4

Cressica Alabastian and What Happened

Two Faeborn Months Ago

Cress stopped talking when Dranian rolled his eyes. The fae Prince tightened his grip on the rolling pin, quite certain it had transformed into a weapon in his hand in the last seconds. After a brief debate in his royal faeborn mind, Cress dropped the rolling pin onto the table where a scatter of flour, charmed almonds, and other baking supplies rested in view of the camera in Dranian’s strong assassin fingers. The pin released a loud clatter through the café and shook the presentation table.

“What?” Cress demanded. “Do you wish to lose your eyes? I know my cooking show isn’t boring. My ten thousand internet subjects—”

“You mean your subscribers?” Dranian mumbled.

“—are all the evidence I need. Humans like watching a deadly assassin bake things. So, if I catch you rolling your eyes again, Dranian Evelry, you’ll be the next thing I use the eggbeater on.”

A low growl lifted from Dranian’s throat, but the fairy assassin reluctantly went back to his filming, keeping his eyes steady.

Cress cleared his throat to begin his show again. “Now, as I was saying, roll out the fat dough clump—”

“Why must I be the one to do this?” Dranian’s monotone voice interrupted again. “You should get Shayne to film your cooking show for the humans.”

“Shayne said he was busy, Mor still hasn’t returned from the secret mission he refuses to tell us about, our human females are away on Kate’s book tour, and Kate’s-brother-Greyson is with Shayne in whatever unbeknownst corner of the human world he’s run off to. I had no other option for an assistant but the faeborn fool before me who can’t keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. Now help me finish Cookery with A Fae Prince so we can both be on our way. That’s a command.”

“By fairy law, you can’t command me anymore, Your Highness.” Dranian was growling again. “Shayne is the King of our new High Court. Didn’t you see his announcement?” the fairy asked as he jabbed his thumb into the camera’s button.

It was Cress who rolled his eyes this time. As he did, his gaze settled on the window, through which humans milled back and forth, some stopping at the breakfast tavern across the road in small herds. “That is preposterous. I wonder what our alleged High King is doing right now anyway that was so important he needed to steal Kate’s-brother-Greyson and leave me with the grumpiest fairy in all of existence?” the Prince asked.

“We could go spy on him,” Dranian suggested with a shrug.

Cress’s mouth twisted to the side as he thought about that. “You’re chatty today,” he commented, dragging his gaze back inside. He debated. Then he said, “And that’s an excellent idea. I think I like it when you’re chatty.”

A newspaper was left on one of the bistro tables by the window, sticking out from beneath one of Kate’s novels. Cress sauntered over to it, eyeing the paper’s title. It was Mor’s latest scroll of articles. Even though Mor had been scribing The Fairy Post for months now, Cress hadn’t bothered to read any of them. Mor’s writing was horrendous. It was an outrageous expectation for a gifted poet-prince to be forced to read measly information articles. But his curiosity got the better of him when he spied a black and white painting on the newspaper’s cover with the title: ‘WARNING TO HUMANS AND FAIRIES ALIKE’ below it. He nudged the book out of the way to see the picture in full, and what he saw made him draw back a step.

A painting of a fairy filled the front of The Fairy Post, though the bottom half of his face was covered with a black mask. The creature’s eyes were shadowed with a certain violent hunger that dug old memories out from the places Cress had buried them deep within his faeborn soul. The fairy’s ears were strikingly pointed. And if he had to guess, Cress imagined the creature’s eyes were brown and laced with a ribbon of silver, though the black and white picture could promise no such thing for certain.

“Queensbane,” Cress muttered. “What exactly was Mor working on when he left us two weeks ago?” He turned to face Dranian still by the camera with a new worry in his fairy bones.

Dranian’s face didn’t change much—not even curiosity could move the fairy’s ever-scowl—but he walked to where Cress was and glanced at the newspaper. Cress heard the change in Dranian’s tone when he mumbled, “Who in the name of the sky deities is that?”

“Perhaps we should go find our High King,” Cress said, tucking The Fairy Post under his arm. The Prince looked up at the street again with fresh eyes. “I’m curious if he’s gotten through to Mor.”

Cress gaped up at the large sign hanging before the congregation of humans that read: HOTDOG EATING CONTEST.

