Lily Baker and the Rules
The music didn’t start right away. Lily only heard it after three days in the Ever Corners, and even then, she wasn’t convinced of what she was hearing. The tune mixed into the wind, hardly a sound at all, just a high note of a woodwind instrument. But the crazy part was that Dranian swore he couldn’t hear a thing.
Lily shook off the thought as she followed him into the village, accidentally kicking up dirt as her feet dragged. She was sticky with sweat from running for so long. She could have smacked the grouchy fairy for making her sprint like that, but when she’d finally reached him, he had a look on his face that somewhat resembled a smile, and Lily figured she shouldn’t ruin such a rare and precious thing. If she’d had her phone, she would have snapped a picture of his expression before it went away, just to prove to the others it had really happened.
Dranian strutted a little taller now, and Lily smirked and shook her head. If all she had to do to get him to change his attitude about this trip was to let him run ahead of her for a while, she would have done it ages ago.
“The girl who can survive anything… can she survive us?”
Lily’s feet came together. The music tickled her ears like it was a physical substance.
She wasn’t crazy. It was really there, and now the song had… words?
She turned to look behind her, scanning the strange village streets with their crooked trees, their braided stick arches, and their glowing flower curtains. Something told her to go find the source of the music. It was the same feeling she got when she had a case to be solved that cost her sleep and days of mildly unhealthy obsessive attention. That addictive behavior was the reason Chief Adams wanted to promote her to detective.
The girl who can survive anything.
This freaky fairy park couldn’t have possibly known to use that word— survive . The song couldn’t have been talking about her.
“Lily.” Dranian only used her name when he wanted something, was strangely trying to apologize for something, or was feeling impatient with her and didn’t want to outright say it.
“Do you seriously not hear that?” she asked him. It sounded like the tune was coming from the faraway hills, which was totally impossible. It also seemed louder now, like they were getting closer to it.
But, once again, Dranian said, “No.”
Lily sighed and turned to face him just as he reached for the hood of her police hoodie and yanked it up over her head. He positioned it around her face, roughly stuffing her hair inside.
“If you can,” Dranian murmured, “conceal your scent as much as possible. And especially keep your eyes down. Don’t make eye contact with any fairies we pass in this village.”
“For real? How do I conceal my scent?” Lily folded her arms as she waited for him to finish his fussing.
Dranian leaned forward and sniffed. He made a face. “Unfortunately, it will be difficult,” he admitted.
Lily burst out laughing. “Well, I wouldn’t smell so bad if someone hadn’t made me run a marathon today,” she pointed out.
Dranian opened his mouth. He closed it again. Another shadow of a smile almost showed itself. “Stay close. If anyone grabs you, scream so I know. If anyone offers you gems, refuse even if you see visions of a wealthy life. If anyone offers you a drink that’s bubbly and silver, refuse even if you—”
“How about I just refuse everything?” Lily offered.
Dranian nodded. “That will work.” He turned and led the way onto a busy street where garland wrapped fences and white cottony dust covered the roads as if it was placed there to mimic snow. Tiny, glowing fairies buzzed above them like fireflies, and pretty, pointy-eared creatures moved into their path, eyeing Lily and Dranian while sipping on steaming drinks from crystal mugs. They wore long, deep blue gowns, vests with glittering green threads, chunky scarves, and large coats with fur-lined hoods. Some wore wreaths with flowers that sprouted as they passed. Dranian ignored them all, walking like a military man on a mission.
“They’re preparing for the two months of Yule ceremonies,” he muttered over his shoulder. “That’s why everything is extra flashy.”
“Ah.” Lily wondered if the House of Lyro would be decorated like this; frost-kissed and smelling of pine. “What can we expect the House of Lyro to be like?” she asked. “You’ve hardly briefed me on it.”
“You won’t be going in there,” Dranian stated.
Lily stopped walking again. “What do you mean I won’t be going in?” A nearby fairy took her hesitation as an opportunity to show her a dazzling velvet gown that somehow looked to be exactly her size.
“I made this gown for you, can’t you tell?” the fairy asked.
Lily glanced over at the dress, but only until Dranian swept back, grabbed her shoulder, turned her toward the road ahead, and continued walking.
