“And why is that?”
“Because you’re our new queen!”
“Though you don’t deserve it,human,” the woman growled.
That’s it. I’m done.
I turned to the barn and stalked in its direction.
Ever since the spiders I’d taken to leaving at least two cans of wasp spray. I climbed over the fence, found them, and stalked my way back to the rude fae.
The guards, surprisingly, stumbled back a few steps.
“Wait, give us a chance to explain, Queen,” Suits begged. “You need to come with us.”
“Hard pass.” I popped the lids off the spray cans. “And don’t call me that.”
“It’s not a matter for you to decide.” The older fae scowled. “We don’t want you either. But it’s out of our hands since you somehow courted favor with the night mares. You have no choice but to go with us to the Night Court.”
Suits grabbed me by the wrist and tried to pull me across the pasture, but he severely underestimated the strength of a farm girl.
I dug my heels in, ripped my wrist from his grasp, and slammed him in the side of the head with one of the cans of wasp spray.
He toppled like a tree, groaning as he held his head.
I guess for all of their manipulations, fae don’t fight dirty.
I raised the spray can I hadn’t whacked on a fae skull. “Whoever tries that next is going to get a face full of wasp poison.”
Suits slowly stood up and held his hands out. “We don’t intend to harm you,” he said in a classic case of fae wordsmithing.
He could have just said theywon’tharm me, but there was a good chance that was a lie, so he used the wordintendinstead.
“That’s not good enough,” I said.
The old lady glared at me. “You are aviper,” she said. “Our Court will eat you alive!”
“Lady Demetria, this is not an appropriate time,” Suits muttered. “Guards, if you would escort our new queen to the car, we must take her—”
“Oh, youmust?” asked a sweet, clear, feminine voice.
Suits turned around—probably thinking to tell off the interrupter—but clamped his jaw shut when he saw who it was.
A male vampire—lethal with dark hair and eyes such a dark shade of red they were almost black—was cradling a petite blond who was just a little older than me.
She held a ball of crackling electricity in her hand, making her black wizard mark appear. The swirls of her mark crawled up the side of her face and down her neck.
The exact same mark appeared on the vampire’s skin, telling the fae who they were dealing with.
Even if they had never seen this famous couple—unlikely, considering the Night Court’s dodgy history with them—there was only one vampire/wizard pair in the Midwest: Killian Drake—Eminent of the Midwest Vampires—and Hazel Medeis—Adept of the wizards of House Medeis.
The tension and fear that had been building in my gut left me with one great whoosh. “Thanks for coming.”
“Absolutely.” Hazel wriggled until Killian let her go, but even when she landed she didn’t release her fizzing magic.
“It’s the neighborly thing to do,” Killian said.
“Neighbor?” the older fae, Lady Demetria, apparently, croaked.
