.
Cress grunted, drawing his fairsaber blade. “That was not ten seconds,” he muttered. He took three more steps before a fairy wearing the replica of his uniform drifted around the corner. The assassin was familiar—all of the Brotherhood would be. Cress’s jaw hardened, and he forced himself to forget the fairy’s name, and where the fairy came from, and to simply fight.
Their fairsabers collided, and Cress kicked the fairy backward into the crystal wall, then turned light and leapt into the air. The assassin hurled a pin dagger at Cress flying over him. Cress batted it away as he landed on the other side.
A shuffle sounded around the crystal corner. Three more of Cress’s assassins filled the hallway. Cress looked at his brothers to his left, then at the one remaining on his right.
It was a flash of silver as they all struck at once.
Cress took a slice in his abdomen.
He took another in his thigh.
He was dripping fairy blood from his shoulder when he staggered off, leaving the four assassins as weak fairy bodies on the floor, his only consolation that they would meld their bones back together and heal over time.
Assassins lined the hallways all the way out of the Silver Palace. It was a battle of strong iron blades and stronger iron wills.
When Cress emerged into the courtyard a mess of swollen eyes, a battered lip, and too many stinging cuts to count, he found the yard filled with dozens of his brothers in the black garments of the North Brotherhood.
Too many.
Far too many.
Cress twisted his fairsaber in his grip and dug in his heels.
Ash and wind rumbled over the grass as he charged. He knew their every move. He had learned alongside these fairies and taught some of them himself. But when he tripped on a starbud bush, landing on its midnight-blue petals, he squeezed shut his eyes and braced for the death stab that was coming.
A second passed. Cress heard heavy breathing around him.
“Get up, Cressica,” a low faeborn voice commanded.
Cress peeled one eye open to see the blade of Thorne—fellow assassin teacher—at his throat. The assassin was not tilting it to run Cress through.
“Kill me,” Cress invited, looking from assassin to assassin. “End this misery I’ve found.”
Still, they waited.
Cress climbed to his feet and held out his fairsaber toward them. They remained still while he found his balance. And his bloody lips pulled into a smile.
“You fools,” he said. “She will figure out you’re letting me go. She will punish you for it.”
Thorne swung at him, and Cress dodged it easily. “So be it.” Thorne’s voice was a deep rumble of sound. “Half of your brothers do not wish to betray you today.” The assassin nodded toward the garden path that would take Cress back to the villages and through the forest, past which was the gate to the human realm.
“Well, let’s make a show of it, then. I’m sure the Queene is watching.” Cress smashed Thorne’s blade from his hand. He cut a few fairy shoulders on his way to the garden path and even dug his saber right through a faeborn calf, praying to the sky deities the assassin would forgive him for it.
Cress wasn’t fast as he raced below plump purple fruits dangling from crisp branches in the garden. He staggered past the golden trees whose bark turned orange in the wild morning sky, leaving a trail of fairy blood his assassins would be forced to follow. If only half his Brotherhood was showing mercy, the other half would catch up once they realized.
Cress reached the villages out of breath, clutching his chest and spitting crimson onto the green soil. Fairies emerged from leaf houses and branch huts, the most powerful ones touching buds to see them sprout. Cress took it all in as he passed, tucking the images away for later when he wanted to remember what the Ever Corners were like.
He raced against his burning cuts, his assassins, and most importantly, Bonswick.
Two dozen minutes later, Cress staggered to the gate; a rippling hold of power, built with an arch of seamless stone and whispering with the magic of the ancients. It seemed the fairy guards had taken the day off, and Cress imagined Haven had something to do with it.
Cress looked back one last time at the Four Corners of Ever when he reached the arch.
Then he went back to where he belonged.
Humans watched the Prince with odd faces as he limped over the sidewalk, clutching his shoulder where blood and power leaked out. His assassins’ armour was coated in the purplish fairy blood of his brothers, his hair was stuck to his forehead, and his eyes stung from blinking so much as he grew faint.
Cress smelled the coffee when he got close, and the potent scent of sour fruit. It filled his faeborn chest with a flutter of hope as he rounded the corner…
Mor.
That was who he saw first.
Cress was sure he wasn’t seeing correctly. He blinked his blurry eyes.
Mor’s body lay in the street, half on the sidewalk, half on the road. His curly hair was unbound and covering his face. Human healer chariots rumbled up with red flashing lights, and humans sprang out with boxes of supplies.
Cress’s gaze went in and out of focus as it wandered to Dranian’s cooling body. Cress staggered forward a step, loosing feeling in his hands and feet. Shayne lay beside Dranian, his white hair stained with dark blood, his blue eyes open and staring toward the heavens at the cruel sky deities who had not saved him.
Females Cress knew as the Sisterhood of Assassins lay sprawled across the ground, torn up yarn and broken knitting needles scattered between them, killed like animals. Kate’s fairy godmother was among them. One of her bright earrings had been torn right off.
But there were other bodies.
Human bodies…
Cress swallowed as he stepped in, catching whiffs of fear and distant shouts that had taken place in the very recent past, perhaps only hours ago. He was sure the bodies were still warm. Kate’s-brother-Greyson lay just outside the café door, the hood of his human sweater drenched in snowy slush and sour human blood. Past him, Lily Baker lay in her officer uniform, lifeless with her weapon tossed to the snow just past her reach.
And… Cress croaked when he saw her.
Kate Kole’s unmistakeable burgundy hair was half torn out of its tie. One arm was flung over her stomach, the other reaching as though she’d been trying to find help. The faint scents of her powder soap laced the air, and Cress slapped a hand over his eyes, refusing to see it any longer.
His brothers.
His humans.
His reasons for living.
“They’re all gone, Cress. You’re too late.” A cruel voice lifted from behind him.
Cress ground his teeth and spun, aiming his fairsaber at Bonswick’s throat. But Bonswick was faster.
Cress felt the fairy’s cold iron blade pierce through his body and come out his back. He tasted fairy blood on his tongue. His numb fingers dropped the handle of his fairsaber, and he fell to a knee, held up only by Bonswick’s silver blade impaling him.
Cress’s power recoiled as he shuddered, choosing to accept this finish. He’d failed to protect Mor after all. Shayne, Dranian, the humans. Her.
His mate. She was innocent. She always had been.
This was right. This was the proper end, the one the Prince of the North deserved. Cress’s turquoise eyes slid over to find her one last time.
He had written an ending to this story; a false one. But even so, this was not how he saw their real story ending.
Bonswick tore his blade back out, and Cress collapsed in a lake of his own deep red. Dozens of Shadow Fairies at Bonswick’s side watched as the Prince of the North took his last breath and let his eyes fall closed.
“Time to leave. Great things await us in the Corners now,” he heard Bonswick say. Then he heard the soft pops of vanishing Shadow Fairies.
Once upon a time, a fairy prince waged a war on a powerful queene. But he lost. And all those he loved paid the price.
Cress’s fairy life leaked away. All his memories floated off with him. He relaxed to let himself go, until a raspy voice broke through the darkness.
“Cress?” she said. “Cress!”
Queensbane…
Kate Kole was alive.
