39

Mor Trisencor and the Merry Batch of Muffins

There’d only been a split second to make a decision when Mor had finally spotted Luc, raging like a whirlwind in the heights of the city’s buildings with Violet in his grip. Mor knew he could not take them both.

As Mor spied on Violet puttering around in his kitchen and tossing flour and sugar into a bowl, he knew he’d made the right choice. He left her to her baking and went to the office, inhaling the thick scent of ink, stock paper, and article ideas. The folktale book he’d borrowed from the library—the one with the white nine tailed fox on the cover—rested peacefully on his desk. He stared at the fox painting for a long while before he picked it up.

“You’ve been luring in human females and stealing their secrets? For what, Luc?! What do you need human secrets for?”

Mor’s own enraged questions burned through his mind as he flipped the book open, looking for a particular story. The sound of ruffling pages filled the office until he came to a tale about a lonely female fox who stole one thousand secrets and transformed herself into a human so she could hide among the humans forever. Mor read the first few lines, then flipped the pages to skip ahead. A detailed painting of a fox offering her ruby to the sky filled a partially torn page. Her pure white hair was partway through turning nut-brown like a human’s; her reward for her one thousand secrets collected.

Mor slapped the book shut.

He rubbed his temples and leaned back against the desk.

Was Luc trying to become a human? But why? Mor tapped a finger along the book’s cover, taking in the silence of the room and the few articles Violet had left pegged to the walls.

“Do you know how long it took for me to convince the commanders to let me come here? How much talking, how much luring, how much baiting and convincing before I had the commanders wrapped around my finger at last?”

Luc had claimed he didn’t come to the human realm for Mor. And for the first time, Mor started to believe him.

“Queensbane,” he muttered, dropping the book back onto the desk. “Queens—bane.”

Luc was attempting to escape from the Shadow Army.

Mor had always wondered why in the name of the sky deities Luc had never killed him back in the Army when he’d had so many chances. And why the fox didn’t even stop Mor the day Mor trashed the cave and escaped when all that time Mor had been losing in his nightly fights against Luc. Luc had the skill to stop and kill Mor during his escape, yet he never lifted a finger.

But it wasn’t just that incident. Mor had to rethink every memory he had with the nine tailed fox. The one of Luc appearing at the nightly fights and challenging all the highest-ranking war fairies so no one remembered to challenge Mor anymore. The ones of Luc refusing to use the enhancement of his fox bead every time Mor challenged him to a fight. The one of Luc kicking him aside to take the punishment from Prince Reval alone for failing the troll mission…

Mor could hardly believe he hadn’t seen it. Could hardly imagine it to be true—that Luc Zelsor had possibly been protecting Mor since the beginning.

And Mor had tried to kill Luc when they’d crossed paths here. No wonder Luc wanted Violet and everyone Mor loved to suffer.

And perhaps…

Perhaps Mor deserved to suffer. But Violet didn’t—Violet didn’t deserve another day of torture in her whole human life.

Cress seemed to think Luc had run far away and was too afraid to lose more of his lives to approach the High Court of the Coffee Bean again. But if there was one thing Mor knew about nine tailed foxes, it was that they found it extremely difficult to let things go.

Violet stayed up all faeborn night baking those wretched muffins. It drove Mor crazy at first. The interns had fallen asleep with their faces pressed to the countertop by midnight; the male human’s arm was flung over the length of the counter. Mor came back every few minutes to check and see if Violet was finally finished with her baking masterpiece, but she never was.

Also, it bothered him a little that she was enchanted by him—compelled to want to be near him, to adore everything about him, to praise him like he was one of the sky deities themselves—and she hadn’t even come desperately running through the cathedral to find him once. It was nearly insulting. The enchanted kiss had been strong; he’d felt it. Violet must have had the willpower of a stubborn wild steed.

He’d finally given up and gone to take a shower.

Once clean, Mor sauntered into the kitchen, eyeing the four bowls of abandoned ingredients on the counter from where Violet had started mixing flour before giving up and starting over.

