Page 72 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

“Save me,” she said.

She was grabbed by a multitude of fairy hands. A Shadow Fairy stuffed a handful of blossoms into her mouth while another held her still and pried open her lips for more. And something deep inside Mor, a doomed monster that had been hiding since the day he’d been recruited to fight for the Shadows,snapped.

He found his faeborn hand around a Shadow Fairy’s throat. He found bones snapping beneath his strength. He found his fairsaber blades plunged through bodies. He found a barrel of fire kicked over at his feet. He found the banquet tables set ablaze before him. He found a trail of lifeless Shadow Fairy bodies tossed to the floor, flung over the tables, and smashed against the walls in his wake.

He hardly knew he’d done it all himself until the cool night breeze washed over him on his way out of the cave. The human girl’s hand was in his.

The entire cave was on fire behind them.

The human girl asked a dozen questions that Mor didn’t answer.

“Are you evil? You don’t seem evil.”

“Are you going to send me back home?”

“Are you a vampire or an elf?” She’d eyed his ears.

“Is this place sort of like Neverland in Peter Pan?”

Mor led her to a pauper fairy and paid every coin he had on him for the fairy to take the girl back to the human world and erase her memories of this dreadful place. He prayed to the sky deities that the pauper would keep his word.

It took Mor three weeks to catch enough whispers of the Dark Rebel Movement to track them down. For months, he fought alongside the rebels against the Shadow Army, guarding the village borders, right up until the Shadow Army declared war on the peaceful, unguarded South Corner of Ever. The North had rushed to the South’s aid, but not before many small-self fairies had been killed.

It was upon the grassy fields of the South Corner, while the North Army was attempting to drive the Dark back into its corner, that Mor crossed a young, legendary fae Prince named Cressica Alabastian on the battlefield; a fairy who was powerful enough to burn entire plains to ash, shoot himself into the sky like a bird, and turn his body to faestone when he wished, striking terror into the hearts of all who heard of him.

32

Luc Zelsor and the Week His Father Took Him

“I want you to take in a ward,” Luc said to his mother as he sat back in his father’s throne with folded arms. He was only half his mother’s size, his voice young and high. No one else was in the cold throne room while Luc’s mother offered a tribute of wreathes to the sky deities. She hung one on the back of each throne.

“Why is that, Luc? Won’t you be jealous if I give you a brother or sister?” his mother asked. Her mouth moved in silence as she counted the chairs.

Luc pulled his legs up on the large seat to cross them. “Not a sister—that would be useless. I want a brother.” He scratched his chin as he thought it through. “I want a brother who isn’t afraid of anything.”

“That’s strange.” His mother pushed her pale hair behind her pointed ear and lifted the brightest wreath of all to hang upon the back of the Dark Queene’s ceremony throne. “Why would you ever ask me for such a thing?” she asked. She pulled the next wreath out and studied its thorny black rose stems.

Luc looked down and twisted the laces of his boots. “All the other childling males are afraid of me.”

His mother lowered the wreath, finally looking at him. She released a chuckle as she came over and patted him on the head, scuffing his ruby hair. “You’re a fox, Luc. That’s nothing to be afraid of. Besides, you have the power to make them like you, don’t you? I thought foxes could lure others in. If you pull them in and show some kindness, they will like you as I do.”

Luc released a large sigh and folded his arms again. “I don’t know how to be kind. And father wants me to be cruel.”

His mother’s light laugh drifted through the throne room as she went back to her wreathes. “So be cruel to others when you’re with him and be kind to others when you’re with me. I will teach you kindness.”

Luc glanced toward the tall murky windows. The cloud of torment raged in the sky above the palace, ever swirling, ever restless. He thought of what his father would do if he ever caught Luc beingkind.

A day later, Luc’s father returned to the palace with a deep frown and a look in his eyes that made the palace fairies stay far out of his way. High Prince Reval slammed his chamber door shut, trapping Luc’s mother in the room with him. Luc waited in the hallway, sure they did not realize he was out there. He turned and pressed his thin ear against the door to listen. His stomach dropped when he learned his father meant to cast his mother out—out of the palace, out of the capitol, out of the Dark Corner of Ever. His father did not even give a reason why.

“I’ll only leave if I can take Luc,” his mother’s voice sailed through the door, and Luc went still, his thoughts falling away until his mind was empty and listening and waiting and desperate. He pressed a hand against the door, imagining he was reaching for his mother through it.

But everything that followed was unexpected.

Luc did not expect his mother to make a bold bet to win him so he could leave with her.

He did not expect his father to agree.

But most of all… In the day that followed, he did not expect his mother to lose the bet.

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