Page 120 of Welcome to Fae Cafe

A crooked smile found the fairy. “I don’t think a bargain is needed,” he said, his gaze still on Cress. “I will do this as a gift to my future wife. Consider it done.”

Cress shook his head. “No, do not let him out of your sight—”

Bonswick vanished, and Cress punched the cage bar. “Haven!” he growled. “You cannot trust that fool of the East! Why do you think he refused the bargain?! He will try to outsmart you!”

Haven’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yes. He will try.”

“How can you marry such a faeborn fool?” Cress asked. He paced in his cell. He could hardly keep himself from trying to kick through the iron bars.

“Because this is how I ensure that the North stays mine,” she said, folding her delicate, pale arms and pinching the ends of her white hair. “You would have ruled over me, remember? Bonswick is someone I can keep under my thumb if I wish. I will rule the North Corner, directly below my mother. Bonswick will simply fill the space as my faeborn husband.”

Cress shook his head. “He won’t just do that. He won’t do what you asked, either. He’s probably in the human realm…” He released an anguished sound. “Sky deities have mercy, he’s probably…”

“Prepare yourself, Cressica,” Haven said, then bit down on her finger until a bead of her fairy blood rolled down it. She touched the bloodlock put in place by Levress, and the lock snapped open. “Your entire Brotherhood will try to kill you the moment you step out of here. I will give you twenty seconds before I scream the alarm that you’ve escaped.”

The gilded cell bars slid to the side, revealing a wide-open door, and Cress blinked, certain he was imagining it.

He slowly stepped out of the cell, and the servants shuffled away, cowering. When no one rushed to stop him, he looked down at Haven with hard eyes. “I thought I grew up without a family. I suppose I was wrong,” he said.

“Ten seconds,” Haven said, and Cress’s face changed. She slapped his fairsaber handle into his palm.

Cress whirled and raced down the dungeon aisle, past the blazing fire, and up the glass stairs. He barely made it to the top when Haven’s shrill scream tore through the air like a winged leafbird, flapping its way into every hall and room of the Silver Castle, alerting every powerful and wicked fairy that he had escaped.

Cress grunted, drawing his fairsaber blade. “That wasnotten seconds,” he muttered. He took three more steps before a fairy wearing the replica of his uniform drifted around the corner. The assassin was familiar—all of the Brotherhood would be. Cress’s jaw hardened, and he forced himself to forget the fairy’s name, and where the fairy came from, and to simply fight.

Their fairsabers collided, and Cress kicked the fairy backward into the crystal wall, then turned light and leapt into the air. The assassin hurled a pin dagger at Cress flying over him. Cress batted it away as he landed on the other side.

A shuffle sounded around the crystal corner. Three more of Cress’s assassins filled the hallway. Cress looked at his brothers to his left, then at the one remaining on his right.

It was a flash of silver as they all struck at once.

Cress took a slice in his abdomen.

He took another in his thigh.

He was dripping fairy blood from his shoulder when he staggered off, leaving the four assassins as weak fairy bodies on the floor, his only consolation that they would meld their bones back together and heal over time.

Assassins lined the hallways all the way out of the Silver Palace. It was a battle of strong iron blades and stronger iron wills.

When Cress emerged into the courtyard a mess of swollen eyes, abattered lip, and too many stinging cuts to count, he found the yard filled with dozens of his brothers in the black garments of the North Brotherhood.

Too many.

Far too many.

Cress twisted his fairsaber in his grip and dug in his heels.

Ash and wind rumbled over the grass as he charged. He knew their every move. He had learned alongside these fairies and taught some of them himself. But when he tripped on a starbud bush, landing on its midnight-blue petals, he squeezed shut his eyes and braced for the death stab that was coming.

A second passed. Cress heard heavy breathing around him.

“Get up, Cressica,” a low faeborn voice commanded.

Cress peeled one eye open to see the blade of Thorne—fellow assassin teacher—at his throat. The assassin was not tilting it to run Cress through.

“Kill me,” Cress invited, looking from assassin to assassin. “End this misery I’ve found.”

Still, they waited.

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