My legs trembling, I set the pot down and reached for a tea towel, drying my hands so they wouldn’t see them shaking. I knew they were waiting for a reaction, a crack in my armor, but I gave them nothing. Not a hint of emotion, not a word.
“Mother says peace has a price, dear stepsister,” Amabel said after a moment. “Andyou’regoing to pay it for us.”
I froze. There was something in her tone, an edge deeper than her usual venom. What was changing? What were they plotting? What had I missed? Brummy moved closer, his eyes watchful, as if he sensed the fear crawling up my spine.
Finally, I raised my eyes to Amabel’s, and her smirk widened. It was a gamble, but I’d hoped her face would reveal some hint of what she’d meant. Unfortunately, her dark eyes held nothing but the usual spite and hatred, and I couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“I never did anything to either of you,” I whispered. “Why are you always so mean to me?”
“Because we can be, of course!” Eluned shrieked with laughter. Amabel, however, wasn’t so pleased, and the sharp slap to my cheek reminded me of ‘my place.’
“Howdareyou talk back to us?” she hissed. “Mother will hear of your defiance!”
She stalked out of the kitchen, Eluned scurrying after her, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Brumous whined softly, and Iwantedto, already dreading how Arabesque would punish me for ‘hurting Amabel’s sensitive feelings’ this time.
Trying to ignore the pain in my cheek, I knelt beside him and hugged his neck.
“It’s okay, Brummy,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure which of us I was reassuring. “We’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
But as my face ached and weariness tried to pull me under, I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t be able to protect either of us for much longer.
2. To the Palace
Zane Cimmerian
It was the wee hours of the night and I was having the time of my life. Standing on the landing of the third-story fire escape, I fired Lurleen, my rifle, down into the writhing horde of dire rats, tracer rounds spelling D-U-M-B in the dark, then jumped down to the second-story landing. The metal rattled under my force and weight, threatening to give way, and I howled with laughter.
Death by rickety fire escape would be just the kind of stupid end Casimir always warned me about.
King Aerin Winterlight of the Woodland Realm had hired us to track down a chort, who’d killed a leshy during a card game, then fled to the States to escape the fae lord’s wrath. The politics of it didn’t mean anything to me. Cas accepted the job and set me loose to find the victim. Uh, I mean,target. Simple as that. He knew I had a knack for hunting down the weird ones.
The chort was clever and quickly allied with the local dire rat population, which were fast little bastards. Good target practice, though. I’d taken down a score of them at least, and my brother Koa was ripping through them like tissue paper, blood and rat guts coating him from helmet to combat boots.
“Having fun down there, Ko?” I called through the comms.
No answer. Just the wet sounds of dire rat insides becoming dire rat outsides. Typical.
They kept coming, and I figured they would until Cas took out the chort. King Aerin had specified dead preferred, and we took that to mean kill the son of a bitch. No need to read between the lines of fae contracts when they just came out and said it.
“CAS! You ever gonna bag that fang-rotted bitch or what?” My voice echoed through the alley, catching the chort’s attention, and it hurled a trash can lid at my head. I ducked, the jagged metal edge shearing off a chunk of brick where my ear had been. “Rude!”
I quickly scanned my intended drop zone: A garbage-strewn alley on the backside of this decaying apartment building. Spotting Cas just beneath me, lining up his kill shot on the chort, I grinned. Perfect landing pad.
Waiting only until I saw the red dot centered over the chort’s heart, I launched myself off the fire escape.
“Catch me, Cas!” I shouted, already airborne. Wind ripped the grin from my face as I fell toward certain pavement pizza.
Then a vise closed around my bicep. My shoulder screamed as Cas’ momentum swung us both into the side of a dumpster, the impact rattling my fangs. Through watering eyes, I watched him calmly eject his rifle’s spent magazine with his free hand.
“You’re buying me a new one,” he growled, nodding to his scope, now dented from our crash landing.
“Your baby likes it rough,” I wheezed. “Told me so last night.”
Across from us, the chort face-planted in the filthy alley as its glamour flickered and died, revealing the goat-legged creep beneath.
“Cruor! You’re the moon-damned MVP of the night, bro!” I shouted, earning a squeal of feedback from the comms unit in my high-tech helmet. Cas flinched at the noise, then punched my bicep hard enough to make me stagger.
“Volume control. Learn it,” he muttered, striding toward the downed target.
