Twenty-Four Faeborn Hours Ago
The fae Prince leaned against a brick wall, running his hands through his short hair and tilting his pointed ears to listen to his human target. She spoke into a glowing rectangular device that she held up to her ear. The distinct voice of Officer Lily Baker came back through it.
“We had to let him go, Kate,” Officer Lily’s voice said.
Kate Kole stopped walking. His human target appeared far too flustered. Cress watched her set a paper goblet on a bench as her rhythms pattered. He might have forced one of his own assassins to eat rocks for being so emotional and losing composure during a negotiation.
His gaze traced down the human’s yellow yarn sweater and the leather bag hanging on her arm. Her legs were quite slender in comparison to how a warrior’s ought to be. Her eyes seemed curious, too, as opposed to the hard, lethal darkness that haunted a killer’s, like his.
Truly, the mask she wove for herself was perfection. Anyone would be fooled, especially by how she sipped her paper-cupped beverage. She looked down instead of keeping her eyes up and alert, like she hadn’t a clue she was in danger. Even her burgundy hair was loose instead of tied back, fluttering in the cool breeze with the red leaves.
In every way, she did not appear ready for a fight.
Slipping from the building’s shade, Cress walked several paces behind, keeping her in view as she ascended the stairs into a large building of gray and black stones. If Kate Kole knew she was being followed, she showed no signs of it.
Humans filled the tight halls with their ugly, scrawny bodies and sweaty scent. Cress adjusted his hair to hide his lovely ears, keeping his sights on his target as he strode into the congested crowds. He came to a halt when he spotted her crouched before a chubby-cheeked childling. The child wiped snotty fluids from its weak human nose.
Truly, Cress had wondered since he arrived here why humans even had noses. They could hardly smell the truth or lies in the air, or the complex history interwoven into their own fragrances.
The childling began to cry in the hall. Cress rolled his eyes.
The rectangular device buzzed in his pocket, and he nearly sprang out of his faeborn flesh. He scrambled to draw out the glowing magical device—which Shayne sometimes called a magic mirror and sometimes called a phone. The sticky-fingered fairy had wasted no time pickpocketing to supply the assassins with magic mirrors so they might blend in.
A very close-up painting of Shayne’s face filled the rectangular mirror as it buzzed in Cress’s hand.
Cress cleared his throat and squinted at the screen. There were two circles to choose from: green and red. He chose red.
“Queensbane,” he cursed when the picture of Shayne disappeared. He turned the thing over. “Where did he go?” He put the device against his mouth anyway. “Shayne?” he called into it. He waited, but nothing happ—He released a shriek and nearly dropped the phone when it buzzed again.
The Prince glanced right and left, worried someone had heard his weak squeal. The humans all seemed preoccupied with their own human-y things.
When his faeborn heart settled, Cress chose the green button this time.
The screen changed, showing Shayne’s unmistakeable chin.
“Where are you?” Cress asked, turning the mirror this way and that to try and see the rest of the white-haired assassin through it. “I can see only your mouth.”
“I can only see your forehead,” Shayne’s voice came from the mirror. “You’re showing me the ceiling, Cress.”
“You’re showing me your stubble, you fool.”
Shayne’s close-up mouth spread into a grin.
“Where are you?” Mor’s voice came through the device next, but Cress couldn’t see him past Shayne’s chin.
“I’m watching the human,” Cress said, his gaze flickering back to the hallway where Kate Kole took the childling’s hand. “See?” He turned the phone.
“You’re showing us the ceiling again.”
Cress aimed the phone lower.
“Now we can only see the floor.”
A growl lifted from Cress’s throat, and he turned the mirror back toward himself. “I’m ending this preposterous meeting,” he decided.
“Wait! When can we leave this tavern and come help you?”
Cress could see just Shayne’s neck now.
“Not yet. We’ll speak again once I’ve enchanted the human,” Cress said. He slid the phone into his pocket and turned back to spy as Kate Kole led the childling through the crowd.
Cress shoved off the doorframe, slipping into the bustle of humans to follow. He thought about red velvet cream cake, and hot pepper-roasted forestboar meat, tapping his fingers along his stomach. “Queensbane, hush, hush, hush!” he muttered at it when it growled again. He was thankful humans had shamefully terrible hearing.
His target and the childling stopped in between halls where every ounce of human flesh seemed to collide. The humans pushed past each other, talking so loudly that Cress couldn’t choose a conversation to eavesdrop upon. His gaze snapped over the throng when he lost sight of the yellow knit sweater.
