5

Mor Trisencor and the TV that Told Secrets

Mor hadn’t bothered to take off his hooded jacket, even though it was rain-speckled. The cathedral was empty and cold, and all the candles remained unlit. Rather than warm up the space with light and a log-popping fire, draw a cozy blanket, pick up a book, and wedge his feet into his too-tight slippers, he’d gone to the old “TV” in the basement that the human internet had told him how to get working.

A piping hot tea was nestled into his fingers. He didn’t care for tea, but he knew if he drank coffee this late at night, he’d be up pacing and cleaning for hours instead of sleeping. And he might—he might—become weary and reckless enough to make a phone call. And that couldn’t happen.

So, tea it was. The herbal remedy was the only thing keeping him warm as he watched the pictures on the TV screen flicker. The TV reminded him of Cress. The fae Prince had always hogged the remote for the TV in the café, and then he’d gone as far as to hide it somewhere so no one else could take it. Truly, Mor had found it pleasant to have the TV all to himself these last months. Even if the cathedral did feel a little empty in the evenings.

Mor watched the humans babble their news for half an hour. There was no mention of the tormentor in the shadows haunting the city streets. For a single night, it seemed the human journalists had forgotten that a deadly beast was on the loose, regardless of how Mor had tried to warn them.

Mor sipped his tea and winced. Simply put: tea tasted like dirt. There was no sweetness in it whatsoever.

He set his mug on a low table and lifted the remote, his thumb on the “off” button. But he hesitated when a new face filled the screen.

A young human woman stood there with painted lips, deep coloured hair, soft green eyes, and a modest scatter of freckles mostly covered by thickly smeared cream paint.

“Isn’t that Violet Miller?” the on-screen reporters asked amongst themselves, and Mor’s pointed ears tilted toward the TV. He crept closer to the screen, eyeing the face he’d just looked into only hours ago in his bell tower.

Violet Miller. He wondered if that was her real name or just the pen name she used to write her articles. He’d never seen her face before to match with her name. His rival in journalism, yet… also his informant, even if she didn’t know it. Among a few others.

“Queensbane,” he cursed as he realized. If only she’d told him her name in the bell tower. He could have laughed if he wasn’t so curious about why she had come to his cathedral in the first place. When he’d first read her articles on The Sprinkled Scoop’s human internet pages, he’d imagined her to be old and wrinkled like a mature human who’d been writing for a long time. Not young. Not…

Pretty.

Mor nearly turned off the TV again as Violet Miller started addressing the reporters. Her eyelash paints ran down her cheeks as the rain soaked her face, her hair, her clothes. The journalists all brought out umbrellas to protect their cameras, but not a single one offered an umbrella to the shivering, sopping wet female before them.

Regardless, Violet Miller spoke with clear words, holding a confidence entirely the opposite of how she’d been in the bell tower when she crossed Mor. “Yes,” Violet Miller said in response to the chatter, looking right at the screen now. Seeming to look right at Mor. “I am the girl in the purple dress who woke up with no memories. I’ve also spent the last year of my life working at The Sprinkled Scoop as a journalist, reporting on whatever creep has been taking victims and haunting the streets of our city. Though I’m no longer with The Sprinkled Scoop, I plan to find the memory thief. I’m still going to stop him, and I’m still going to write about him from whichever news base I end up at.”

Ah. So that was why Violet Miller had come to his cathedral.

Mor found himself smiling. He tossed the remote back onto the table and folded his arms. He watched the human say several other things aimed at warding the reporters off. After a moment, she excused herself, but not before one last riveting statement:

“To the women-murdering predator of Toronto, I’ll say this: I’m coming for you.” The reporters went wild, snapping photos and asking new questions, but Violet Miller nodded her farewell and left. The news switched to a different story.

Mor tapped a finger against his chin. What a surprise.

Violet Miller wanted to find the monster of the city, while all the other humans seemed intent on avoiding him—the ruby-haired gumiho. The Shadow Fairy. The fox. The memory-stealing monster.

The one fairy in all of existence Mor had wanted to hide from for the rest of his faeborn life.

Fourteen years prior, the Shadow Army had come to the coastal village of Pane in the Dark Corner of Ever in search of childling recruits. Mor had been the only one from his village who’d volunteered to join. It wasn’t because he wanted to; it was because he knew a faeborn male or female from Pane would be required to enlist before the army would leave and move on to the next fairy village. While in Pane, the Shadow Army leaders had demanded the locals bring them fresh meat, sweet blossoms, baskets of vegetables, and everything else the folk of Pane had worked so hard to store all year.

Mor was the strongest childling fae in his town at eleven years of age. And though he was the most loved by the village fairy folk—those who worked alongside him gathering shellfish on the seashores especially—he was the only one without family. His aunt and uncle who raised him had passed on when the sniffle spell had rushed across the coast.

So, it was only natural for him to rescue the rest of the Pane childlings from such a fate and offer himself when there was a chance he would survive because of his strength. Most of the other young males or females from Pane either would have frozen to death in the mountains or would have been snapped in half in training.

The Shadow Army was not half as bad as the rumours had claimed. Training was hard in the days that followed Mor’s recruitment, but food was never scarce. With ripe white grapes and hogbeast meat to feed on, Mor grew stronger as he grew in years. And even though whispers moved through the Shadow Army that they were planning a war against the North Corner, Mor kept to himself and believed the army could not be so faeborn foolish as to actually go through with it and kill thousands of Northern fairies without just cause.

But as time went on, and he beheld the vicious nature of the Shadows, his belief began to wither away. Eventually, he feared a great deal that the Shadow Army would, in fact, attack the North Corner of Ever and slaughter thousands. All for the sake of a greed that Mor didn’t share.

Five faeborn years after the date of his recruitment, he was invited to dine among the army elites where there was feasting, shouting, cheering, and marvels each night.

Mor went, but he never ate their feast food.

He never shouted their praises.

He never cheered alongside the other army elites.

He did not watch the marvels.

He waited.

And when the time was right, he destroyed them all.