Page 12 of Chased by the Fairy: An M/M Fairytale romance

Cypress held on tightly to the ash-brown neck feathers of his house sparrow mount, hugging his body tightly to its back.

The wintry storm had settled for now, only sprinkling snowflakes, but the air was still icy as it bit against his skin. His nose and fingertips were red, and felt as though they’d become frost bitten due to the speed of his mount.

It wouldn’t have been too bad if he’d been walking, but flying always sent a rush of air over him. His sparrow was even faster than his own wings.

However, that was not why he was using his house sparrow, who occasionally tweeted as it flew. If he tried to fly for a long period of time, it would freeze his wings. Cypress couldn’t risk tearing a wing – not now, not when he might need them in the future to find Sorrel.

They were safely tucked under his fur coat. It covered him all the way to the back of his thighs, and it had a hood with which he could cover his head and face. There were also two slits at the back that his wings could slip through in order to fly.

Cypress glanced over his shoulder to check on the two guards following him on their own bird mounts before turning his gaze back to Zahrya in front of him, who led them through the trees.

Everyone blended in with their birds, their brown fur coats matching their feathers. If a human saw them, they wouldn’t be able to notice the sparrows were being ridden.

Haven Hollow was quite some distance from his home tree.

With each quick flap of his mount’s wings, Cypress’ heart raced faster with the hope he was getting closer to Sorrel. At least he’d be able to save him, protect him, and make sure this never happened again.

I’ll have guards on him in the future. Even if Cypress couldn’t be with him because he had duties to perform, or Sorrel wanted to remain with Greta, he’d make sure Sorrel was always safe.

When they arrived at the hollow they needed, with two hollowed-out trees lying on the ground, they landed on the branches of a living tree that overlooked it. They tried to remain hidden as they all peeked down.

Although most lived in other homes fashioned out of anything, many beetle sprites liked to congregate together in masses. Figtree beetles, with their metallic outer shells, liked this haven in particular.

Cypress found the ledge platform belonging to Jeffers; it was in a live tree that overlooked the town... and it was empty.

“Okay,” Zahrya said with her hand on her wide hips. “So, we scout and–”

“No,” Cypress cut in, disrupting her plans. “We head straight for Jeffers’ menagerie.”

“We can’t.” She frowned her disapproval from under her fur hood. “We can’t get caught interfering with the sprites, no matter the reason.”

He knelt at the edge of the branch, assessing the best way to do this. There was no back entry point, from what he knew, and Jeffers had quite a few guards.

“I don’t think you understand,” Cypress stated coldly, “but I don’t give a shit about the treaty. We will be rescuing Sorrel today, and I don’t care if we are caught doing it.”

Zahrya grabbed his shoulder, and he glared at it before raising his thunderous gaze to her face. She let go, putting her hands in an apologetic surrender for touching a royal.

Then she softened her expression, her tone, and even her body language as she knelt beside him. “You really do care about him deeply, don’t you?”

His lips tightened. “I thought that would have been obvious by now.”

Shaking her head, she let out a deep sigh. “You’ve always been rather dismissive of your role as heir, but you’ve never done anything that could instigate a war. You’ve always followed the rules, even if you hated it. But this?” She waved her hand towards Jeffers’ platform. “You’re not only breaking the law, but you’re willing to start a war. Consider what that means, your highness.”

His wings fluttered with pent-up tension.

“I have,” he quietly uttered, before his features hardened with cold determination. “And I don’t care. His safety and wellbeing are paramount – that also means mentally.” He cast her a glance from the corner of his eye. “There’s a reason I’ve come to care for him, even though we barely know each other.”

The radiant spark that was Sorrel came from his playful, carefree, and spirited nature. Cypress didn’t want him to... lose that. Even if everything changed him, Cypress would still want him. He’d nurture that side of him back to health, but he’d just rather it not be necessary.