“This is not more important than my cooking show!” Cress growled. “Where is our High King? He’s due for a royal beating!” As he said it, Cress spotted Shayne marching onto the dais with a wide grin where eight thrones were evenly spaced apart before a long feasting table. Seven large, jiggly humans walked up alongside him, and Cress bristled at the sight of his white-haired assassin parading among them.

Humans began to laugh.

“Get off the stage, muscles!” an audience member shouted, and Cress eyed the man in the blue hat. It seemed the human’s jest had been directed toward Shayne. Cress glanced back to the stage to find Shayne taking a seat on one of the thrones. “Can you believe that guy? What is he, a CrossFit champion? He’s not even going to finish his first hotdog. What an idiot,” the human in the hat added.

Cress’s cold, turquoise gaze narrowed on the human.

“Should I go stop Shayne before he embarrasses—”

“Let’s sit,” Cress interrupted Dranian. He kept his eyes pinned to the back of the human’s blue hat as he weaved through the chairs and took the seat directly behind. That hat was where Cress’s lethal gaze stayed as platters of hotdogs were carried out and laid before each human—and Shayne—at the feasting table.

“You guys came! Cool.” Kate’s-brother-Greyson appeared and scooted into the seat beside Cress. “I was going to do this,” he explained, “but Shayne wanted to compete so badly that I let him have my spot.” The human grinned. “I had to beg the people running the contest to get gluten free buns for Shayne though. They weren’t happy about it. And Shayne still complained that the bread would kill him, but I convinced him he wouldn’t have an allergic reaction to—”

Dranian stood up so fast, his chair toppled over behind him and into the humans in the next row. “Your Majesty!” he shouted over the group in a panicked tone. “Don’t eat the bread!”

Shayne waved when he spotted Dranian. But what he didn’t do was keep himself from stuffing his face with bread-coated-meat-tubes the moment a whistle was blown.

Cress and Dranian watched in horror as Shayne slid not one, not two, not three, but twelve hotdogs down his faeborn throat in a matter of minutes, leaving the rest of the humans in the contest behind. “How repulsive,” Cress said. “This competition is utterly horrifying.”

“Yeah.” Kate’s-brother-Greyson grinned and leaned back in his chair with folded arms.

“Wow,” was all the human in the blue hat in front of them had to say about Shayne’s performance.

Cress released a gloating grunt. “He’s my friend,” he loudly announced. “Well, actually, he’s my subject. Some would think it’s the other way around—” he cut a glance at Dranian “—but—”

“Shhh!” Kate’s-brother-Greyson smacked Cress’s knee and leaned forward with a wild expression as the contest came to its conclusion. When a bell rang and those on the stage stopped eating, Kate’s-brother-Greyson jumped to his feet, thrust his fists into the air, and released a magnificent battle cry over the throng.

A human judge climbed the dais stairs at the front as the crowd clapped and cheered. Cress sighed and joined in, slapping his hands together in the odd human fashion. When the judge announced Shayne as the winner and brought Shayne to stand before the audience, Cress cheered a little. He kept his satisfied smile on, casting subtle glares at the blue-hat-human in the row ahead, until Shayne leaned forward an inch with a pale face and a strange look.

The fairy loudly barfed.

Humans in the front row screamed and wrestled out of their chairs to run as the incident turned projectile.

Kate’s-brother-Greyson turned white.

Cress laughed.

Somewhere in the crowd, a vomit-soaked female was shouting threats at Shayne. A contest banner was ripped down as panicked humans tried to run in too many directions.

Dranian was plugging his nose when Cress looked in the rearview mirror. Cress felt an ounce of sympathy for the fool, knowing that of all his assassins, Dranian had the most acute sense of smell.

The Prince drove Shayne’s chariot on wheels back toward the café, holding his breath while Shayne moaned and dozed off in the back seat. Finally, Cress couldn’t take it anymore.

“That is a ghastly smell, Shayne!” he roared. He was sure he needed to roll down the window and spew at the next car passing by himself. “Can you not… hold it in?”

“Hold it in? What in the name of the sky deities are you talking about? You want me to hold in my smell?” Shayne asked.

Kate’s-brother-Greyson released a snort-laugh. He was the lucky one who got to sit up front with Cress. Dranian was trapped in the back with the hotdog monster.

The rearview mirror filled with flashes of red and blue, and Cress eyed it suspiciously for a while until Kate’s-brother-Greyson seemed to notice them.

“Woah! You need to pull over, Cress,” the human said.

“Pull what over?”

