Page 28

Dranian Evelry and the Thing that Happened

Twenty-Four Hours Ago

(Before Mor and Cress Showed Up for Luc,

and Before Shayne Returned to the House of Lyro)

Snow.

Dranian scowled at the cold white stuff falling upon Toronto and hugged his arms to himself, his one good arm carrying the weight of the other. The streets rang with Yule carols and all the nearby humans looked cute with their pom-pom hats and their scarves jammed into the neck crevices of their coats. But even with the holiday tunes and the human-y cuteness in every direction, Dranian found he was temperamental, and not due to natural moodiness, no, but because he’d just walked himself across the entire North Corner of Ever to get back to the human realm and his feet and legs were bundles of soreness and silent complaints.

Naturally, as he was grouching about it to himself, muttering on about his circumstances—how the girl with no name had been stolen from him, how Lily had been human-napped and had vanished without a trace, how Mor and Cress had left him alone with Luc, and how Luc had disappeared for days —he stepped in a slushy bit.

“Faeborn-cursed-human-realm-slushy-bits!” he cussed as he shook off his shoe.

A mother cast him a scowl and dragged her childling to the other side of the road. Dranian looked up at her in surprise, realizing he’d startled the small human family. So, he attempted a smile, which must have been rather terrifying since the mother’s face grew more horrified and her steps of escape became quicker.

Dranian snarled and turned back to his walking. His running shoes were every bit as damp, squishy, and repulsive to hike in as sticking his bare toes in swamp mud. But he finished the trek to Fae Café and paused outside when he noticed the new holiday drink menu in the window and the strings of lights flashing around the door. Something big and heavy sank through his chest. Half of him was so profoundly relieved to be back, to see this with his own two eyes. How he had missed this burgundy awning, the scent of fresh drinks, and the promise of warmth.

His eyes grew misty when he thought about Shayne never seeing it again. Never having this feeling of desperation and relief from standing before the café door. Then, he sniffed—loud and hard—to make sure none of his watery emotions showed. He even wiped his nose on his sleeve, then he grabbed the door a new man.

When he came inside Fae Café, he instantly craved cranberry desserts and caffeine. Even though he hadn’t been gone from this place for long, he didn’t realize just how much the separation had affected him. How much his fairy blood and empty stomach demanded to be filled with sweets and hot beast milk with whipped cream and tiny little crunchy bits sprinkled on top.

But then there was Cress. And Kate. And… queensbane, Mor and Violet were there too… and Greyson—oh no.

Dranian fell into a chair, threw his head back, and wailed a cry of self loathing.

Customers quieted their conversations, a few glancing over at him with strange faces. A female across the café even held a sizable piece of cake on her fork an inch from her mouth, frozen there at the noise.

Cress’s wild turquoise eyes darted up, spotting Dranian. Then they moved around, taking in all the cringing humans, and his expression grew horrified as Dranian ruined his well-maintained level of customer satisfaction. To Mor and Greyson, he whispered, “Get him.”

Greyson was smack dab in the middle of consuming a tart. He looked up as if to see if Cress was serious, and seeming to note the fairy’s deadly glower, Greyson dropped the tart to his plate and rushed through the café after Mor. Mor didn’t really need his help though—that was clear when Mor reached Dranian, grabbed a handful of Dranian’s shirt at his shoulder, and tugged him up from the chair in one great heave.

“Come with me,” Mor said in a voice far more soothing than Cress’s had been.

Dranian shook his head. “You don’t understand—”

“Apologies!” Cress shouted at the humans in the room even though they hadn’t asked for an explanation. “This fool was raised by raging forest beasts riddled with itchy fur-lice. He often forgets how to act normal like the rest of us.”

“Cress!” Kate scolded with a whisper as she flicked him. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

Cress leaned down to Kate’s height, put on his ‘I’m about to educate you’ face that Dranian had come to know all too well, and he whispered back, “It’s essential to stay ahead of the problem. That’s public relations won-oh-won.”

Dranian was nudged through the kitchen doors, and the doors swung shut behind them.

Mor folded his arms as soon as they reached the back freezers. “Speak.” He waited.

Dranian sorted through a variety of things he might say aloud. Nothing quite fit, but he decided he might go with—

“There can only be one reason you’re here, Dranian. So, tell it to me,” Mor said for him. “Where is Luc? What happened? Please tell me…” He paused and swallowed with difficulty. “Please tell me Lily is alright, and the two of you have found a way to rescue her.”

Dranian grimaced and looked off to think.

A muscle feathered in Mor’s jaw. “Where. Is. Luc ?” he asked again. Even though Mor was normally the most understanding of Dranian’s brothers, he had a particular way of sharpening his silvery eyes that could turn a fairy’s blood cold. Thankfully, Mor only brought it out for special occasions.

It seemed this moment was one of those occasions.

