“I don’t like this.” He released me and shook his head. “Forget the crown. I’ll buy you another one.”
My curiosity ate away at me. It wasn’t just the crown I wanted, but the message I thought was inside. “If I do get poked by one of these thorns and it’s poisonous, you can heal me.”
“This is Fae magic. What if it doesn’t work?”
“Why would he let us go if he wanted to kill me now?”
Professor Nimblewatt stopped his circling around the cage. “Did you say Fae?”
Both of us turned to him. Zyacus replied, “Yes, you know something about them?”
He shuddered and took his glasses off. “When I was a boy,” he began and took in a deep breath, “the Fae came. They took four girls from my village to make them their brides with promises of riches and abundance, and also to offer us relief from the blood moon. The village was so happy. These powerful, beautiful, men from a better land came to give their girls a better life or so they thought.”
Relief from the blood moon? And that’s what the Fae came for? Human brides? It didn’t make sense, especially when Prince Winter Prick made it clear he thought himself superior.
Nimblewatt went on, “But the same night of the wedding celebrations, they also took my brother—I followed them. After the binding ceremonies of four girls, the happiness and celebrations ended. On the last day of the month of the blood moon, they slaughtered my brother and three other boys. A white essence flowed from their fallen bodies into the Fae lords. I don’t know what it was. But I can tell you the Fae are wicked and cannot be trusted. If this trap is made by one of them we should build a tomb around it with no way in.”
A white essence—did they collect souls? The thought of that made me shudder. A feeling of impending doom hit me in the gut. If this happened on the last day of the month of the blood moon again, they’d come in just a couple weeks. We hardly had time to prepare. How could we prepare? “I’m sorry you lost your brother to them… How do we stop them?”
Professor Nimblewatt shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. They had some sort of persuasive power. Everyone who drank and ate at the wedding celebrations suddenly became carefree. My parents smiled as they waved goodbye to my brother who also grinned like a fool as he left with them. The girls didn’t even react when the boys were killed in front of them. Boys they’d known their whole lives. I’d hidden when I saw them come. I never drank their wine or ate their food even though I was starving. My ability is to see people as they truly are, and I knew they were bad. So I never forgot but my parents—they’d forgotten they even had another child. I cried and cried about my brother, I screamed his name at them but their memory of him was gone. That was even more tragic than his death. He and the boys and girls had been forgotten.
“Over time mother’s memory came back in pieces. She’d stare at the empty bed next to mine and ask me why we had it. She’d say, ‘go wake up your brother’ and then stop herself. She’d cry in her sleep.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said softly. The story made my gut churn. Made my chest ache. I also believed that Nimblewatt was the boy Edwin from the Thirsty Pirate tavern had spoken of. No one believed him.
He sighed. “That was hundreds of years ago now. But if they are back, we must stop this ritual. We cannot let this happen again.”
“We will,” Zyacus’s firm voice left no room for doubt that he’d do whatever it took.
“We’ll find a way,” I promised.
“For now,” Nimblewatt said, lifting his hands. “I’ll hide this trap with a spell. Stay away from it.”
As Zyacus and I walked away, my crown called to me… not with words but almost as if an invisible rope tugged around my middle, beckoning me to come back. I pushed the feeling away. What did he do to my crown?
Chapter 15
As we entered the academy, small groups of students whispered as we walked by. Not that this was entirely unusual but it was obvious they were talking about us. They were going to ruin the surprise party. I grabbed Zyacus’s hand and the first thing that popped into my head was my room.
Looking taken aback at my abrupt action, he dropped my hand and looked around. “Um, I thought we were going to see Madison and Jordane?”
Why didn’t I think of her office before I used the appearus spell? “I-uh, forgot but we can go there now. We do need to tell them about the crown and our encounter with the Fae bastard, and to add to the list what Nimblewatt told us.”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion and gave me a sideways look. “Alright, but I overheard some of the students mentioning a party. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
Heat rose up my neck and into my cheeks. Damn, he knows. “Party?” I repeated with a shrug. “I didn’t hear anything.”
He grinned and plopped down on my bed, relaxing like it was his own. “You’re a terrible liar.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He grabbed the unicorn sculpture he made me last year for my birthday from my nightstand and inspected it like he didn’t know every curve and detail. “How about I go talk to Madison and Jordane so you can get ready for my party. Unless you plan to go with windblown hair and dirty clothes.”
“Prick,” I said and stormed into my closet. The surprise was ruined. I was attacked by the Fae prince a second time. My stolen crown now called to me in some poisonous thorn cage and ugh, I wanted to scream.
Poking