“You must be having a difficult time trying to stay away from me,” he guessed, putting as much sympathy into his voice as he could while he took in how much she’d trashed his kitchen. He’d likely be the one to have to clean it.

“Yes, Doom. I’m trying desperately to hate you,” she admitted.

It was painfully obvious that she was avoiding saying his name.

Mor nodded, drifting in a little closer. He stopped directly behind her where her floral scent engulfed him—then he thought better of it and scooted back. He pulled out a stool and sat at the island beside the sleeping male intern before Violet could notice how close he’d come.

A few words rolled to the end of his tongue to be said, but he sucked them all back in again, one by one. He scratched his head. He ran a hand through his hair. He flicked an abandoned spoon on the island.

“I made a mistake,” he blurted. He clasped his hands in front of him and squeezed them to near death.

Violet stopped her mixing. When she turned around, Mor nearly burst out laughing at the dollop of batter on the end of her pretty little human nose. “You think?” she said as she strangled the tea towel in her grip.

Mor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I understand you’re angry, but you’re enchanted, and you should be racing for me with all the rage and passion of a thousand gazelles—”

“Doom.” Violet said it coolly and straight-faced. “I liked being enchanted by Luc more.”

Mor slammed his mouth shut and stood. “What?”

“It hurt less than this.” She tossed the tea towel to the counter with an echoing slap and turned back to her mixing bowl. “You kissed me in front of my house, and then you left me forever. After I told you that I wanted to belong to you like a total idiot. You led me on then pushed me away. Who does that?”

“A pompous fae,” he answered. “One who’s doomed—”

“And then you dove into my memories and tore away suddenly like I had thirty contagious diseases, and you looked at me like… like…” Violet shook her head, unable to come up with anything. “And after that I got kidnapped! While we were apart!”

Mor wanted to go stand at the counter with her, but he sank back onto his stool again. “I’m not going to try and justify what I did. I know I hurt you when I left you to wake up alone. I did it because I thought Luc was after me and your proximity to me would get you killed, but I was wrong.”

Violet glanced back at him again with her batter-speckled face.

“He was after you,” Mor said, feeling the rush of nerves all over again. “He wanted you, Violet. Not because he thought you were my lover, but because he realized who you are.”

The batter spoon tumbled from Violet’s hand. She tried to catch it but it clattered to the floor, and the interns snorted and shuffled. Neither of them awoke. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, all the anger draining from her face, replaced by a flickering hope that twisted something in his chest. “Mor… did you find out who I was before?”

Mor stood again, shoving the stool away once and for all. He came to meet her by the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he swallowed. “I’m sorry, Violet, but you and I met before the day you came to my cathedral looking for a job. If you were ordinary, I might have sent you away and never thought about you again, but you had an aroma of fairy-meddling on you, and I think I accidentally kept you around because I wanted to know why.”

Violet blinked up at him doubtfully. “We’ve met before.” It was a question.

“The day before you woke up, you were taken from this realm and into the fairy one. You were brought to a feast for the Shadow Army in the Dark Corner of Ever. And you were saved by someone—a youthful male fairy who…” Mor forgot how to speak as her face changed.

“That boy…” she breathed. “I remembered him when I woke up from a strange dream yesterday. It wasn’t a dream though, was it?”

There’d been a moment in the parking lot after Mor had seen Violet’s memories, after he’d recognized her reflection in the window from her own recollection of the day she woke up in the forest, when Mor was sure he’d accidentally grappled a few strands of her lost memories and sent them back into her mind. He’d lost control—he’d wanted to scream. He hadn’t been able to stop himself, and he had no idea what pieces of her old self he’d given back from that terrible day in the Ever Corners he’d once paid a pauper to make her forget.

Mor swallowed and carefully took her flour-covered hands. “I was sixteen years of age. I was wearing black shells on my shoulders. My shoulders weren’t as broad, and my skin may have been lighter from living under a cloud, and my hair would have been short.”

