17

Violet Miller and the Shadows

Violet’s sweater was grabbed. Dranian shoved her behind him where she staggered to stay balanced. She dropped one of her heels to the ground, gaping up at his body shielding hers from whoever stood in the road. Then she peeked around, trying to decide if the redhead fairy was really there.

It seemed he was.

“Let him try and take me,” Violet scoffed, blinking rapidly. “He’ll only get hurt.”

Dranian reached back to shove her behind him again. When his fingers accidentally brushed Violet’s hand, he stopped. He turned and looked back at her in question, staring at their touching fingers. Violet’s mouth parted as she tried to decide if it was real—their hands. Touching. Him not feeling any pain.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Dranian growled and turned back to the redhead. “Great,” he muttered.

“Why…” she mumbled manically to herself. “Why now? Why all of a sudden?” She poked the back of Dranian’s bare forearm again, but he still didn’t react. She poked the other one, and this time, he flicked her hand off seemingly in sheer aggravation.

She felt even more sick than before.

“Oh dear. It seems Trisencor hasn’t been abandoned by his rumoured High Court after all. You must be the guard dog he uses when he’s desperate.” The redhead’s cool voice crawled into Violet’s ears. She peeked around Dranian again.

There he was. The same lustrous, metallic-red hair, the same silvery eyes, the same strange, dark energy rolling off him. Violet could almost taste it, even this far away.

“Dog?” Dranian’s low growl seemed to curse the word.

“Dog. Mongrel. Mutt. Hound. Aren’t those what the humans call their pets?” the redhead asked, arching a brow.

“Not really,” Violet murmured, and Dranian shoved her behind him again.

“Ah. Violet Miller, we meet once more,” the redhead called to her. “Shall we make a bargain, Violet? If you come with me willingly, I won’t tear your guard dog to pieces,” he promised.

“No, you’ll just erase his memory and leave him passed out in the forest somewhere with his pockets full of rocks!” Violet shouted back, and the redhead’s face changed. Amusement flickered at the corners of his expression.

“Quiet, Human,” Dranian scolded. He spoke to the redhead fairy next. “I wish to challenge you, Shadow Fairy. One fairy duel winner. One dead loser. A simple faeborn fight here in this human street.”

Violet gaped. “Wait… what?!” She blinked a hundred times over. “You’re not actually going to fight to the death for me, right?”

“It seems Mor will only come home once this Shadow filth is dead. So, yes, I will take this opportunity gladly,” Dranian stated in a low voice. “Run, Human. You don’t want to watch what I’ll do to this fool.” He pulled out a gold and navy handle from his pocket. Before Violet’s eyes, a spear formed, bursting out both ends from the handle, seeming to materialize from nothing. A pulsing, buzzing sound filled the air. Dranian tipped the weapon forward, looking ready to ram the redhead through the heart with it, and Violet reeled back.

“How did you do that…?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She dropped her other heel to the street as she raced on wobbly legs toward the nearest alley. She caught the brick wall for support as she looked back, not wanting to watch, yet unable to stop looking.

“Who would win in a fight between you and Mor Trisencor, North Fairy? Have you ever fought him, even in practice?” the redhead asked Dranian, drawing two handles of his own. A pair of black blades formed from them. “Because I have. Many times. And of those fights, do you know how many times I beat him?”

“I assure you, however much you think you hate Mor, I hate you twice as much for hating him in the first place,” Dranian stated, refusing the question.

But the redhead answered himself. “Every time,” he said. There was a look in his eyes that promised he could kill without compunction, and Violet shuddered, thinking of all the women this guy had lured into the forest.

Violet almost missed it when they charged—the spear and swords shot out in a blur of colour. She scooted another step back, but she marvelled. Dranian was no joke; he deflected and spun like he was a weightless, horrifying creature from a legend. And the redhead…

He was faster. It was almost impossible to tell with their speed as his swords swung with terrifying accuracy. Violet placed a hand on her thudding chest as she watched.

Dranian didn’t let him get a hit. He used brute force to shove the swords back, keeping the redhead at a distance with his spear.

A young, screaming couple raced by Violet, snapping her attention to the people escaping in every direction down the street. A few pedestrians pulled out phones to film the scene from their hiding places.

Phone.

Mor.

She had to call Mor.

Violet scrambled through her pockets and pulled out her phone to call him… only it wasn’t her phone she had; it was his. She moaned. But when she looked back to the fight, fresh wind swooshed in, and her heart picked up an extra beat.

Mor stood in the street. A glistening sword was in his grip.

Dranian fell back and Mor stepped in like a practiced formation. Violet couldn’t believe her eyes as he swung and stabbed forward, body twisting. He landed a punch. She knew he could write, of course. She knew he could manage a newspaper. But never—never—did she imagine he could fight like this.

“What am I doing?” she whispered, snapping out of it. Someone was going to die here. If she didn’t want it to be her, she needed to leave.

Violet backed down the alley, watching the three fairies the whole way. And she almost screamed when the redhead’s blade plunged into Mor’s side. Mor ripped himself back, purplish blood speckling the road, and he charged again. Dranian stabbed for the redhead’s feet as Mor swung at the guy’s head.

Violet turned and ran, hoping she hadn’t just made an enormous mistake.

Shadow Fairy. That was what Dranian had called the redhead. Violet had been afraid of him the first time she saw him, sure, but her nerves had subsided when she thought he couldn’t touch her. Now it felt like a beast of her childhood nightmares had crawled out of the closet and was looking for the life he was owed.

