Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
“ C ass—” I broke off because when he glanced at me, there was something in his eyes, some softness that I had never seen there before. How much had he heard? Had he heard me defending him like a fool? Or had he only heard what my mother said?
“You’re right. That is the prize I came here to seek, but you’ll find it’s not something that can so easily be caught.” Cassander smirked and pointed at my mother’s hand. “As you will soon find out.”
My mother turned quickly, frowning, because the coin was gone. I reached into my pocket, pulling it out. This thing was worse than a boomerang. At this point, I was sure I could launch it into space on a NASA rocket and still end up with it under my pillow like a gift from a demented tooth fairy.
“What is that thing?” my mother demanded, but she wasn’t asking me. “What did you bring my son into, fae?”
“Mom, what?—”
But my mother wasn’t looking at me, and Cassander grinned, sharp, his teeth lengthening, his eyes going bright silver, ears sharpening in the corners.
Before he could finish, I was over across the room, pressing him against the wall, my hand at his throat, my other hand yanking his behind his back. He went easily, letting me push him around. And that was enough evidence for me that this wasn’t a real threat so much as a defensive, a desperate desire not to be exposed for what he was to my mother.
“We good, Your Majesty?” I asked.
His eyes caught mine, flashing in amusement.
“It’s ‘Your Highness,’ actually,” he said. He shook his head but didn’t try and pull away. For several seconds, I stared at him, drinking in the parts of him that were different, the eyes that I had already seen once before, but now also the teeth and the threat in the way his lips pulled back.
“We good?” I kept my voice low.
He dipped his head in a nod, and I stepped back, staying close.
“How did you know?” Cassander asked my mother.
“You think you are the first one I’ve seen?” My mother shook her head. Then she came close, dropping her voice to a breath of air. “The spirits whisper about you.”
My stomach dropped out, the same way it had a few minutes earlier when my mother revealed that my father had been working for Silas Milner.
“Mom. You know about magic?” I wasn’t sure what else to ask. What did she know? Did she use magical artifacts when she was pulling her cons? How—why hadn’t she told us?
“I know a lot of things.” My mother frowned at me. “Just like I know you’re going to follow him farther than you should.”
She sucked on her teeth, clicking her tongue. After a long beat, she leaned forward, patting my cheek and pulling me down so she could press a kiss to my forehead.
“You like to pretend you’re not at all like me, but you’re much more my son than your father’s. I could see your father for what he was a mile away. And you can read this man just as well as I can.” My mother heaved a sigh, then stepped out the door, letting the screen slam shut behind her.
I frowned, looking after my mother, but the closed door was a cipher, and I was fresh out of keys from my morning cereal box.
“Is that true?” Cassander asked, something soft and uncertain in his voice.
“Is what true?” I played it off, let my body language go loose, turning it into a joke when it was the last thing from it. “That I’m happy to choose you when you’re pressed against me? Yeah. That’s true.”
“No. What you told your mother.” Cassander tilted his head, and his features faded back to human as he examined me. “That you trust me.”
I felt pulled toward him, and I leaned in. I let my lips ghost over his. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why you decided to stay with me, why you decided to save the kids and save me when you could have run. But you did. And that means something to me.”
“It was nothing,” Cassander said.
“It wasn’t, and we both know that. You could have watched Iris kill me and taken the coin off my body,” I said. I hadn’t pressed him before. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to know. I knew he was magic, but how could I continue to touch him when he was going to tell me something that would destroy my world? “So, cards on the table. What’s going on?”
“Cards on the table?” Cassander asked, raising his eyebrow. “Will you make a deal with me? You’ll reveal your secrets in exchange for mine?”
“Even I have heard what a bad idea it is to make deals with the fae.” I cocked my eyebrow. “Grimm has a whole section on it. Tam Lin ended up trapped for thousands of years, right?”
“Would you come rescue me from my service to the fae queen?” Cassander challenged, his eyes on mine. “Would you hold me no matter what form I took?”
“Is that who owns your service?” I asked. “The fae queen?”
“No.” Cassander’s eyes flashed silver, his face as sharp as a knife, and god, did I want to cut myself on it. Maybe Dr. Aston was right about my lack of self-preservation.
What was it when I knew Cassander was a bad idea, that I knew I shouldn’t want him like I did, and I still couldn’t resist him? When every part of him made me want to curl into him and take care of him and find out if he’d be able to take care of me.
Okay, wonky self-preservation aside, I had to know what I was getting into. There was what Dr. Aston thought was a “lack of emotional ability to separate the job from his own concept of self-worth,” and then there was plunging over a cliff without a parachute and hoping that no pits full of spikes were underneath.
