Page 2

Sav

T he city was a cage, and I was its prisoner.

Heat pressed through the cracked windowpane, sticky and suffocating.

Humans called Central Park beautiful. Their little Garden of Eden amidst the urban jungle.

I saw only man-made cages for plants and carefully cultivated paths for its inhabitants.

Nothing about this place was free or wild.

Like the hedges lining the sidewalks, I was being groomed into what humans expected me to be. Molded a bit more each day into a human version of my once lethal self. I would have preferred to vanish from memory rather than rot in this prison, but that was not to be my fate.

Sighing heavily, I rose from my perch in the window and edged around the dorm-style bed to the single closet that housed all my remaining possessions.

One thing New York City was short on was space, and our proximity stacked against the ever-rising tension mounting between two species, stifled in the sizzling heat of summer.

I pulled the solid green apron off its hook—my uniform—and tied it behind my back in a tight knot.

Not only was I trapped here, but I was required to hold a job.

A mandatory step in the assimilation project to help fae and humans coexist. Work for the folk, especially for those of us who were not part of a Faerie court, was limited.

If you knew the right human or had the right kind of magic, positions in modeling or television were prestigious and paid well. I knew precisely the wrong humans, not that I would lean on them for a favor, especially with my magic bound.

Assessing myself in the mirror, I considered inching up my skirt for the briefest moment before dismissing the idea.

Although it was guaranteed to get me better tips, the urge to draw blood would be fierce when someone inevitably tried to grab my ass, and then I would be fired.

And jobless fae weren’t awarded housing.

There were more of us than there was space, and only those who proved their willingness to participate in the program were given a place to cram their possessions in.

Tonight was a full moon, and that meant I was more likely to threaten violence.

Oddly, full moons on the human side were almost as unpredictable as in Faerie.

Men behaved as though they had trace werewolf genes hidden in them, howling at females and starting fights that turned bloody quickly on the nights when the moon hung round in the sky.

The same sky we looked upon back when I lived in Faerie.

With that in mind, and because I didn’t give a damn what any human male thought of me, I swung my long auburn hair into a topknot.

I stared into the mirror at dull hazel eyes.

Human eyes. Once, they had burned amethyst in moonlight.

Now they barely sparked, like Faerie had been bleached from me.

When I was cast into this realm, I’d used the last remnant of my power to glamour myself to look human.

Now, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t change back.

I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, trailing my fingers down to the dusting of freckles on my chest. Mab knew why, but men always stared at them.

Assholes . But it meant better tips, and I had my eye on a few human gadgets that cost money.

Money—a foreign concept in a land built on bargains, but bargains were illegal here.

Grabbing my house key, I slipped into a pair of heels—invented by men to torture women, no doubt—and stepped out the door.

In the hallway, I wedged myself against rough unfinished wood as a goblin shoved past me, not bothering to make room.

“Hey!” I demanded. “Share the hall!”

He grunted, ignoring me.

My fists tightened at my sides as I pushed off the wall. If I’d had even a fraction more power available, I would have blasted him across the hall and left him whimpering for his mommy, but in my current condition, he would only feel a tickle.

Bounding down the back stairs, I moved quickly to the bottom floor, thrusting open the emergency exit door, and squinted against the harshness of the fading daylight.

In Faerie, the sun always grew hazy as the day reached its end.

In the human realm, it was a brutal tyrant seeking enemies to flay alive should you look upon it.

Heels sinking into soft grass, I crossed the lawn surrounding the housing, built just inside Central Park for our kind.

If I could have left this park to settle anywhere more remote, I would have, but the deal we’d made with humans only granted us living quarters in designated areas—as though they knew we would suffer most trapped among all this iron and it delighted them.

I trailed the back of the building, cutting through the uninhabited part of the park to avoid running into any humans as I left Central Park.

Something stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and I leaned down tearing the scrap of paper, sticky from someone’s gum, free and rolled my eyes.