Violet swallowed as she burst into her house, kicking aside pebbles. She rushed for the kitchen cupboard and flung it open so hard the door snapped off. It clattered to the counter, tipping the saucers off the teacups, and everything smashed over the floor as Violet grabbed her bottle of iron supplements and twisted off the lid. She knew she needed to run, to possibly never come back here. It was the only logical thought racing through her spinning mind as she threw a pill into her mouth and guzzled water from the kitchen faucet.

“Well, you can’t go back to your human home now that it’s been fairy tricked. Anything you touch will alert the Shadow Fairy that you’re there, even nudging a single pebble.”

She looked around at the mess as she wiped a drip from her lip. “Well, that’s problematic,” she muttered to the Master of Doom’s voice in her head. She raced for the hall closet and yanked out her pre-packed overnight bag. Then she turned and took one last look at her garden home she shared with Zorah. As soon as she could, she would call her aunt and tell her to stay away from the house.

Minutes later, Violet was blinking rapidly at the busy downtown street, begging her supplements to kick in. The stress made everything worse—Violet was sure she would pass out on the roadside and end up in an ambulance. And she didn’t doubt the Shadow Fairy’s ability to stalk her all the way to the hospital.

She had to get back to the café. She took a few wrong turns, thinking they were right turns, certain she had the worst sense of direction of anyone in Toronto when her mind felt like chalk and clouds. She knew she wasn’t going to figure anything out until she could think straight, so she half-crawled into an alley to wait it out, shoving her overnight bag ahead of her. She sat back against the cold brick wall, hugging her knees to herself and clutching her purse.

Someone walked up to Violet with a weird glare and a questioning face. The young woman looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties with a long braid of red hair roped around her neck and resting over a green knit vest. A name was carefully stitched across the left bust pocket of the vest: GRETCHEN.

“Where’d you get that sweater, Human?” she snapped in a high voice. “My sisters and I agreed not to make you one. That faeborn assassin didn’t ask politely.” She moved in to block the morning light from Violet’s eyes, and Violet squinted up at her. She recognized her from the knitting store Mor had brought her to yesterday.

“I smelled our yarn on my way by,” the young woman added. “That sweater doesn’t belong to you. Give it back.”

“I… I can’t…” Violet choked out.

A cool breeze brushed through the alley, running along Violet’s neck and sending a shiver down her spine. She watched the wind flutter Gretchen’s red hair, and Gretchen stiffed. The woman’s nose wrinkled like she smelled something bad, and she turned her head toward the end of the road.

Violet’s gaze followed. She was too dizzy to scream, but her fingers tightened around her purse when she saw the redhead guy there.

He stood, eyeing Gretchen. A bead of dark blood ran down his chin, and a swelling bruise covered half his jaw, but he looked strong.

Violet jumped to her feet, gluing herself back against the wall. She stuffed a hand into her purse, searching for anything she might use as a weapon. Her fingers curled around a fountain pen, so she tore it out and ripped off the lid, holding it high above her head. She wouldn’t go down without a fight—a fountain-pen-stabbing fight.

Gretchen looked the Shadow Fairy over the same way he studied her. There was a strange tension in the air that was so thick, Violet almost choked on it.

“Step aside,” the redhead said. “I want a conversation with that human.”

Gretchen’s nose wrinkled again. “Can’t you see what she’s wearing, you foolish male?” Do you want the whole Sisterhood coming for your throat?”

The redhead glanced at Violet’s pink sweater. “Yes, I did notice that delicious little fact,” he said. “Perhaps we can make a bargain for her?”

Gretchen’s hands slid beneath her knit shirt at the back, and Violet’s eyes widened as the motion revealed two long, silver knitting needles flush with her spine. “No bargain,” Gretchen said. “She’s wearing our yarn, which means she’s under our guard. Even if we didn’t agree to it.” The last part sounded bitter.

The redhead guy’s broad, diabolical smile returned. “Too bad you’re here alone, then,” he said to Gretchen, his eyes glittering.

Gretchen’s jaw tightened. She clasped the needles behind her back and drew them out, making it clear she wasn’t planning on running. “Let’s go, then,” she stated.

The redhead guy vanished, and Violet gasped, her eyes darting around the alley until Gretchen stabbed backward into the air. He reappeared behind her and nearly took her needles into his neck. He dropped to a knee to avoid them and thrusted his boot into Gretchen’s side. It happened so fast Violet almost missed it.

Gretchen slid over the asphalt, ripping the fabric of her pants at the knee. Her head whipped back to stare the redhead down with a look of menace. She jumped and kicked off the wall, soaring high into the air, and she shrank. Violet watched with wide eyes as the young woman transformed into a winged creature the size of her thumb that darted back and forth like a bullet. The two went at it—vanishing fairy and tiny fairy—until Gretchen reappeared in full size with a swinging kick that caught the redhead in the leg.

He stabbed backward as he took the hit…

The blade went into Gretchen’s stomach.

Violet shrieked and dropped the fountain pen as Gretchen released a high, raspy gasp. The redhead yanked his blade back out and Gretchen tumbled to the ground in a heap. She didn’t move after that. The redhead turned on Violet before Gretchen’s blood even started leaking onto the asphalt.

Something flashed in his brown and silver eyes as he drew a step toward her. “Take off that sweater,” he insisted in a sweet, articulate voice.

Violet pressed back against the wall as hard as she could, shaking her head and clutching her collar. Her skin was useless—this sweater was the only thing she had left to protect her.

He leaned in, trapping her there as his cold and musty earth scent filled her senses. “Take it off, Violet. Or I’ll take it off you myself.”