Page 9 of Welcome to Fae Cafe

Shadow encompassed the yard. Without lifting a faeborn finger, Cress summoned ink-black clouds overhead; they rolled in like black waves off the Jade Ocean, blotting out the sun and turning the day to dusk. The grass at the Prince’s feet curled in, crisping to ash, and the breeze laced with frost.

Bonswick’s lips turned blue as he shivered. The fairy’s hair fluttered while he prowled around Cress.

“You don’t impress me, Prince.” Bonswick flicked his fingers and disappeared from sight.

Cress spun, scanning the air, sniffing the wind. He glanced at Mor in surprise as if to ask,“He has the powers of a Shadow Fairy?”

“Did no one ever tell you my mother was from the Dark Corner?” Bonswick’s whisper appeared at Cress’s ear. “You faeborn fool.”

Bonswick vanished again as Cress turned. He felt Bonswick’s glassy eyes roaming up his back and over his throat.

Cress snatched Bonswick from the air by his neck, and Bonswick growled, reappearing. The fairy’s limbs thrashed, his black hair falling out of place. Cress squeezed, pulling him in to whisper, “You should have stayed out of the North.”

He lifted Bonswick’s whole body with one arm, ready to finish the fight, but a voice ripped over the square. Every assassin dropped to one knee with their gazes on the ground.

“Cressica Albastian!”

Cress released Bonswick like a compulsion, and the fairy of the East fell to the grass, sputtering and red-cheeked.

Assassins around the square began to shiver, their fingers gripping the grass. Cress did not move a muscle. A terrible cold deeper than the mountaintop snow chilled his bones as Queene Levress descended to the training space.

“Assassins of the High Court,” the Queene called over them. “You shall each carry one thousand rocks from the quarry into the dungeon before sunset tonight. Then you will carry them back to the quarry in the morning. Whoever fails to complete this task will die by my own hand.”

Cress turned to face her. “Your Majesty—”

“Silence!” Queene Levress grabbed Cress’s shoulder, her long nails digging into his flesh. “You shall also be punished with the Brotherhood, Prince. You will carry two thousand rocks.”

Cress closed his mouth, stifling a reaction as she pierced his skin.

“We will not fail you, Queene!” the assassins shouted in unison, but Queene Levress’s silver eyes remained on Cress, waiting.

“I will not fail you, Queene,” Cress promised through his teeth.

Finally, the Queene unearthed her nails from Cress’s shoulder and drew them back to look at his faeborn blood blotting her fingers.

“I thought losing your memories changed you for the better, Cressica,” she said below the sounds of the assassins marching toward the quarry. “But perhaps I was wrong.”

Cress stayed silent as the High Queene of the Ever Corners drifted back up the hill to join her daughter. The air remained cold.

A moment later, Queene Levress returned to the castle with slow, careful steps, flanked by a tetrad of fairy guards. But Haven stayed put. She pinned Cress with her stare.

The Princess continued to watch Cress in cold silence as he headed for the quarry. As he lifted his first great rock. As he carried it toward the castle, and as he came back out for another.

He thought she would leave after that, but she watched him for the rest of the morning, during the orange and yellow afternoon, and into the purple evening. She watched until the sky sank to gray and red.

Cress felt every single prickling, icy second of her gaze on his back.

The sky was angry. Cress glared at it from the study of the Crimson Glass Tower as he held a block of ice to his aching shoulders. His faint reflection looked back at him in the window: his piercing turquoise eyes and his long, smooth, brunet hair.

Dark clouds roared outside, spitting flashes of white light across the heavens and unleashing tears upon the villages of Ever North. The rain pounded against the ruby glass as though it wished to break through and drown Cress with a flood.

There were days the Prince would have welcomed such a death. But today he stared back at the rain with a deadly glower. Today, if the rain tried such a thing, he would burn the sky and turn the clouds to cinders. He would steal the sun and curse the stars and make the cruel deities of the heavens pay.

A headache blossomed behind his eyes, and Cress squinted them shut.

“Are your thoughts troubling you again?”

Thessalie wandered in with an armful of books. The old scholar set them atop the desk, briefly glancing down at the half-written letter of apology Cress was working on to send to the Low King of the East Corner of Ever. A moment later, the scholar joined the Prince at the window.

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