Keep Harlem Human glared up at me in bold yellow lettering.

Just another day living among people.

Fae’z In Harlem was a seedy interspecies bar just a few blocks away, on what people referred to as the wrong side of town .

Its flashing neon lights had been broken in some act of vandalism a few weeks ago by anti-fae faction members—in the early hours of dawn—when the bar was closed, and no one was around to retaliate. The AFF were cowards.

Sam, a man with the right politicians in his pockets, had built the bar three years ago, hoping to capitalize on humans who would pay extra to gawk at our kind.

It had been hastily constructed, cutting as many corners as possible, and was wedged uncomfortably between two derelict buildings that housed the city’s poorest residents.

My least favorite thing, the unisex bathroom.

Sam called it a uni-species bathroom, claiming it increased cohabitation and the city inspector had allowed it.

It had been used for so many dirty deeds I wouldn’t piss in there if I had a full hazmat suit on.

Stepping inside the windowless bar, the dark momentarily swallowed denizens lingering from the day shift while my eyes rapidly adjusted to the low light.

I smiled at Brixz, who was nursing a drink after work, as I slid behind the counter.

His hunched shoulders and pinched expression could have been a mirror to my own dejected mood, but Brixz didn’t have my luck blending in.

His green, slightly slick-looking skin clashed horribly with the powder blue button up uniform he wore for his front desk job in my building.

Grabbing his cup, I refilled it. “Hey Brixz, bad day?”

He frowned up at me, his heavy brow folding thickly into a z across his forehead. “Damn riots making my day shit. They broke a window this morning and been throwing bricks at all the fae comin’ in and out of the building,” he grumbled.

I straightened. “I saw no riots outside our apartment.”

He took a long sip of his cup before shrugging. “They were at the front door. Did ya go out the back again?”

I wiped down the bar, biting my lip. I had, but the crowd couldn’t have been as large as Brixz described or I would have seen or heard something.

Maybe. My hearing was better than a human’s, but the glamour dampened some of my ability to hear as well as I had before.

Just another thing I lost when I was forced out of Faerie.

My stomach soured. It wasn’t the first time the Anti Fae Faction had targeted our building for one of their demonstrations. When would enough be enough? In three years, their actions were only escalating.

Last week, Clover, a fawn who worked weekends, hadn’t come in.

When I’d gone to check on her, she barely cracked her swollen lids and didn’t bother getting up from her bed.

She’d been cornered on her way home and beaten within an inch of her life.

I had reported it to the Inter Species Human Fae Alliance, but as far as I knew, nothing had been done about it.

She was expected to return to work this weekend.

A stipulation if she wanted to keep her housing. Luckily, our kind healed quickly.

Curling my fingers into a fist, I scrubbed the countertop with more force than was necessary. The paint meant to give it the look of marble was wearing away under my ministrations, and the cheap plastic underneath peeked through.

I glanced around. “Where’s Juniper?”

“She poured me a drink half an hour ago,” he said, head tipped into his cup. “Haven’t seen her since.”

It wasn’t like Juniper to disappear, and we didn’t have a back room.

A cold stone settled in my stomach. Like me, she avoided the restroom here at all costs.

She used the bathroom somewhere else; I reassured myself.

Goosebumps rose along my arms, and I rubbed them.

Scanning the dark room again, I turned to the bar’s single occupant. “I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Brixz mumbled into his cup as I untied my apron, set it on the counter, and stepped outside.

Moving down the cracked sidewalk, I raced the several blocks it took to get from the bar to the front of my building, heart pounding in my chest. The electricity in the air, charged with violence, pricked the hairs on the back of my neck.

I hadn’t felt it before, hadn’t seen them as I followed the forest’s unpaved path to work.

Now, the sheer size of the crowd stole my breath. A mix of bitter anger and disgust roiled in my gut as they raised signs and shouted slurs outside my building. Had Juniper been caught up in this mob? Was she lying in a heap, unconscious as they trampled her body in their frenzied state?

