Page 59 of The First Trial
‘I am sorry for my silence, Juniper,’ she blurted out, cutting through my thoughts once we were alone. Or as alone as we could get, given the circumstances. She kept her voice low to prevent her people from listening in. ‘My people are frustrated because they do not know where they are going, or what is coming next, and we…
‘You what?’ I prompted, wondering what she was so reluctant to divulge. Fae secrets, or her own?
She sighed shakily, wariness and anxiety making her tremble. ‘We had no choice.’
I frowned, a bad feeling swirling in my gut. ‘What?’
‘I am so sorry. We didn’t know what would happen, but it was our only hope-’ She cut herself off when a group of Fae drifted closer, led by none other than the prodigal douche himself, and his little stabby sidekick. Evander and Arden’s expressions were shut down, but there was distrust glinting behind their eyes that they couldn’t hide. Hypocrites.
Elvina shifted from one foot to the other as she kept her head down, shame colouring her cheeks. Whatever courage she had mustered dissipated with a single look from them, and she clamped her mouth shut. One thing was clear, though: she was desperate to come clean about something. Something her people didn’t want us to know. If I was going to keep my new… boyfriend(?) and our people safe, I was going to need her to reveal whatever secrets she was harbouring.
Leaning in close, I whispered as quietly as I could. ‘Later.’
I tried to give her a friendly smile that I hoped assuaged some of her fears, because there were clearlya lotof them. I couldn’t afford to lose the small amount of trust we had built between us before I got the answers we needed. I doubted the Fae would be so willing to come forward with the information. If what they were hiding was bad enough, it could put a target on their backs,but at least now I was beginning to understand their hesitation to work with anyone else.
Now, I had validation of my suspicion. We couldn’t trust them.
When Elvina drifted away, her gaze stuck on her people’s backs as they turned on her, Phenex pulled me aside and wrapped me in a hug to cover up what he was about to say. His lips brushed against the shell of my ear, and I shivered, heat pooling in my lower stomach at record speed. I clung to him tighter than I should have, accidentally digging my nails into the bare skin of his back, which made him groan, his cock hardening between us where he rubbed it against my stomach.
‘That wasn’t what I was after,’ he murmured in a strained voice.
I giggled. ‘Sorry?’
He chuckled. ‘Shush, you. I just wanted to check in after… well, everything. It’s a lot to process, and you’ve been through more than all of us combined.’
An angry male voice cut through our whispered words, and I automatically looked to Elvina to translate when we came face to face with a red-faced Arden. He had her by the arm, a bruise already beginning to form under his grip as he shoved her forward.
She stumbled, but quickly righted herself before he could tighten his hold on her any more. ‘He said to… um…’ she started, unsure if she should repeat what was clearly a rude comment.
‘Go on. It’s okay. His words don’t mean much to me,’ I told her, and Phenex grunted in agreement.
‘He said to break it up, that they won’t save you if they’re fighting for their lives and you’re… um…fucking.’
I hummed, amused that he was so easy to rile up just because we weren’t ashamed to be open with our affection for one another. ‘Well, that was kind of him.’
She released a giggle that earned her a fierce scowl from Mr Grumpy Pants. The sound was like tinkling bells (and now I understood where the name Tinker Bell came from), which filled me with a sudden affection for her. She was like a stray cat that I wanted to nurse back to health with her constant wounded demeanour, and that first sound of happiness coming from her was like the best reward for a job well done. It meant she was opening up, even just a little, and I decided in that moment that I was going to make sure she made it through these trials.
Arden threw another slew of vitriol at us that I was sure I could decode from his body language alone, but Elvina translated for us again anyway.
‘He said… I’m so sorry, but he said you’re a disgrace to your people and your public displays of affection are revolting, that you shouldn’t even be attracted to each other because you’re not of the same race. He… No. I don’t want to say that. He’s wrong. You two are a beautiful couple, and you shouldn’t listen to people like him. He’s just jealous because no woman would ever want to be with someone who constantly belittles them to compensate for his minuscule penis.’
Her commentary shocked a laugh right out of me, and Phenex quickly followed with his own show of mirth as he deftly stepped between her and Arden, blocking her from his ire.
‘There’s clearly a story there, and you should tell me sometime,’ I teased her with a wink.
She huffed, but a small smile played at her lips to let me know she wasn’t mad. At me at least. In a rare show of confidence brought on by her blatant disgust with the man, she leaned around Phenex to shoo Arden back to his people. I thought I might have even caught a few smirks from them, too, but they had wiped their faces clean of any show of emotion before I could really get a look.
As I watched the Arden Show unfold, I caught Evander’s eye. He was glancing between me and Phenex with an open curiosity that he quickly shut down when he saw me looking, but it didn’t change the fact that I caught it. I wasn’t sure what their problem was or why they had initiated the Unity Trials in the first place, but there was a deep-seated prejudice embedded within the Fae that was preventing them from seeing things clearly. Perhaps they had stories about Humans the way we did about Daemons, villainising us so they came into every interaction expecting the worst.
But hadn’t we already proved that wasn’t the case?
I groaned. Bringing them over to our side was going to takea lotof work, and I was already exhausted just thinking about it.
I let my resentment win for a moment and pulled a face at their backs, annoyed that we were making all the progress that they were blatantly ignoring. I had met some pretty darned arrogant people in my life, but these guys took the cake.
The sound of wings beating from above suddenly reached us, and I knew then that the gods were laughing at me. I had spoken too soon. I’d almost forgotten about the Angels, since they were pretty much out of sight, out of mind, but it seemed we were finally going to have the opportunity to communicate.
‘Oz?’I called out to my twin.
