2

Mor Trisencor and the Dangers of Flowers

Glass sprayed over Mor. He spun away to shield his eyes, but a shard stabbed into his back, clean and sharp. That’s where the irritating wedge of glass stayed as he spun back and slammed his fairsabers against the set of short, black fairy swords that looked identical to his.

The fairy intruder wore a black mask concealing the lower half of his face, but Mor could see the fellow’s eyes plainly. A cutting blend of cold, dark browns and sparkling silver, mirroring the flecks embedded in every Shadow Fairy’s eyes from the enchanted Silver River where those from the Dark Corner drank.

It was like looking in a mirror. Only this fool’s hair was as richly red as the bloodthirsty look in his gaze.

The two fairies fought in the dark cathedral, destroying the fireplace in the living space first. The furniture was next. Then the main level windows and every shelf in storage. Railing spindles, grey brick chunks, and unwashed glass littered the storage room floor all the way to the foyer. A horrid mess if Mor ever saw one.

The intruder smashed Mor’s left fairsaber from his grip. It flew ten feet and pierced the wall so hard it stayed impaled that way. Another thing Mor would have to clean later.

Not that the cathedral’s cleanliness mattered in this moment.

Not that anything mattered in this moment apart from dealing a deathblow—or eight. Time was running out, and if Mor wasn’t careful—

Mor ducked a sharp swing and plunged his fairsaber toward the intruder’s rib, but the Shadow Fairy spun away, doing a full flip in the air and landing with infuriating grace on his light feet.

If only this Shadow Fairy wasn’t so faeborn fast.

Mor was sure his chest would explode soon. He couldn’t keep this pace for much longer, but he couldn’t stop, either. His gaze slid to where his phone had landed in a pile of gray rubble.

There was a time when he might have blown a screaming trumpet for help at a moment like this. But no. He could not call for help. It was out of the quest—

A cold, sleek blade entered Mor’s side. His fairy blood rushed to the cut, sprinkling out as the intruder tore the saber back. Mor fell to his knees, lightheaded, while a strange, fast heat rushed through his body from where the fairsaber had touched. The room became a fuzzy picture, and he blinked. Worry spread through him; he lifted an arm, pointing his fairsaber at his enemy in warning. He couldn’t quite keep his blade from wavering.

The Shadow Fairy approached, his boots echoing over the cold wooden floors. He nudged Mor’s fairsaber away, took hold of Mor’s left arm, and in one fast jerk, he snapped it. Mor growled as his arm fell limp at his side. He tried to stand, but his legs didn’t seem to work. His mouth worked just fine though, so he ran it.

“Numbing flower pollen…” he gritted out. “How brave of you.” He glared at the tiny yellow speckles on the intruder’s fairsabers that had stolen all function of Mor’s cursed limbs. But despite the glower he gave his opponent, Mor’s heart tore itself in two, beating and yelling even while he didn’t speak.

Though he fought a battle in the dust, Mor Trisencor was at war with himself.

He stole one last look at his phone in the wreckage, swallowing as he considered if he might really die before he caved and called for help. When he brought his attention back to the intruder, he found the Shadow Fairy staring at him from dark, silvery eyes, ever glowing with a power Mor would never possess.

As always, the Shadow Fairy intruder said nothing. He stood over Mor as Mor struggled to keep his faeborn lungs working. As Mor snapped the bone in his arm back into place. He felt himself teeter. Four more seconds, maybe less, until he would be a numb heap on the floor. And then he didn’t know what would happen. He expected no mercy from the Shadow Fairy.

Mor imagined Cress’s face when he would get the news. The Prince would go wild with rage and reveal himself to every dangerous fairy in the Ever Corners. Then Shayne. Dranian. And the humans. Mor’s chest ached at the thought of what his death might do to them.

Perhaps he should have made the faeborn phone call.

His body tumbled onto its side; Mor barely managed to catch himself on his elbow. He dragged his unfocused gaze up to the intruder for one last word.