Her lips twisted as her own wings fluttered green dust in apprehension. Cypress also noticed the subtle way she gripped the hilt of her needle sword. With the way her eyes trailed off to the side, it was obvious she was trying to think of a rebuff but couldn’t.

“There are things I am willing to do to ensure his safe return to me,” Cypress warned. “If you can’t bear the weight of them, leave now, but nothing will stop me.”

For a long while, she stared at him while the other guards nervously shifted behind them.

“Let us go in your stead,” she finally pleaded. “We’ll go in and get him. With our cloaks, we don’t look like royal guards. We may be able to get away with it without inciting a political war.”

He shook his head, making his short hair sway across his forehead. “No. You don’t know what he looks like, and he may not come with you. He’s rather... quick to attack.”

He still remembered the way the feisty man head-butted him. A quick strike that landed himself in Cypress’ heart, but it also meant he was defensive.

“I’m doing this, regardless of what you say.”

Then he leapt off the branch before she could stop him.

Letting his wings flutter through the cloak to help soften his fall, he silently landed on the platform without being noticed. They all landed behind just as he was pushing on the knotted door.

The area was quiet and empty.

“There are no guards posted,” Zahrya whispered.

He’d found that rather odd too. Even more so when he spotted claw marks on the floor.

They descended into the bowels of the spiralling tree.

A sickening feeling arose in his stomach each time he stepped over shattered glass. Each cage was empty, as if all the collected odd prisoners had escaped.

“They’re all gone,” a royal guard rasped, taking it all in.

“We should turn back, your highness,” Zahrya suggested. “Before anyone notices we’re here. We can go to Haven Hollow and gather information on his current whereabouts.”

Cypress shook his head, his feet moving forward. “He may not have gotten away. We should check.”

They were only on the third level when they came across Jeffers and some of his men trying to install new glass for the cages. They were quickly making repairs, and had already locked away a few sprites as if they never had the chance to escape or were recaptured quickly.

Jeffers turned with a gasp when the royal guards drew their swords. Jeffers’ men turned, most of them figtree beetles, who immediately pulled out crude batons.

Cypress, using his wings for speed, flew forward and shoved the head cretin against the wall. Jeffers choked and spluttered when Cypress pressed his elbow into his neck.

The royal guards quickly shot forward behind him, acting as a barricade against his back.

“Where is Sorrel?” Cypress demanded, his face twisted into a snarl.

“You’re stupid for coming here, Prince Cypress,” Jeffers wheezed out, his eyes alight with cruel humour. “The moment the other sprites hear of this, there will be outrage.”

Cypress shoved his arm up under the beetle’s jaw, forcing his hard head back. “Where is he?!”

“I don’t know who you speak of.” He shrugged his lanky shoulders. “And, as you can see, my little zoo of pets has recently had an escape.”

“But he was here, wasn’t he? A man who looks like a wingless flower fairy.”

“Really?” Jeffers stated with a hum. “I didn’t think such a rare specimen existed. I would never keep a fairy. Unlike you, I care for the treaty between our kinds.”

From his belt, Cypress removed a tiny dagger. He slotted the tip into a segment of his torso.

“Start talking, Jeffers, or I start gutting. A swallow sprite saw you take off with him.”

The beetle sucked in a breath when he felt the sharpness against his exoskeleton. Fear shone in his rounded black bug eyes, yet his features tightened.

“I don’t know where he is.” He waved towards the side of the room where broken glass still lay. “He’s the reason my zoo is in such disarray. He escaped, like many others.”

“Go check he isn’t lying,” Cypress demanded to his royal guards, without removing his sight from Jeffers.

A short, but tension-filled pause was shared as one of them ran off to check. She returned shortly.

“It’s empty. There’s no one here with his description.”

Cypress sneered at Jeffers, lowering his gaze to his rich suit vest, before bringing it back up to the beetle’s face. “What you’re doing here is despicable,” he spat out. “Keeping people imprisoned for your own entertainment.”