Shoving his way past a weakling, Cress entered the middle of the junction, squeaking to a halt on his damp boots and nearly toppling over the pair; the human girl—his target—kneeling on one knee right in the cursed middle of the crowd, and the childling who had begun wailing like a dying hogbeast. He didn’t have time to redirect and disappear among the bodies before his human target began to…
Sing.
She was singing.
His target sounded raspy for a female, but her song voice was sweet in the centre. On a calm day in the North Corner, Cress might have followed such a sound to discover the female responsible. He had never heard a song voice quite like this—clean and pure.
“Can you keep singing for me, Miss Kate? I’m still scared!” the childling whined.
Kate Kole’s soft lips curled into a smile, and Cress tilted his head as he studied it. For a human insect, her smile was pleasantly striking. Possibly even slightly attractive to an untrained eye.
Cress pulled back and slammed his palms over his ears.
“Queensbane,” he muttered. What if his human had the gift of siren-song?
Cress turned to leave before he might be lured in and trapped by a songspell, stifling a growl as humans pushed in and trapped him there. But when his target’s raspy singing lifted to his ears again, he turned back, skin tightening as rolls of music rippled along his flesh.
“Daffodils sway and the golden sun sings, la, la, la, la. Rivers rush and the silver stars sing, la, la, la, la…”
His target hugged the childling and rubbed its shoulders.
Cress blinked a few times. He waited for the song’s magic to rapid his heartbeat, or a trick to follow and fuzzy his mind. But the air remained sweet and clean. The childling stood an inch taller, and his human target smiled again like a sprouting blushflower in the morning. It all appeared annoyingly innocent.
He turned to face them fully, no longer caring if he was seen. How in the faeborn-cursed Corners did she hide her cruelty so well?
Cress didn’t realize how close he came to the pair until his human target nudged him back with her elbow to make way for the childling to walk again. His hand flexed and he fought the impulse to grab her—How dare she shove a prince?—but the stone in his blood melted as he watched the two head down the hallway. His target ditched her paper goblet in a barrel on her way. The pair disappeared around the bend, and Cress inched toward the barrel. He glanced inside to find atrocious food scraps and crumpled parchment all mushed together. Kate Kole’s paper cup rested on top of it all. A word was scribed across: Coffee.
“Coffee,” he said to test the word.
He marched in the direction the pair of humans went, muttering, “Coffee, coffee, coffee,” all the while so he would not forget.
“Are you drinking coffee? You shouldn’t do that, Your Highness. It’s how the bravest humans poison themselves.” Shayne’s voice appeared, and Cress stopped marching. He turned once, then twice.
“Where are you?” Cress demanded because he hadn’t smelled Shayne approach.
“You didn’t end our conversation,” Shayne said. “I’m still in your mirror.”
Cress glanced down at his pocket. He drew the thing back out, and lo and behold, there was Shayne’s chin again.
“You need to touch the red circle if you want to be free of the mirror,” Shayne explained. “Otherwise, we’re trapped in this conversation forever.”
Cress turned the mirror over to study it. “What a terrible, binding spell,” he said.
“Only if you don’t poke the red circle.”
“Well, since you’re stuck in my mirror, you should know the human target may have the gift of siren-song,” Cress said first. “You three are forbidden from approaching the female now until she is absolutely, mind-sputteringly in love with me. We all know that a female who sings cannot be trusted.”
A long pause followed. Shayne was still there.
“Are we finished speaking now?” Shayne asked.
“Yes.”
Cress squinted at the mirror again. He lifted a finger, and he stabbed the red button with it.
Shayne vanished.
He got lost.
By the time Cress had searched every hall and sorted through the old meat scents of un-showered humans to locate his target, she was already sitting in her class, halfway to the front. He watched her flick the corner of her book as he pushed into the classroom and headed down the outer aisle toward her.
Several whispered conversations came to a halt. Human females turned in their seats to look at him, but not Kate Kole. She paid him no attention as he chose the seat at her side and plastered on his most beautiful smile.
“What did I miss?” he asked in a melodic, low voice.
“A really boring chat about character-driven plots,” she answered after a moment without looking up. Her speaking voice was filled with the same sweet rasp as her singing voice, and Cress’s mind flooded with that song: “Daffodils sway and the golden sun sings, la, la, la, la…” It was a voice filled with curves and cracks and likely tasted of the human beverage of fresh coffee.