“If you go into the House, you’ll never come out. I’ll go in. I know this family. I can withstand their torture.” Dranian’s voice wavered—a clear tell that he was lying. Lily looked over in time to see him bite his tongue.
It was strange to be the least educated person on an assignment. Connor always let Lily do the research ahead of their tasks, making her the natural leader. She didn’t know whether to try and convince Dranian to let her help, or if she should heed his advice since he understood this magic stuff. It was difficult to tell if he was being reasonable or overly cautious.
She decided to change the subject. “I’m starving.”
“Swallow some air then, Human, because that’s all we have to eat,” Dranian grumbled.
Lily grunted and stuck her tongue out at him. She did it half to lighten the mood, and half from legitimate dissatisfaction of the growling hole in her belly. What she didn’t do it for though, was for someone to place something on it.
She wasn’t prepared to come face-to-face with a black-haired fairy, or to have him drop a coin on her tongue at lightning speed. Or for the vicious smile that followed.
She was too shocked to move for a split second as it settled in.
Lily tried to spit it back out. Her spitty sounds filled the street, turning heads. But the coin stuck to her tongue like glue, weighing it down so she couldn’t even speak.
“Now you won’t be hungry forever,” the fairy said like he’d heard her comment and was kindly solving her problem.
Dranian punched him.
Lily shrieked, trying to pull the metal out of her mouth as the black-haired fairy fell into the dirt. The fairy howled a laugh, then he pointed at Lily.
“Is that female what I think she is?” he asked Dranian.
Dranian’s eyes widened. He brushed a hand over his injured arm.
Lily had never felt more out of her element as her legs turned numb and began wobbling. Heat soared through her body as if a paralytic drug was leaking from the coin. She reached for the gun tucked into the back of her belt, but found she couldn’t move her fingers to grab it.
“I’m from the Brotherhood of Assassins!” Dranian barked over the street. “The death-bringers of Queene Levress herself! Cross me at great cost!” Before he’d even finished his announcement, he lifted Lily, his face contorting as he tossed her over his shoulder and hauled her through the village.
His sprint into the woods was filled with grunting and quiet, anguished sounds. Lily’s mouth had no feeling as he laid her flat on her back behind the cover of the trees. “Don’t touch anything!” he growled. “Don’t eat anything! Why is that so difficult?!” He jammed his fingers into the dirt and rummaged around until he found a stone. Then he squeezed Lily’s jaw to open her mouth, and he dropped it inside.
The second the stone touched the coin, it loosened from her tongue and the feeling came back into her body. She flung herself up and coughed, spitting out the coin and the dirty rock at once.
“That was totally not my fault!” she said in a shriek. She coughed again. “Ugh, that rock tasted like mud.” She put a hand on her stomach as a terrible, overwhelming wave of starvation rushed in, so much greater than the hunger she’d felt before the whole coin thing. Thoughts of food screamed through her mind; pizza, pasta, Thai food, cake— “How much further is it to the House of Lyro?” she asked. “And is there going to be food there?” was what she wanted to ask.
“House of…” Dranian looked like he might explode behind his dull mask of expression. “Forget the House of Lyro! Now I’m going to be fighting off a whole village! They all saw you!” Then, “Do you know how valuable you are? Hunters will fill these woods within the hour!”
Lily nodded. She closed her eyes and shook the manic thoughts of pizza away. “Did that coin trick make me crave food like a crazy person?”
“It might have,” Dranian snapped.
She thought of that fairy’s vicious smile, how fast he’d put her in a state of paralysis, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get far away from this village. In fact… it was the first moment she wondered if maybe Dranian had been right in his warnings of this place, and that she was crazy for wanting to come here. The first moment she realized she had no idea what she was doing against fairies.
“Let’s go,” she said. Everything in the trees was darker, the air thicker, her knees weaker. “Dranian, I want to go,” she said again, pulling her legs beneath her.
“Your body isn’t used to fairy meddling. Are you sure you can walk?” Dranian asked. He stole a look into the woods. Glanced over his shoulder.
“I’m fine!” Lily promised. She stood and inhaled deeply.
She passed out.
Her limbs crumpled, she hit the dirt, she was gone.
There was no dream. There was just spinning blackness that swallowed time and thoughts and reality.
