Page 28 of Fake Dating a Human 101

“Call the hunting party back to the House. Or I’ll make sure you end up like Kahn-Der,” Shayne said.

Massie looked over at Shayne with a startled face; Jethwire didn’t move a muscle.

“Brother,” Jethwire greeted. “Did you think this was over just because you left the House?”

“I’d hoped so, but no, I didn’t really expect that.” Shayne nudged the tip of the arrow a little harder against Jethwire’s back. “Call off your hunting dogs,” he said again.

Jethwire obediently raised a hand, and the hunters who noticed stopped their pursuit, mounted their deer, and headed away. Many hadn’t seen though.

“Perhaps my best bet is to finish you both right here. Save me the trouble of having to do it later if you follow me again,” Shayne thought aloud.

Massie’s slow grin appeared. His sparkling eyes narrowed on Shayne’s crossbow like he wanted to see if Shayne would really shoot Jethwire through the back. “I imagine you know how our father wouldn’t sleep until he destroyed you if you did that. He’s still sore about Panola. I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out about Kahn-Der.” Massie twirled a silver dagger over his fingers. Shayne hadn’t seen him pull it out.

“Perhaps he’ll throw a celebratory feast now that his oldest and most incapable son no longer craves his inheritance,” Shayne guessed. “We all know Kahn-Der was a greedy hog. Which one of you is going to get his enormous, excessively decorated bedroom? Hmm?”

The hunters congregated at the foot of the hill. Dranian retreated at the other end of the valley, soaring into the air with Mycra in his arms. Dozens of dead hunters in red coats spotted the grass; the battle’s ending almost looked laughable. Dranian and Luc had caused all this destruction, and now Jethwire and Massie had finally seen what Shayne andhisallies were capable of.

He decided this unbearable subject of conversation was over. He had other words to use against his brothers, other things he needed to address now, but then Massie said, “She’s pretty.”

Shayne’s fingers tightened on the trigger of the bow. His mouth opened, but he didn’t ask who Massie spoke of.

“Your human,” Massie said anyway, nodding down the hill to where Luc pulled Lily to himself. The fox took one last look up the hill before he vanished with her, and Shayne breathed a sigh of relief. Massie turned an inch toward Shayne—his strange smile was still there. Shayne was tempted to shoot it off. “Did you know you were in love with a human?” Massie asked.

Shayne’s finger faltered on the crossbow trigger. He nearly fired the arrow through Jethwire right then and there.

Massie’s warped smile only grew when Shayne forced a laugh. “Nonsense.” He wondered if he ought to just leave—he could cast his important words at these fools another time.

“It’s true, Brother. When our dreamslipper informed us you had a fairy crush, that you dreamt of a golden-haired female, we thought to send a few tunes of invitation into the wind to see if we could draw her to us and meet her in person. It took us a while to realize the reason she never came was because the two of you were in another world entirely and she couldn’t hear it. Because she was ahuman.” Massie tilted his head. “How foolish you must feel for letting her come here.”

“Give me your flute, Jethwire,” Shayne demanded.

“It’s too late,” Jethwire replied. “All the tunes are already floating through the wind, searching for her weaknesses and desires. They’ve been waiting for her since last year’s snow. And you brought her here to face them.”

Shayne flexed his jaw. “What do you want?” he asked.

“You know exactly what we want, Brother,” Massie said, his smile disappearing. “And why you can’t kill us.” He reached over and pushed the nose of Shayne’s crossbow down.

Jethwire finally turned around. “And you know why we will keep coming, regardless of thesupposedlydeadPrince of the North being in your company. We’ve been trying to decide for months if we should tell our High Queene he’s alive and has been in hiding,” he added. “You’d better consider our deal quickly. Our father returns in three days, and by then it’ll be too late. If he learns you’ve fled, you know what he’ll do.”

Shayne took a few steps back. He scanned his brothers, calculating his best shot. “This conversation is over,” he said. “I need time to think. Don’t even dream about capturing Cressica Alabastian for a reward, or sending more hunters to drag me back, or luring in that human to use as bait.”

Without waiting for a response, he fired an arrow into Jethwire’s leg. It punched through and speared into Massie’s leg, too, pinning them together and finally splattering purple blood on their precious hanboks. Jethwire wailed a shriek and stared down at his leg in horror. Massie’s blue eyes twinkled as he gazed at the blood.

“That’s so you can’t snatch me up as I leave,” Shayne stated. He slung the crossbow onto his back and turned to race over the hill.

The colour shifted in the sky, darkening from aqua to a navy-gray and filling with rainclouds. It seemed Dranian didn’t know how to control Cress’s weather powers yet. Shayne inhaled the icy turn of the wind as he met the trees, and only when he was behind the cover of a trunk did he stop to catch his breath and peek back at the dozens of remaining fairies in his family’s colours. His hand found its way into his pocket, his fingers curling around a paper crane. He drew it out to read it again, despising the words just as much as the first time:

Neither of us wish to be the Lyro heir. This is your birthright, Brother.

Return to the House to take your place, and we won’t have our scouts pay a deadly visit to your humans in the tavern across the gate called Fae Café.

Did you think we didn’t know about that?

We had your dreams hostage for months. We know everything. We know about Kate Kole, Violet Miller, Greyson Lewis, and especially Lily Baker.

Come home and bring our dreamslipper with you before this gets unpleasant. We’d hate to do to your humans what we did to all those fairies who crossed us in our childling years.

Jethwire & Massie

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