“Dranian,” Mor warned again, and so, Dranian cleared his throat.

“Luc… has vanished.” He bit down on his mouth after he said it, every inch of him feeling like a disloyal, loose-lipped traitor.

Frankly, on his walk back here, Dranian had resolved he wouldn’t tell a soul about Luc abandoning him immediately after Mor and Cress left. About how Dranian had thought about going after Lily and the girl with no name all by himself, and that he’d been so distraught by the idea that he had truly considered researching Luc’s magic walnut enchantment and switching bodies with Cress again. In fact, he’d resolved that his primary reason for returning here was to get Cress’s body back so he could return to the Ever Corners and save the day.

But alas, Mor had looked Dranian right in the eyes and asked that question specifically, and so, Dranian had revealed everything. He would apologize to Luc later—if Luc ever showed up again.

For now, Dranian’s one plan was soiled. But perhaps it had been derailed the moment Dranian had arrived and seen that everyone was present instead of only Cress. Only Cress would have been easier to trick into eating another walnut than everybody plus Cress. Dranian was no math wizard, but even he could tell that equation wouldn’t add up to success.

It occurred to Dranian that Mor had not blinked in a very long time. He had not spoken, either.

Finally, Dranian murmured, “Aren’t your eyes drying out—?”

“Do you know where Luc is?” Mor asked. “If you have an inkling, Dranian, tell me now.”

Even if Dranian did know, he was sure admitting Luc’s location to Mor when Mor’s eyes were doing their sharp silvery thing would be a betrayal to Luc. Perhaps Luc had betrayed their High Court first, but Dranian had always been loyal to a fault—except when asked direct questions with eye contact.

None of that needed to be said aloud though. So instead, he went with, “I haven’t a clue.”

Mor closed his eyes and let out a growling sigh of disbelief. “I’ll go get her then,” he said.

Dranian’s eyes widened. “Who?” he asked with dread.

“Lily, obviously!” Mor snapped back. He glared at Dranian for a moment, but then his shoulders relaxed. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with that fox. This is my fault, not yours. Thank you for coming to tell us about Luc,” he said.

Dranian opened his mouth to confess that he hadn’t actually come here to tell Mor about Luc, but then he thought better of it. In fact, he went with it.

“Of course,” he mumbled with a nod. “But Mor… how do you plan to get Lily back?” What he didn’t add was, “And will you be getting back the girl with no name, too?”

Mor shook a hand through his hair, dislodging a wild curl from its bun. “I suppose I’ll offer to purchase her, which will bind us to payments for the next twenty faeborn years at least. And if that doesn’t work…” Mor’s throat bobbed again, and Dranian wondered if he was thinking about instigating a death match—a one on one fairy battle that would result in the winner taking a very large prize—like a human. But Mor finished with, “I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

“That is outrageous, Mor!” Cress said from outside the kitchen doors. The doors swung open, revealing Cress, Kate, Violet, and Greyson who’d all been listening on the other side. “You’ll not be going to the House of Lyro. Not today, not ever.”

“What happened to Lily?!” Kate’s voice rang over everything—and Dranian’s heart stopped as he took in the humans and realized what they must have learned in this moment.

“Cress, are you out of your mind?!” Mor asked, nodding toward the humans. “Do you want Kate to have a heart attack? I thought we were going to tell her everything once we got Lily back!”

“Seriously, what happened to Lily?” Kate shouted as she took a step into the kitchen.

Cress jutted this thumb backward toward the café exit. “This is for Shayne to deal with. That was the responsibility placed upon him when he made the choice to fool us and run off in the night!” Cress tried to stand with his own words, but a slow, tight-lipped snarl formed across his mouth a second later. “Oh sky deities, have mercy. Fine, inform the Sisterhood they must be on guard,” he stated. Then he turned to Kate. “Put on your sweater.”

“What are you doing?” Mor asked him, and Cress lifted his eyes that were a fraction icier than they’d been a second ago.

“We’re going to find Shayne and Lily ourselves like we should have from the start,” Cress declared.

Mor put his hands on his hips, shook his head, and rubbed his temples. “You really trust the Sisterhood of the Travelling Knit-Pants to protect our humans if we leave?” he asked.

“No,” Cress stated. “They’re severely out of practice, and if I’m being honest, they’re wildly unhealthy. They ride around on those mopeds all day like they’ve forgotten how to faeborn walk! But we’ll strike fear into them with our dominance, and they will obey us.”

Mor cast a look to Dranian indicating he didn’t believe for one second the Sisterhood of Assassins would abide by Cress’s fearsome demands.

Dranian noticed Cress’s gaze dart to Kate while her back was turned. The sorrow that spilled into his turquoise eyes made Dranian shift his footing. Cress’s tones gave off a story of worry that if he returned to the Ever Corners and his identity was revealed, he might be trapped there forever. It was as though Cress feared he might never hold onto Kate again, and that sent prickly guilt crawling all over Dranian’s flesh.

