Page 65 of Welcome to Fae Cafe

He also forgot how to breathe when she intervened in Shayne and Dranian’s petty male fight at the human bookshop. Cress watched it from the window with fire in his blood. He wanted to smack Shayne and Dranian for being such faeborn-cursed fools.

Cress twisted the yarn in his pocket between his fingers as he observed them all tumble from the bookstore entrance like a pack of messy swamp-loons. Shayne had blood in his teeth.

Kate Kole parted from his brothers and fluttered off in the other direction despite Mor’s shouting. Cress stalked after her with several cold words cooling the tip of his tongue. He had warned her. He had been clear. Yet still his brothers were cleaning up after humans, attending human functions, and forgetting their true place among the dignified fairies. Forgetting that they were trained killers created to show little mercy in a hunt.

After a few blocks, a store came into view and Cress stopped walking. Smells of tea and sweets flooded the street from it, but most potently… the itchy scent of cursed fairy yarn tickled his nose. Kate trotted up the front steps.

Cress marched to the front door and grabbed Kate Kole before she could go inside. She released a quiet gasp when he pulled her backward, shoved her aside, and went in himself.

His deadly turquoise gaze fell over the group of females nestled together with magic in the air and yarn on their fingers.

Assassins.

Of course.

No wonder his human target had been able to enslave his brothers. Cress wanted to laugh at the lovely revelation. Kate Kole was not cleverer than him.

Seconds later, Cress took the sisters down two at a time right in the dreaded middle of the human street, but the treacherous members of the Sisterhood of Assassins kept getting back up. They beat him, only by a miracle of the sky deities, with claws and needles and wills of iron. They forced him into an alley, and there Cress laid his head back as the dizzy, endless dark came to steal him. But thenhervoice sailed in against the black waves, plunging into his mind and releasing ripples through his thoughts.

“Wait!” she screamed before the Sisterhood killed him. And that had been enough.

Cress stifled a moan as the heartache rushed in, worse than any puncture in his flesh. For the first time, he was too weak to deny his wants. When she came to him, he begged her to stay like a fool who deserved to lose his tongue.

23

Prince Cressica and the Present Issue of Ouchies

One could learn a lot from watching people. If you watched them long enough, you’d learn their habits, their hearts’ desires, their instincts, the little things they do when they think no one is looking. Cress had stalked many foes, hunted them to the darkest corners of the North and beyond. He had slayed giants, disbanded armies of elves, and he had taken down evil fairy Kings. He had killed great serpents, travelled to distant mountains, and swam to the bottom of the Jade Ocean. And there, in all those places, he had watched. It was his greatest skill—to be a silent presence in a shadow, a mere breath on the wind. To be the invisible beast of nightmares, the monster under the bed of his enemy, the evil hiding in the closet at night. Always watching and waiting for his moment to strike. He had trapped many prey after learning about their evils, their ploys, and their attempts to invade or overthrow the High Court of the North. He was an information-gathering assassin.

An assassin whose heart had nearly been cut out by a knitting needle because of a human he’d learned far too much about.

Warm light kissed Cress’s eyelids. He grimaced as he tried to remember where he was. When he opened his eyes, he saw peeling white paint on a dull square ceiling, not the muralled artwork of the faeborn artists of the Silver Castle.

Memories of a fight flashed through his mind—flying knitting needles and an old fairy female snapping the bones in his fingers. He dragged himself up to sit, his brows furrowing.

A thick yellow blanket covered him, tucked in around his feet. A cold mug of tea rested on the bedside table.

Cress could hear Thelma hobbling around downstairs. He vaguely recalled knocking on the front door of her home. She’d answered just as he’d collapsed a blood-spattered mess in her entryway.

When Cress pulled the blankets off, he saw that his pants were rolled up and white bandages wrapped his legs. He remembered snapping his fingers back into place and feeling the bones meld back together before he fell asleep. Thelma had gone pale-faced.

Cress turned his leg to see the old woman’s work. He imagined Thelma’s shaking hands bandaging him up while he slept. He had never been taken care of by anyone apart from castle healers before. If he’d shown up in such a condition before Queene Levress, she would have laughed and sent him off with a promise she’d have him killed if he didn’t get better before she needed him next.

Cress didn’t want to think about the Queene now though. He took in the quiet room, sniffing the healing ointment in the air. He could also smell…

He inhaled a whiff of his shirt and winced.

A moment later he entered Thelma’s kitchen and announced, “I could use a bath.”

Thelma whipped around from the sink where she washed berries. “Heavens, you scared the life out of me!” she accused. She lifted her spectacles off the counter and put them on to look him over. “You look pretty good considering the condition you showed up in.”

“I’m exceptional at self-healing,” he bragged.

Thelma made a doubtful face, but she returned her spectacles to the countertop and went back to her berries. “You’ve been asleep for two days. You can’t be that good at self-healing.”

Cress’s face fell. “What?” He staggered toward her a step. “Did you saytwo days?”

“I sure did, son. Now go get cleaned up. You can help me with the strawberry pie when you’re done since you seem to have your energy back. I don’t want to know what happened to you though. Keep your crook friends and crimes out of this house.”

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