“Tell me,” I said.
Cassander tilted his head. “What do you want to know?”
“What are you?” I asked.
“Your mother already told you what I am.”
“The fae aren’t real,” I said. “They’re literally fairy tales . Disney has made billions on Tinkerbell, but she isn’t any more real than Dumbo.”
“Well, until you see two giant ears on my head, I was never claiming to be Dumbo .” Cassander reached up, brushing hair off my face.
“Just a deposed fae prince.” I inhaled, and it was like I could smell the magic on him, lighting up my senses, lighting my skin with his flickers of firefly light.
“Just a deposed fae prince.” He closed his eyes. “A man you shouldn’t trust because he’ll steal you away forever.”
Around us, the world shimmered, the fireflies surrounding us, but I only had eyes for Cassander.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I whispered against his lips. “Stealing me forever?”
When I kissed him, the entire world was condensed down to the feel of his lips on mine, the way his hands fisted in my shirt, the soft, desperate hitch of his breath.
Around us, the air cooled, Cassander’s skin scalding hot. He whimpered, and I felt it in my chest. When he touched me, I could feel it in every nerve ending, and every hair stood on end.
For the first time since I had left home at eighteen, young and stupid and desperate for something other than the life I knew, I had met someone worth staying for. Someone snarky, and hard, and wonderful. Someone who challenged me and challenged my expectations.
“Wait. So, you’re a fae prince, but how do you know about Dumbo ?” I pulled back, my hands framing Cassander’s perfect face.
His expression melted into puzzled amusement. “The fae—all supernatural creatures, really—exist alongside your world. Of course we know about your movies. I saw the movie when it first came out.”
“What do you mean?” I blinked. “How long have you been alive?”
He tilted his head. “Longer than you. Do you really want to know?”
“How can you exist alongside us? Someone would know. The SPA would know.” I pulled back, blinking when I realized we weren’t in my mother’s living room anymore.
The night sky spread out above us, a billion stars. There was nothing like the desert at night. I had spent my whole life looking up at the sky and knowing I was home by just how many stars I could see.
We were far out in the desert, the lights of Desert Flower distant glimmers. When I looked at Cassander, he seemed bioluminescent, gleaming like starlight.
“Perhaps someone does know.” Cassander looked up at the night sky, and the stars dipped down, wrapping themselves around him. I took a step back. He was a whirlwind of magic. “There was a time when we walked freely among you, freely among your people. Yes, that time has passed, but it was not as long ago as you believe. Whether or not your SPA knows about it, that I can’t say. Humans are largely ignorant when they choose to be.”
“So, what? You have jobs? You go to bars and join fantasy football leagues?” I looked him over, but he knew too much; he was too familiar with humanity to have spent much of his life apart from us. Moreover, I remembered the clothes he had provided, the elegant cut, the expensive taste. That sort of thing was specific to humans, to our time.
“Not exactly. We exist where you cannot see us. We take great pains to be invisible to the authorities of your world. Our own councils and governments run secretly alongside yours. To survive as long as we have requires extreme wealth. And with that wealth comes privacy. Our kind rarely brushes elbows with humans any more than a billionaire would run into your sister at a Walmart.” He looked at me, and his silver eyes gleamed in the darkness. I shook my head slowly, and his lips spread, a smile forming on his face.
Then, with slow fingers, he reached out. He caressed my cheek, his thumb stroking under my eye. “Would you like to see?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. I did want to see. I wanted to know what he was, how he could be what he was, and, more importantly, I was desperate to find out about a world that existed without me knowing about it.
“I have your consent?” He asked it slowly, waiting for my answer. I nodded, and his smile spread. “A pact has been struck. I will show you the world as it is for me in exchange for you observing it honestly.”
I frowned. I didn’t like where this was going, but it was too late. Cassander reached up with his hand, stroking from my forehead down my face, his fingertips brushing over my closed eyelids.
“Observe.” His voice was a command, and I blinked open my eyes, only to gasp in wonder.
The desolate desert gleamed with flickering lights, brilliant yellows and blues, purples and oranges that danced from cactus to yucca plants to spin up into the sky, swirling around each other until I couldn’t even see them. One landed nearby, and I crouched down to look.
It was a small creature, humanoid, her face a flicker of light, the eyes more brilliant than the rest of her skin. I gaped, then reached out, and she smiled, extending her hand for me.
Before I could touch her, a massive creature dug its way out of the rocky desert soil. It looked like some cross between a Gila monster and a snake, its long tail lingering in the hole it had dug. It opened its mouth, sharp teeth curved like blades, and snapped up the small glowing humanoid creature whole.