It felt like only a few seconds had passed when she heard Dranian mutter, “I haven’t fought that hard in ages, Human .” And some time after that he said, “We’ll have to hide here until I regain strength in my one good arm.”
There were only two kinds of people in the world. Those who solved problems and those who made them. Despite her upbringing and unlucky childhood, Lily had refused at an early age to be the latter. And that one resolve had made her a different sort of girl. It had made her a survivor.
That was why, when the sound of shattering glass made her eyelids peel open to see a ceiling over her head and walls around her, her first move was to roll out of bed, grab her gun, and move into the next room before she’d blinked the sleep from her eyes. It was why she punched as soon as she saw the young woman raise a weapon against Dranian, their colliding spears sending a metallic echo through the cabin.
The woman took Lily’s punch, the spear in her hand swinging around so fast, Lily would have been impaled through the neck if she hadn’t leaned back. Lily kicked as she came up. The woman dodged it in a graceful dance, appearing before her again with the tip of her spear at Lily’s throat. Lily’s gun was against the woman’s head, right between a pair of wild green eyes.
The woman’s gaze flickered over to Dranian—whom Lily only now realized had stopped fighting. He’d become pale and rigid, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Drop your spear, or I’ll shoot,” Lily warned the woman anyway.
Dranian dropped his spear, and Lily cut him a look of disbelief. “I wasn’t talking to you!” she said. But his expression didn’t waver, and Lily looked from Dranian, to the woman, then back to Dranian again, who seemed like he couldn’t spit out whatever he wanted to say.
Then, as if all the weirdness in the room wasn’t enough, Dranian miraculously found his voice to ask her, “Where’s Shayne?”
Lily almost demanded to know why Dranian would ask that question to a stranger, but the young woman’s face fell, and the next thing Lily knew, the ‘stranger’ spoke words that made Lily drop her gun. Made the beats of Lily’s heart slow, and made none of this seem real.
“You came too late,” the woman said.
Too late.
Too late ?
Was this woman a psycho? She clearly had a few screws loose, but numbness filled Lily’s chest when she studied the woman’s face and saw actual regret there. It was as if this stranger might have really known something about Shayne in her glowing-eyed, tangly-haired head. And that… Lily couldn’t handle that. Not even a peanut’s worth.
“What does that mean?” Lily asked in a low, articulate voice. She nearly raised her gun again. Heat burned around her eyes out of nowhere, even though crying wouldn’t solve anything. Even though crying was for people who didn’t know how to survive like she did. “Tell me what that means!” she repeated. She cut her glare over to Dranian who stood there with parted lips, hugging his injured arm to himself, still staring at the intruder. “Who is this?” Lily asked him instead, pointing to the psycho-woman with her gun.
Dranian didn’t answer. Didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t help at all .
The woman spoke instead, “It means Shayne Lyro is probably already dead. And if he’s not… he likely wishes he was,” she stated. Her voice was high and sweet like a melody, but it didn’t make the things she said any better. “And running at full speed to that horrible House won’t get us there in time even if the sky deities have kept him alive until now.”
Lily bit down on her lips and drifted a step toward Dranian, forcing him to peel his eyes off the psycho-woman and meet her gaze. “What is she saying, Dranian?” she demanded. “What is this psycho saying?”
Dranian’s mouth moved, but he didn’t answer.
“What in the world happened, Dranian?” Lily roared this time. She tightened her grip on her gun while losing her grip on herself. “I know all you brothers were in on something back in the summer. Did that have to do with why Shayne lied to us and came here and ended up like this?!”
Dranian slid back a step. A crease formed between his brows as he shook his head. “Our secret-y thing had nothing to do with this,” he swore. “And I promised my brothers I would never tell of that incident, so don’t ask me about it—I beg you, Lily.”
Lily stared at him with a look that spent the last dime of energy she had left after hearing the woman’s news. “We’ll be too late even if we run; didn’t you hear?” Lily enunciated every syllable. “We’re too late, Dranian! We’re too late for Shayne!” She hiccupped an inhale as that settled in. “So yeah—I’m going to ask about it. And you’re going to tell me every ‘secret-y’ thing you fairies were involved in before Shayne left.”