A tear broke from Violet’s eye and skittered down her face. Mor swiped it away, a blend of things racing through him—mostly relief. He was sure Violet wouldn’t have believed this story if she didn’t have her own recollection of it.

Mor pulled her against him, wrapping his solid arms around her shoulders. There was nothing he wanted more in any realm than to keep her safe now. To tether her to him even. To never let anything happen to her like what had happened that day when she was among his Shadow Army division, and what had happened today when she’d been kidnapped by a Shadow Fairy all over again.

“I should have never left your side. Now that I know you’re who Luc is after, I won’t let go of you, Violet,” he said.

Violet’s arms slowly closed around him. Her fingers hesitantly dug into his shirt, taking handfuls in her fists like she was afraid to let go. “You want to stay together?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes. You belong to me now,” Mor promised. “You’re mine, Violet Miller.”

The morning crawled in with the smell of warm baking. Mor had just fallen asleep on the couch in the living space when the wild trumpet blasts of the oven rang through the cathedral. He started, flinging himself up to a sitting position and clutching his tiny little blanket. He slapped a hand over his faeborn chest and tossed the blanket aside, rising to stride to the kitchen. He was prepared to put an end to Violet’s manic baking and mixing and wasting of supplies and colossal destruction of his kitchen. But when he entered—seeing that the interns had finally been shaken awake after their long night’s sleep at the island—he saw Violet standing by the oven, holding a steaming tray of muffins in her mitten-covered hands.

She was beaming.

Perhaps he didn’t care about the kitchen or the wasted ingredients or whatever. He slid onto a stool beside the female intern this time. The intern was looking around like she was trying to remember where she was. She gasped and looked at the time telling device at her wrist.

“My parents are going to kill me,” she said.

The male intern’s eyes rounded. “Mine, too.”

“Here! Everyone try a muffin before you go!” Violet said, setting the tin on the counter and plucking out a few. After a moment of her teetering, during which time Mor became aware that Violet had failed to take her cold iron pills again, Violet popped the muffins onto a plate and carried it to the island. She slid into the seat beside the male intern and placed the glorious platter before Mor first. The smell was absolutely intoxicating, and Mor’s stomach grumbled at the sight of a fresh breakfast.

He took one and carefully peeled off the papery thing. Violet watched his every movement, linking her fingers together and resting her chin atop them with a smile. Mor had a feeling that if he played his cards right and made sure she knew he loved her muffins, she would bake breakfast every day of the week, and he would live in the luxury of waking to this delicious smell for the rest of his faeborn life.

Mor shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

He smiled around the pastry when Violet’s face lit up. He chewed a little. He stopped.

His face warped, and he tried not to cough.

Was that… salt he tasted?

A cough slipped out, and he covered it up with his fist. Was that some sort of crushed grass flavour?

He forced a wide smile over the glob of rot in his mouth.

It was the human realm’s worst mud mixed with the taste of horror and misery.

“Mmmm,” he said.

Violet sat up straighter. “Do you really like it?” She grinned.

Mor stared her dead in the eyes for a second. “Mhm.” He grunted the sound out, but he gagged a little, and Violet’s face changed.

She glanced at the plate of muffins. “Is there something wrong with them?” she asked, and Mor’s hand flashed out to the plate. He dragged the whole platter toward himself before she could take one, and he forced himself to swallow the fungus—he felt it slide all the way down his throat like a rock in sticky mud.

“They’re so good, I want them all,” he declared, hugging the plate to himself. “And I’m faeborn starving.”

“Mor, let me try one,” Violet demanded. She glanced to the female intern beside Mor. “Can you grab one for me?”

But Mor shook his head and yanked the platter away when the young female tried to reach for one. The intern got a determined look on her face and tried again, and it was then that Mor jumped to his feet and exited the kitchen with a dozen garbage-worthy muffins pressed against his chest.

“I’ll be in the office if you need me!” he shouted back.