Page 38 of Welcome to Fae Cafe
Prince Cressica and All His Enemies
Cress could only watch as his human target backed away from the shelves. A lock of her dark, purplish hair spilled over her shoulder, brushing the ancient book humans were never meant to touch.
Kate Kole’s big, hazel eyes didn’t leave him as she inched far around the tables. Her back came against the library doors. She stared brazenly without bowing her head, and Cress’s hands balled into fists. Did she wish to lose her eyes?
“How…” Cress whispered through his teeth to the others, “in the name of thesky deitiesdid she know about that book?”
Shayne stood rigidly at Cress’s side, his own glare pinning the human. But his hand lifted slightly toward the Prince, like he was prepared to stop Cress if he tried to lunge.
“You have caused me riling trouble, Human,” Cress told Kate Kole in his darkest voice. “The pain that awaits you… the lengths I will go to cause you to suffer… And this”—he nodded toward his brothers—“is nothing. I have many ways to get to you.”
The girl blinked. And then…
She smiled.
Smiled.
Cress’s legs twitched; he stepped toward her, but Mor’s and Shayne’s hands came against his shoulders. He could have tossed one of them aside, but not both. And perhaps he didn’t want to watch his faeborn assassins fly across the room at his own hand because of a human.
“You know I cannot let you touch her,” Mor whispered, apology and frustration creasing his face.
Cress glared at his human target. “I will crush your heart in my fist,” he promised.
The girl bit her lower lip over a terrible laugh. “I don’t think you can,” she said.
Heat drove into Cress’s chest.
The human tossed the ancient book at them—Shayne caught it before it touched the ground. She escaped through the doors, her burgundy hair vanishing into the dark hallway. The doors clicked shut, echoing through the library where the assassins stood. Silence returned to the shelves.
Mor was the first one to move; he inched over the floor, studying the splayed books more than anything else. Shayne and Dranian looked to Cress like he would have answers.
“Did she…” Cress’s chest tightened as the heat began to spread, “laughat me?”
Dranian tore off his black coat and tossed it to the dusty floor.
“I am the greatest, most terrible assassin in the North. How…” Cress worked his jaw. He shook his head. Curled and uncurled his fists. “Howdoes she keep escaping me?”
“She must have help.” Shayne scuffed his white hair and eyed the ancient book in his hands. His bare foot nudged a paper on the floor when he turned. He took in the mess of tomes and torn spines littering every surface. “What happened here, anyway? Don’t the humans know how to keep a study clean?”
“You fool. Don’t you know what this place is?” Dranian mumbled, and from down the centre aisle, Mor’s gaze flickered up. “This is where the Queene’s crossbeast was slain.”
“What?” Shayne’s light blue eyes widened. “Here?”
Cress could feel Mor’s stare on him. He wanted to ask what in the faeborn Corners Mor’s problem was, but try as he might, Cress could not pull his eyes off the spot by the door where his human target had just been standing.
Her laugh.
He had never heard a laugh like that, one without traces of malice and the threat of power that turned plants to ash and poisoned the air and forced the heavens to growl. Why did it ring in his ears? Why did it sound like a rusted flute or a cracked harp or the crisp crunch of dry leaves or a broken, delicate wind embracing the heights of the trees?
He hated this day.
He hated her laugh.
Cress flipped the pages so harshly, he tore one. After glaring at the flimsy paper that had refused to hold together beneath his frustration, he tossed it aside, grabbed the next page, and accidentally tore that one, too.
“Queensbane,” Mor scolded from across the table in the human academy library. “You’re going to lose more than your hair if the High Court discovers you ripped up a sacred book.”
Cress slumped into a chair. “I kissed her right on her human mouth,” he said. “She didn’t even bat an eye.”