This was the exact sort of situation he’d wanted to avoid when he had decided not to involve Cress and Mor and their humans in Ever Corner business in the first place. If something happened to Cress, Kate would lose her forever mate. She wouldn’t understand why she felt her human heart torn from her chest without notice, why she would wait by a window for the rest of her life, or why she would never be able to forget about him or let him go and why time would not heal all things as the humans claim. She wouldn’t understand because she was from a realm where the relevance and power of bonding to a mate were entirely unexplained. The same thing would happen to Violet if something happened to Mor.

Dranian glanced through the kitchen doors, out at the café, at the street beyond the windows, and he wondered just how different the human realm might become if the fairies in his company did not return home.

Thirty minutes later, three fairy assassins stepped out of Fae Café.

Cress pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his fashionable snow coat. He put them on as a warm gust of wind fluttered his silken hair, and a beam of sunlight pierced through the clouds overhead, turning him gold for a split second. Time seemed to slow as he flexed his jaw, his coat flapping while he took his first step across the sidewalk. Dranian’s eyes got stuck; he couldn’t look away from Cress’s greatness. In fact, Dranian could have sworn he heard some sort of sweet-toned, stringed music rise from the ground that aligned perfectly with Cress’s movements.

“Stop doing that,” Mor muttered at Cress.

The slow-motion, the magical wisp of breeze, and the music all disappeared in an instant, and Cress’s hair fell flat. Cress grunted and adjusted his coat which seemed far less flashy all of a sudden. “If I can do it, I should ,” he said back. “It’s a great act of theft to all those watching if I don’t.”

Mor rolled his eyes and buttoned up his own coat; the long black one he usually kept in the closet at his cathedral. In comparison to theirs, Dranian’s coat was pretty boring.

The sound of revving, chunky bicycle engines lifted from behind the buildings, sending ear-piercing echoes in all directions, and Dranian winced.

“Ah. Right on time,” Cress said, looking at his wrist even though he didn’t have a watch there.

The assassins turned toward the end of the street where two dozen mopeds inched their way around the bend, ridden by females wearing tight knit scarves, unsightly yarn vests, helmets, and bug-eyed goggles. The machines took up the whole road, and Mor shook his head.

The Sisterhood rolled up to Fae Café and stopped before the Brotherhood when they saw them standing there. Freida slid the goggles off her eyes and hung them around her neck as she looked Cress over first, then Mor. She hardly spared a glance at Dranian. “Well, something’s not right,” she said. “Where is Kate Kole?”

“She’s fine .” Cress made a tsking sound. “I take good care of her.” He folded his arms and leveled his sunglasses-covered eyes with Freida’s. “We’re about to—”

“Go on a trip, I imagine. Isn’t that right, Prince?” Freida interrupted. “Ah. I see you’re all dressed up.” She made a face at Cress’s outfit in particular. “Not well, but dressed up, nevertheless.”

The corners of Cress’s frown tightened.

“We’ll be back soon. Please keep an eye on our humans for us,” Mor said, and Freida’s gaze darted over to him. She had a cat-like way of looking people over, and even though Dranian wasn’t the object of her attention, he fidgeted with his hands.

Freida folded her arms and tapped a finger against her ugly sweater. Then she said, “Fine. We’ll watch over Kate Kole and the humans—”

“It’s not an enormous request!” Cress howled out of nowhere. “Just say you’ll do it! Or when I return, you will suffer my unrestrained wrath!”

Mor and Dranian leaned forward to look at Cress.

Freida unfolded her arms and barked at her fellow moped-riders, “Is he deaf, Hazel? I did say we’d do it, right?”

Hazel nodded but said nothing, and Cress’s stance relaxed. “Oh,” he said.

“We’re a gang, Prince Cressica. And we’re former assassins. We’ll guard the humans well,” Freida swore.

“A gang?” Dranian didn’t mean to mutter it out loud or say it with doubt, but Freida’s gaze—along with all the pointed gazes of the whole ‘gang’—darted to him. At that moment, he felt a bit like he might melt into the sidewalk.

“Gangs ride around on bikes and are deadly to mess with,” Freida challenged him. “Seems like we’re a gang then.” With that, she replaced her goggles, turning her back into a giant, fuzzy bug.

The Sisterhood filled the street with the scent of exhaust and screechy whining sounds as they flew three more doors down the road on their mopeds and stopped in front of the Yarn & Stitch.

And just then, Dranian was struck with the horror of what might happen if the girl with no name he’d spent so many years without decided to join that knit-wearing band of old women if he managed to get her to the human realm. The females were all on the same side after all. What if the girl was more loyal to the knitters than the café? What if Dranian was forced to whip pudding and cupcakes across the street at her? And—queensbane—what if she threw macarons back at him?