A villainous smirk crinkled his hard face. “No one cares enough to stop me, and you flower fairies can’t get involv–”

The sprite gasped, his eyes snapping open wide when Cypress sunk his dagger all the way into his gut with a wet crunch. “I guess I should make sure there aren’t any witnesses, then.”

Jeffers slapped at him, desperately trying to get him to stop as he squirmed. Cypress’ forearm was too tight against Jeffers’ neck to get free, and he couldn’t feel the sprite’s hits underneath the burn of his emotions.

Hot rage had settled into his core. It sizzled his bone marrow and hardened his muscles into stone.

He couldn’t believe everything this stupid, selfish beetle sprite had done to his Sorrel. If he had just left Sorrel to Sunny, he may have been returned to him by now. Jeffers had taken him, then locked him up inside a cage to be stared at, leered at.

Cypress could only imagine how mortified he’d been, how upset.

A fight started behind him. The royal guards ensured there were no witnesses to the merciless act he was doing, as he repeatedly stabbed the beetle sprite before him.

Even if Sorrel wasn’t here, he would mete out retribution in his stead. As well as for all those Jeffers had imprisoned here for goodness knew how long.

Cypress would consider it a service to the world to remove such a horrible, sickening darkness from it.

He drew back the dagger slowly before slipping it back inside his torso, hearing more wet crunching of it going through his hard exterior to greet internal wetness and insides.

Jeffers’ face twisted with pain. It eased him seeing it. He liked it, wanted him to be in pain. He wanted to see the fear in his large eyes that showed Cypress’ face reflected in them.

He dropped Jeffers’ corpse when it stopped twitching. It thumped loudly as it hit the ground.

He stared down at it, his chest heaving. His breaths sawed in and out of his lungs. Justice had been meted out, but it had done nothing to help Sorrel. He stared down, wishing he could revive Jeffers just so he could stab him over and over again.

I want them to discover I killed him. He wanted everyone to know he’d do anything to protect Sorrel. That he would harm anyone who had him or hurt him in any way.

He clutched the dagger tighter.

Cypress wanted the world to know he would be violent for Sorrel’s sake.

By the time Jeffers was limp and lifeless, the guards had taken out those who worked for him. He bent over to wipe his dagger clean on the dead sprite’s plum vest before turning to them.

Zahrya then raised her sword towards the others, her feet shuffling as she gave Cypress her back. “You will swear that you will never speak of what you’ve seen today, or you will join their fates,” she commanded, causing their eyes to widen.

They warily looked between each other, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Killing sprites was one thing, but if they were to harm either the only prince or Zahrya, the head guard, they would be imprisoned or worse.

“We will never speak of it,” the guards said, but Cypress didn’t care if they did.

Although he was thankful Sorrel was free, he couldn’t stop the fear that no one may be helping him.

He just wants to go home. I was supposed to take him there.

He silently headed towards the exit, seeing it was pointless to remain here. Although he’d acted with violence, he didn’t truly wish to start a war.

They needed to leave before anyone discovered what they’d done.

A cold, bitter white expanse greeted them beyond the platform.

“Fuck,” Cypress blurted out.

“We’ll find him,” Zahrya offered, coming up beside him.

“It’s winter,” he explained, waving to the world around them. “If he’s out there by himself...” Where was he now if not buried beneath the snow?

He might be dead. His gut twisted as his heart constricted. Fuck! He can’t be dead!

Cypress refused to accept that. He would keep looking. He would keep looking with hope and only allow himself to stop until he found him, no matter if he was alive or not. He needed to know the truth.

“He’s an adult,” Zahrya stated. “He must have faced plenty of winters.”

Yeah, an adult who bloomed from a fucking flower last summer!

There had been a small blizzard recently, and knowing Sorrel might have been outside during that time sent fear through him. He looked at the snowy horizon.

Where should he go? Where should he look now? He doubted the sprites of Hollow Haven would tell him even if they had seen Sorrel.

They left the platform to meet their mounts.

Another storm was coming, and they needed to retreat to safety if they themselves didn’t want to die.

Please be okay.