Page 104 of Blood of the Fairest

The faerie's voice and the memory of how he nearly killed me in this same place not long ago aren't helping to calm my sudden nerves.

I stop to take a deep breath, aware of Wulf nearby observing my every anxious move with a deep frown. He looks ready to carry me out of here, and I'm almost ready to let him.

Except…this seems like the best shot I have at getting back to the world I belong in.

It might even be the only shot.

"Kiss," I blurt, the word rushing out too fast as I stop to face the cage. "We have to kiss, okay? As in, I have to plant one on you. With Rhinestone's blood, no less, which makes no sense because I've seen what that shit does. Fuck my life—I cannot believe I have to play Kool-Aid-flavored tonsil hockey with the petty-ass faerie from Sleeping Beauty. What kind of sick joke is this?"

My distress is met with silence for a beat before Malivant speaks.

"Someone explain her vernacular."

Eris sighs. "If only anyone could."

"Verena often speaks in terms from her homeland," Wulf supplies.

"How bothersome," the faerie scoffs.

Eris moves back to Wulf's gleaming axe to address me quietly, his expression completely earnest.

"Let this faerie rot here, and I swear I'll teach you to read. There might be an answer in Reinhilde's journals that won't involve you having to go anywhere near Wrath."

Yeah, there might be.

But those journals could also have nothing, leaving me back at square one. If I leave now, it'll probably piss off Malivant—and I don't want to be on his bad side ever again, especially if he's powerful enough to enchant an entire kingdom of living things to sleep for a hundred years.

Since that's straight out of Little Brier Rose, I wonder again if this world will somehow force me to meet the same fate as the evil queen.

I need to escape while I still can, so…

Fuck it. I can kiss a monster just to survive.

I've done it before.

"Let me borrow your knife," I tell Wulf.

He unsheathes it and hands it over at once, his jaw clenching. I feel shitty to give orders he has to obey, but I doubt my sworn protector will be on board with this next part.

With a pounding heart, I venture deeper into this dim prison. I stop just outside the shadow-filled cage wreathed in thorns. My slippers brush piles of dark feathers and dead rose petals aside.

Trying not to think too hard about it, I press my index finger against the edge of Wulf's knife until a warm trickle accompanies the sting.

Taking a deep breath, I recite the words on the paper I brought.

"As by blest blood was Wrath ensnared,

A hundred winters sealed away,

Yet now may, by this red-stained kiss

Of fair blood, see the light of day."

The thrumming tingle of magic sweeps through me. My pricked finger burns before I fully commit and raise my hand to smear the queen's warm blood over my lips.

Unlike others' blood in this world, it doesn't smell like juice or anything else I'd want to drink. It smells like nothing to me.

Closing my eyes since I still really don't want to see what this monstrous faerie looks like, I move closer until a metal bar presses into one of my cheeks.