“The car! You’re getting pulled over!” Kate’s-brother-Greyson pointed toward the side of the road, so Cress inched the car that way and crawled it to a stop. “Put your window down,” the human added when Cress sat there and did nothing.

Cress sighed, thinking only of a hot shower that might rid him of Shayne’s horrid smell. He hit the button and the window lowered. A human police officer was already standing on the other side, waiting.

“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?” the officer asked.

Cress raised a brow. “Precisely as fast as I wanted to. Why?”

“Were you speeding, Cress? You’re not supposed to go fast. It’s against the law here,” Shayne mumbled from the back seat.

The officer leaned to look in the window. The fairy assassins lounged around, waiting for this encounter to be over. Dranian was still plugging his nose, and Shayne was covered in faeborn-cursed vomit. Kate’s-brother-Greyson, though, looked frozen and panicked beneath the officer’s stare.

“You weren’t speeding,” the officer told Cress. “You were holding up traffic.”

“Holding up…” Cress blinked. “Are you trying to tell me I was going too slow?!”

“Yes. Way too slow. This is a busy city, and you’re going to cause an accident if you drive like that. Can I have your license and registration, please?” The officer eyed the fairies in the back seat.

“I don’t have any of that nonsense. It’s for humans,” Cress announced. Kate’s-brother-Greyson slapped a hand over his eyes and pursed his lips.

Finally, Shayne leaned forward to help. He nodded toward Cress. “Don’t worry about him, Officer Alwing. He’s got several raging human mental illnesses.”

The officer raised a brow in concern. “Does he?”

“Just let Officer Lily Baker deal with this. She knows all about his… condition,” Shayne added, and Cress turned around to glare into the back seat.

“You know Officer Baker?” the police officer said.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Shayne lied, flashing his lovely fairy smile.

The officer blinked at Shayne for a moment, and his own aged face broke into a smile. “Shayne!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you back there. The last time I saw you, you were all dressed up and… wearing shoes.”

“Lovely to see you again, officer.” Shayne slumped back in the seat and forced another smile onto his exhausted, sick face.

“Are you coming to our department hockey game this summer? I’m sure we could use you on the team—”

“If you don’t mind, we’ll be leaving now. I have a bath to take,” Cress stated.

“I’ll be there, Officer Alwing. Tell Lily I say hi when you see her!” Shayne called as Cress slid the window back up. Cress pulled the chariot back onto the road, leaving the dumbstruck officer behind.

“Queensbane,” Dranian muttered to Shayne. “She’s going to kill you.”

Shayne nodded. “Yes, she will try. I suppose I better not fall asleep tonight, lest she poison the coffee before we all drink it in the morning.”

Kate’s-brother-Greyson stared ahead with wide eyes, not moving a muscle. “Yeah,” was all he managed to squeak out after a few minutes. “Lily’s going to kill you for sure.”

Cress debated about waiting until Kate’s-brother-Greyson was gone before he got down to fairy business, but the rolled-up Fairy Post beside his seat must have been enchanted to make him obsess over it at all moments.

“Take a look at this,” he said, abandoning his worry about the human and tossing the newspaper back to his brothers in the rear seat. Shuffling and sounds of paper-wrinkling followed.

“I’m making a decree,” Cress stated when he imagined Shayne had seen the depiction of the Shadow Fairy. “I know full well Mor told us to stay away in his last message. I thought he needed a break from work, but this is something else entirely. This is something my royal gut is telling me will get him killed. The three of us…” He glanced over at Kate’s-brother-Greyson who listened with a quizzical brow. “…the four of us, I suppose,” he corrected, “are now entering into a fairy match. We need to convince Mor to return at all costs. Whichever one of us manages to get him back before it’s too late will earn a great reward. But I know Mor. He’s sensitive about Shadow Fairies,” he added. “If he realizes we’re going after him, he’ll grow afraid we’ll get involved, and he’ll disappear. So, I beg you; be discreet.”

Kate’s-brother-Greyson raised his hand and left it in the air. It seemed as though he had questions of his own to ask, but Cress wasn’t really sure if that’s what the gesture meant.

“Why would Mor try to handle this himself?” Shayne asked first from the back seat. “Does he think just because he’s a Shadow he needs to go head-to-head with this fellow?”

“What reward?” Dranian mumbled too quietly for anyone to really hear.

“He can only have one reason to go it alone,” Cress answered Shayne. His grip tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “He must know who this Shadow is.”