But what was insufferably irritating about it was that her speaking voice sounded just as innocent as her song one.
Cress’s smile faded.
What a clever, deceitful thing she was. When underneath that pretty mask of innocence, she was a cold-blooded killer.
He slid his jaw back and forth and mumbled, “Ah. My favourite.” He watched her slide off a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles and set them on the table, revealing her human-y green-brown eyes. His gaze travelled down to the brown stain on the corner of the book below her hand. It was the very book he’d seen in Whyp’s memories. The book that had made him believe her real name was Kate Kole. He reached to tap it. “You must drink coffee—”
“I’m not really in the mood for chit-chat,” his human target stated with a tone as icy as the Queene’s.
Ah. There it was.
So, she was cruel after all.
Cress’s smile returned, and he released a chuckle. “As you wish. Human.”
A shrill sound exploded over the classroom, and around the room, humans stood from their seats. Cress eyed his target who stayed in place, his smile broadening as he concluded she must have figured out who he was.
She tried to pack away her book, but Cress reached for her delicate little human chin, and redirected that pretty face of hers toward his.
“Officer Riley…” she rasped with that adorably innocent sounding, pathetic human voice.
Cress smiled. “Not even close.”
He didn’t give her time to sort out her feelings before he yanked her chair toward his and stole a kiss, light and feathery and lush and infectious. And completely enchanted.
The human’s eyes were big when he pulled away, gazing at him with all the love and adoration of a silver-winged castle puppy.
Yes, she would see it all now.
He was the feared Prince of the North, dangerous assassin of—
She smacked him.
Cress’s face recoiled to the side; his lips parted in disbelief. He dragged his gaze back to her, unable to blink.
Never…
Never in his faeborn life…
“Don’t touch me,” the human said.
Deadly words rushed to the end of his tongue, but they never escaped. Cress found that he couldn’t blink. It was her face—Cress was sure that her face was gilded by the sun and beloved by the moon, molded together by the deities of the sky with soft, clay skin and an entire forest in her eyes.
Oh no…
The human’s chair squeaked. She was running out of the classroom before Cress could snatch her. He blinked away the fog spreading through his mind. He stifled a growl and stood, marching out and following her to the stairwell. She was too frantic to see him hop the rail and land silently at the bottom. He waited until Kate Kole flung herself down the last steps before he grabbed her and dragged her to the dark cranny below the rail.
His target’s hazel eyes were wild when she took him in. In them, Cress saw approximately twenty years’ worth of history and triumphs and failures and joys and pains. Though, for the life of him, he could not spot her cruelty.
“Kiss me again, Human,” he demanded, eyeing her lush, violet-tinted lips that had not seemed so violet or lush ten minutes ago. “Immediately.”
“Let me go.” Her whisper sailed through the dimness. Cress smiled at the defeat in her tone—like that of a thornrabbit who fell from its nest and found itself before a powerful crossbeast. The surprise on her face was nearly delicious.
“Queensbane, you must have known I’d come for you,” Cress said. “No one kills a fairy and lives.”
The human tried to pull his hands off her hips.
Human chuckles echoed down from the tallest stair, and Cress’s mind scrambled through rules of the fairy law—including being spotted doing fairy works. Perhaps trapping a human was considered such a thing.
He reluctantly dropped his hands from his target’s sides, studying her wild red-purple hair, her oval-shaped mouth, and the black brand on her neck that told him she must belong to someone powerful. Only the strongest assassin houses branded their slaves.
There was also that fresh gash on her forehead from her scuttle in the alley. Cress’s brows tipped inward as he studied it, feeling an altogether different feeling when he looked at it now versus when he saw it in the street. A strange heat moved through him, and he fought the impulse to clench his fists.
“I’m surprised you let him hit you.”
Kate Kole’s face went white. “How did you…”
Cress smiled. Yes, he had been watching her. She was doomed.
“Stay away from me,” she said.
His target leapt from beneath his stare and joined the pack of humans heading away. Cress raised a hand to stop her, but he left it there, a weightless thing in the air. And he laughed, letting her get away after all.
“Yes, run from me little human,” he invited, more relieved than he could admit. “I’ll only play games with you. But my assassins will find you soon enough, and they don’t have the patience for games like I do.”
The human didn’t reply. When she swept around the corner on the heels of the others like her, Cress’s smile faded. He slumped back against the wall and slammed his palm against his thudding heart.
No. This could not be possible. No.
What wicked curse against his fairy blood was this?