My heart crashed against my ribs, drowning out the world around me as I strained to see through packed, sweaty bodies.

Picking up my pace, I smacked into the hard expanse of a chest. Peering up, I swallowed as a male with dark slashes for eyebrows and raven hair falling nearly to his collar bone frowned down at me, his glare burning behind mesmerizing emerald eyes.

The sharp cut of his jawline, smooth skin and tall build could have marked him as one of the high fae, but the way his shoulders curved uncomfortably said otherwise.

Those unique eyes widened as he took me in. “Excuse me,” he said in a rumbling voice, stepping aside to let me pass.

Flinching as his utterly human smell permeated my space, I backed up.

His beauty had momentarily distracted me from the other signs of his humanity.

Folk attempted to blend in with humans—far outnumbered and bound by so many laws, we could scarcely breathe around them—but grunge attire and a blatant disregard for hygiene.

Never. Millennia of polish—and pride in our appearance—could not be wiped away simply for the sake of appearing human.

I sidestepped the man, banishing him from my thoughts, and scanned the ever-growing mob for any sign of Juniper.

As I drew near, the words to their chant became clear.

The famous line they’d graffitied on every alley and building in Harlem was the slogan of the Anti Fae Faction.

“We don’t need no assimilation,” cleverly twisted from the lyrics of the song Another Brick in the Wall, rang in my ears, making me want to stab something.

While I quietly plotted my escape from this new hell, some humans made their feelings public. I felt like shouting back at them that we didn’t enjoy living among them either. That they agreed with me did nothing to raise my opinion of them.

I skirted the crowd, searching for a satyr with curling horns and a mane of sandy blonde hair, when a man stepped up onto an overturned crate, megaphone in hand. Steel-gray eyes, as sharp as a hawk’s, swept over the mob and his lips twisted cruelly.

Heat boiled in my veins as my gaze landed on a face every creature knew.

Dane Clyde, the leader of the Anti-Fae Faction and the self-proclaimed slaughterer of our kind, raised his hand and the crowd fell silent.

He had personally led over a dozen riots through the streets of New York City and claimed responsibility for the brutal murder of several low fae who were courtless and lacked high fae protection.

A jolt of terror shot through me when I spied blonde curls bouncing near the front.

I surged forward as she turned, and I caught a glimpse of her very human face.

Not Juniper. Exhaling a breath, I stopped.

I may look human—mostly—but to someone like Dane, or his fanatics, I wasn’t sure my glamour would fool them.

I wiped a sweat slicked palm on my skirt and continued around the crowd, sticking to the shadows where the man with dead eyes, leading his very own crusade of torment, wouldn’t see me.

Dane cleared his voice and from the corner of my eye, I saw the raven-haired man I had bumped into—still standing across the street—cringe visibly.

Holding a megaphone to his mouth, Dane shouted, “Grotesque monsters plague our city, take our jobs and frighten our children.” Shouts of agreement rang out from the gathered horde.

“We stood by, waiting for our lawmakers to come to their senses and banish these creatures back to the hell they came from, but have they listened?”

My gaze traveled the crowd as the spark of violence in them ignited into a flame of rage.

Heat radiated through me. They were vile, pitiful beings fueled by fear, and if my magic had been free, I would have reveled in their deaths.

The fire clawing at my ribs wasn’t just for tonight, though.

It was for every veiled threat I’d been forced to endure since the night I’d been cast out. Since the day my magic was bound.

Mumbles from the people.

“I said: Have they listened?”

“No!” everyone yelled.

A satisfied smirk twitched at his lips. “Now is the time to take matters into our own hands!” As he shouted, fevered cries rose.

Ice slid down my spine, dousing some of my rage as he pointed behind him at my building, and bellowed: “Tonight we tell the malignant creatures who live in our world, that they can go back to Hell!” With his last statement he waved a bottle I hadn’t noticed, stuffed with a bright flaming cloth in the air, and the mob lit their torches.