It was still on his mind as he and his brothers walked down the streets of Toronto. As they rounded the shops and made their way toward the gate that would take them back into the Ever Corners—hopefully for the last time.

When they approached the gate, that shimmering flicker of light and sweetness in the air that indicated something magical was on the other side, Mor said to Dranian, “So you really have no idea where Luc is?”

Dranian shook his head.

They hopped through the barrier one by one and found themselves in the lush, cold North Corner of Ever. No one was there guarding it, though that had been the case the last few times they’d crossed the gate. Levress must have been preoccupied with other troubles in the Silver Castle since she’d abandoned it.

“Let’s find Shayne first. That’s step one,” Cress decided. “If we can infiltrate the House of Riothin, we may be able to drag him out, and then we’ll remind him that this is his mess to clean up, and then we can beat him—royally—and after that—”

“There’s no need for that.”

Cress stopped talking. The voice that came from the trees’ shadows was one Dranian knew well, one that reminded him of a fairy he wanted to both hug and kick just like Cress.

Shayne stepped out of the woods like he’d been waiting. Purple blood coated his hands, a piece of parchment was clenched in his fist, dark crescents shaded his usually bright eyes, and his hair was a mess—nothing like the slick style he always kept it in to catch the eye of human females. And his scowl…

Queensbane, his scowl…

It was so much bigger and greater than any scowl Dranian had mustered in all his years of scowling. Shayne was the new King of scowls. King of the High Court of the Coffee Bean and the King of Scowls.

Shayne lifted the letter toward them. Cress carefully took the bloody letter with the tips of his fingers and unwrinkled it to read.

“You’re right,” Shayne stated. “This is my mess. Lyro is my House, and Lily is my human.” He glanced at the gate behind them, and a faint, sad smile shifted his mouth. “I’ve missed this place,” he confessed. “But I can’t go back in there without Lily.”

“How did you get here so fast?” Dranian asked Shayne, but it mustn’t have been loud enough because Cress spoke again, and everyone gave him their attention.

“Well, at least we know where Lily is now.” He folded the letter and handed it back. “And that she’s alive.”

“I’m going to get her. But I just wanted…” Shayne chewed on his bottom lip, his brows tugging together. “I guess I just wanted to say goodbye. Properly this time.” He glanced at Dranian. “And to give you an opportunity to rescue Mycra, if you want it.”

“Nonsense.” Cress waved a hand through the air. “Bringing Dranian is a great risk—”

“I’ll come.” Dranian’s statement was loud enough to shake the fruit in the nearby trees, and Cress slammed his mouth shut as he looked at Dranian in surprise. But even though Dranian had failed to steal Cress’s body, he needed this one last chance to be epic. He needed to show up for the girl with no name, to pull her from the cage she found herself in, to make up for all the years she had waited before and he had not shown up.

Shayne nodded, and his modest smile looked real this time. “Let’s go then. One last mission together, Dranian. Just the two of us, like old times.”

“What in the name of the sky deities are you talking about?!” Cress demanded. “Are you planning to take that chair, Shayne? You know I was only joking when I said all those things a moment ago about this being your mess and all that.”

“I knew it was my mess before you said it. And you know why you and Mor can’t come with me. Dranian knows his way around my House, and if we’re careful I can make sure he gets back out. But I can’t say either of you would—especially you, Cress. You’d be sold off to the Silver Castle in seconds if you showed up there.” Shayne sauntered over with his bloody hands in his pockets and stopped before Dranian. He pulled out an old key and held it up between them. His blood was smothered over it. “Come on,” he said. “Our females might not have much time left.”

Mor grabbed Shayne’s shoulder. “Let us help you, at least. Maybe there’s a way out for you.”

Shayne’s chest rose and fell. “Absolutely not. I’ve thought of everything,” he assured. “There’s only one way to save Lily, and I’m going to take it.” He turned and looked at Mor. “Let me go, Mor.” The words came out soft. It was a plea that was meant for far more than just this moment. It was, “Let me go forever. This is goodbye.”

A silent inhale swept across the Ever Corners as Mor’s hand slid off Shayne’s shoulder. Cress looked like he might protest, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t seem to have an argument. Bugs and birds chirped in the forest, making conversation when the fairies couldn’t.

One second passed. Dranian still didn’t know what to say. No one else seemed to either.

How was Dranian to let his forever friend go? Shayne was his charge, his fairy to guard. How was he expected to watch Shayne’s final moments of freedom with his own two eyes? If he did not have a girl with no name to save, Dranian was sure he would not have been able to go to the House with Shayne for this.

Dranian looked down the line of them, wishing he could imprint this moment onto his brain. The image of four brothers standing side-by-side. Likely, for the last time.