Page 91 of Fake Dating a Human 101

“You’ll avoid war. For now,” Luc agreed.

Hans-Der nodded. Then he grinned, a look of malice spreading over his blue eyes. “Done. Kill him.”

Luc drew his blade, and Lily didn’t have time to process what was happening before he strode over, tore Shayne from her grip, and plunged his fairsaber through Shayne’s stomach.

Lily heard herself scream.

Everything around her froze in place, except for the blade being torn back out of Shayne. And Shayne’s body falling…

Falling…

She was still screaming as he collapsed in the dirt, as his blood leaked onto the soil. She buckled beside him and yanked his coat open. She slammed her palms against the stab wound, applying pressure. Sobs escaped her as she tried to hold him together, as she fought to keep him from losing the last of his blood and dying beneath her hands. Shayne’s mouth parted as he stared up at the sky, his eyes losing focus, his limbs going slack.

“You’re…” Lily croaked. She didn’t even know what she was yelling. She thought she would die right there beside Shayne. “You’re amonster, Luc!” she shouted through her tears.

Luc stared down the end of his nose, watching her. He didn’t look like he regretted anything. In fact, he seemed to stifle an eye roll as he bristled, and he turned his back to her.

Lily knew Luc didn’t like Shayne. Luc had threatened Shayne many times, but she didn’t really think he’d… he’d…

Dranian stood nearby, his expression slack, his face white. Mor and Cress were as still as statues. Until…

Mor reached out and grabbed Cress’s arm to hold him still. To keep him from helping, maybe. The act was so strange that Lily looked back to Luc again.

“Your household’s debt is paid, High Lord,” Luc said to Hans-Der. “But be assured that if you ever threaten the Dark throne again, or even bother me in the slightest, the House of Lyro will be burned to the ground with fairy fire so searing that even yournamewill be wiped from existence.” He raised his hand and flung it at the whole Lyro line. “Now get out of my sight, peasants,” he said.

Hans-Der took one last look at Shayne’s body on the ground, bleeding beneath Lily’s fingers. He snarled as he turned and walked back to his reindeer. With a shallow bow toward Luc, he mounted his deer, turned it around, and fled into the woods. The army in red followed him, groups breaking off from their lines and stampeding through the trees.

Jethwire was one of the last to leave. His mouth was pinched to the side, and his eyes were narrowed like he was waiting for something as he watched Lily hold Shayne’s wound. But finally, he turned his reindeer and followed his family.

The second he disappeared, Luc whirled. “Hurry!” he shouted at the Shadow Fairies standing around. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” He pointed down at Shayne. “Save him or you’re all dead!”

Lily’s hands were pulled off Shayne as Shadow Fairies swooped in and began performing strange practices: digging for nearby roots, pulling his coat off, splashing water over his face. “Wait…” she said to one when he shoved a handful of something into Shayne’s mouth and held his lips shut around it. “You’ll suffocate him…” But she didn’t fight them. She scooted out of the way, watching as they jolted him around.

After a moment of it, Shayne’s chest began to rise and fall. Mor appeared beside Lily and helped her to her feet, but she kept her stare glued to the parts of Shayne she could see between the Shadow Fairies surrounding him.

“Bring him to the Shadow Palace healing rooms,” Luc instructed. Two Shadow Fairies lifted Shayne and vanished with him. Then Luc said, “And didn’t I tell someone to bring me a crown?”

33

Shayne Lyro and That Time He Almost Died

Everything smelled like darkness. Shayne found himself wincing as he stirred awake, as he inhaled the fragrances of death and destruction around him. He smelled smoke, too, but not the nice kind; not the sort from campfires or the warm fireplace at Fae Café. This was something stranger and laced with far more shadows.

When he opened his eyes, he thought he was alone in a long room with bottles lining shelves and various forest herbs tied in bundles by the windows. But when he sat up, his leg bumped an arm covered in tattoos, and he took in the human leaning against the foot of his bed, fast asleep. She wore black clothes now, almost as unfitting for her as the red fairy dress and gold heels had been. The black dress hugging her body was definitely something of Dark Corner fashion, and it had Luc Zelsor written all over it.

Shayne’s first priority became finding Lily something else to wear.

He leaned forward to brush a strand of her hair out of her face, but agony speared through him and he inhaled, grabbing his midsection and realizing that reaching and stretching and all manner of other big movements wouldn’t go well for him for the next little while. So, he studied her instead.

He could still hear her screams. She’d practically turned into a human explosion when Luc had stabbed him.

Speaking of the fox devil, Shayne glanced around the large room to look for him. Even though Shayne had caught on to Luc’s plan the moment Luc had turned his fairsaber on him, he didn’t exactly care for the way Luc had gone about doing it.

Shayne lightly touched his tender stomach, thinking about Lily’s reaction all over again.

He bit his lips together as a smile formed. She would kill him if she awoke and saw him smiling like this, but truly, that had been a lot of screaming for someone who didn’t have feelings for him. Maybe she wasn’t there yet, but Lily Baker was certainly on her way to falling deeply, madly, head-over-heels in love with him. It was only a matter of time now.

But his face changed when he thought back to the moment after he’d rescued her where he’d been bleeding out against that tree and had babbled all that nonsense about “loving her since the beginning” and whatever else he’d said under the influence of potential oncoming death. He stifled a moan. Why did he do foolish things like that? Why did he run his mouth? He sighed, only finding consolation in the fact that she’d tried to shut him up at the time, which meant she’d used her powers of case solving to deduce that Shayne wasnotin his right mind. Had he been, he would have confessed far more stylishly.

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