I jumped back, but the lizard seemed to have no interest in me, retreating back into its hole.
I stared. How often had I walked around here and noticed holes like this and assumed a groundhog or lizard dug them?
“What are these?” I gestured to the lights. Every time I blinked, I expected them to disappear, but I could see them dancing even in the distance, brilliant rainbow colors spinning around each other.
“Sprites,” Cassander said dismissively. “A pest that has been allowed to take over from the local population of pixies. Normally, the local dragon would keep them in check. But it appears he has let them proliferate.”
“Dragon?” I gaped at him. “What else is real?”
“Lots of things.” He raised an eyebrow. “If I would ask you to name all the creatures in the world, could you do it?”
I shook my head slowly.
“Then assume I cannot also name all the creatures alive in the world.” But Cassander’s smile was gentle. I was a foreigner stumbling around in the dark, trying to find the sign marked “exit” when I didn’t speak any of the language.
“So, things like this are common in cities too?” I waited.
He nodded. “Different, yes, but the same. In cities, they are forced to adapt more, as foxes and coyotes do when their wilderness becomes cities. They blend, they hide. Or, as the pixies and sprites, they are simply invisible. Have you ever lost something you know you just put down? A pen or a key?”
I frowned, opening my mouth, thinking about all the times I’d chalked it up to forgetfulness after a long mission.
“Elves. Or sprites who have adapted to city life.” Cassander pointed to himself. “We are there. We exist in the cracks. People fail to see what they don’t want to.”
I blinked again, trying to make sense of it. “So, there are whole cities inside the ones we live in? Whole nations that exist?”
“Kingdoms,” Cassander corrected. “Empires.”
I breathed out, taking a step back, not quite pushing him away, but holding him at arm’s length. “The SPA must know.”
He shrugged, and I looked around again. The SPA knew, but what did that change? Did it change anything about my missions? About my exile? I rubbed my eyes.
“We should get back. Can you take us back?” I looked at him expectantly.
The glimmers of light on his face flickered high on his cheekbones. He was blushing.
“No.” He shook his head, raising his chin, trying to look regal. “Unfortunately, I didn’t bring us here consciously, and the amount of magic I have left leaves me somewhat at a deficit.”
“You’re out of juice.” I looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. “You’re out of juice, and you dropped us in the middle of the desert. It’s going to get cold.”
I could already feel it, the chill of the air, now that the adrenaline and excitement of kissing him had passed.
“As I said. It wasn’t voluntary. Our kiss affected me in an unexpected way.” He raised his chin. “You should be pleased. It is rare that I find a mortal so distracting.”
I raised both eyebrows, then laughed. “I should be pleased ? Exactly how many other mortals have you been enjoying like this?”
“Perhaps we can walk back.” Cassander turned, beginning to walk deeper into the desert, but I grabbed his hand, tugging.
“I think there’s a road this way.”
As we walked, picking our way carefully through the rough terrain, the low shrubs and short grass making the journey difficult, Cassander looked over at me.
“Would you like me to take it away?”
Immediately, I shook my head. I might not have known about this, and it might bring up more questions than I wanted the answers to, but the difference between knowing and not knowing meant everything. Knowing meant I wasn’t choosing to be ignorant, choosing a life where I closed my eyes because it was uncomfortable.
“Tell me about your brother. About your kingdom or… is it an empire ?”
Cassander sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I think we have time.” I gestured to the nothingness.
At least the walking was keeping our blood going. As soon as we stood still, the cold would get us. We had finally reached a road, but it was two-lane, and no one seemed to be driving down it at night. We began walking toward Desert Flower, and I squeezed his hand.
“The story of my empire. All right.” He took a deep breath. “Everyone knew my mother was mad. She was known for it. The Mad Empress. Our empire extended from one end of Europe to the other, but during her reign, the other courts picked at our borders, and she would react with such violence and cruelty that we gained territory but lost good soldiers, decent fae to her insanity and greed.”
“And then she died?” I asked.
“And then she died. And although I was the true heir and my brother was a bastard my mother’s consort sired with another from her court… Well. He was much more princely. He had the manners. The pedigree. His mother was not mad.” Cassander’s voice was tight, and his face, briefly illuminated in headlights, looked tired. I reached up but then frowned.
Headlights. Looking forward, I saw a car in the distance and waved my hand, trying to get the driver’s attention.
It slowed as it approached, then stopped a distance ahead. I couldn’t see who got out of the driver’s side and had a sinking feeling that my luck had turned again. The coin was taking its due for the good luck we had rescuing the kids. It was going to be Iris or one of her henchmen.
Instead, Officer Choi called out, “Damian Reyes. What are you doing all the way out here?”