“I know who you are,” he rasped as the numbing pollen took the rest of him, wrapping itself around his veins, muscles, bones, and limbs. He toppled to the floor, lashes fluttering, but he kept his gaze on that Shadow Fairy.

The Shadow had no expression. He didn’t blink, or breathe, it seemed. He simply stared.

After several seconds, he stepped over Mor and headed for the nearest broken window. “Then you know what’s coming,” he said as he climbed onto the sill and hopped through the hole, avoiding the jagged glass teeth. In a wisp of wind, the fairy was gone, leaving only the cool night air slipping in from the window and flooding the cathedral’s storage room now painted with wooden splinters and Mor’s leaking blood.

Mor breathed a sigh of relief that echoed up into the room’s rafters. His faeborn skin prickled. It was the first time the Shadow Fairy had spoken a word since the two of them had begun this war in the human realm darkness two months ago. Mor wasn’t sure he could endure it much longer. He wasn’t sure how many more fights he’d live through.

And that voice…

He indeed knew it well.

It was a miracle of the sky deities he was still alive.

It took two hours for the numbing pollen to wear off. Mor winced as he curled up to sit from where his body had been frozen on the floor. He traced a hand over the blade wound in his side and then reached back to try and flick out the shard of glass still clinging to his flesh like a pesky leech.

Queensbane. How had it come to this?

He looked toward the window where the Shadow Fairy had disappeared. A storm had come and gone. Mor had watched rainwater sprinkle in through the broken glass and run down the walls. There were puddles in the storage room now.

What a mess.

What a faeborn-cursed mess.

He climbed to his feet and kicked a wood plank across the room. It sailed into the furthest shelf—the only shelf that hadn’t fallen—and with a loud, mean creak, the shelf tipped forward. Its contents smashed over the floor, a box of sheet music flinging into the air and sending a choir’s-worth of weightless pages fluttering to the ground seconds after everything else.

“Unbelievable,” Mor muttered now that everything was, in fact, destroyed.

He shoved his fist against his bleeding side to plug it up, and he strode from the storage room to get his coat. He needed to go find medicine and sink into the sort of scathingly hot bath that would burn away the memories of everything that had just happened in the last three hours.

Exactly eight months ago, Mor and two of his fellow assassins had followed their Prince across the gate into the human realm. Their human target had been harder to kill than expected, and Cress, being the flimsiest of all, had fallen for the human with barely a nudge in her direction. That was the turning point for a lot of things.

Exactly three months ago, Kate Kole had released her first book just in time for spring, titled High Court of the Coffee Bean after the new High Court the assassins had decided to form in the human realm. Shayne had quickly called dibs on being High King.

And exactly two and a half months ago, Mor had been delivering coffee and muffins to a business by the harbour when he’d spotted a red-haired fairy standing in a nearby park, cloaked in a black jacket with a hood and a black mask. It was clear when Mor locked eyes with him that the fairy had been watching him rather closely.

When Mor blinked, the fairy was gone. It was like it had been a dream. Like his mind was playing tricks on him, dragging something from his childling years into the present. Punishing him for all the unresolved things he’d left behind with the memories he couldn’t forget.

Mor tried to imagine it was just in his head. But he got up in the night and packed his belongings while his brothers slept, just in case.

The next day, when Mor was at the grocery store picking up flour for Cress’s new baking show, he spotted the fairy again, lingering by the fruit baskets. The Shadow Fairy lifted a melon and glanced across the chilled area at Mor. It was then Mor knew for sure it was no dream. And that he had a terrible decision to make.

There were a lot of perhaps’ after that:

Perhaps Mor should have kept walking on by.

Perhaps Mor should have pretended he never saw.

Perhaps Mor should have gone back to Fae Café that day.

But he didn’t. Instead, he’d slipped into the air and mapped every street, searching for abandoned buildings in the city. And when he found one, he closed himself inside, and he never went back.