It was less an office and more of a hang-out space. The cozy little room was plastered with band posters and Benjamin sat on a beanbag chair, his hands in his lap, a beatific smile on his face. He was sipping a giant can of Yerba Mate tea. Ms. Friar stood awkwardly in the center of the room, leaning against Benjamin’s “desk”; a rustic wooden table piled high with paperback books and scrolls. There were a couple of magic objects lying around. A goblinish sort of creature stared at Cara from inside a crystal ball which seemed foreboding.
“Hello, Ms. Friar,” Cara said firmly. She nodded at Friar and then Benjamin. “Hello, Benjamin. Is my mission ready?”
“Yep!” Benjamin replied, looking cheerful. “Have a seat.” He gestured toward a second beanbag which Cara assumed Ms. Friar had rejected. Cara nodded curtly and half fell into the beanbag chair. She blushed as she shifted around, sitting up and attempting to look graceful which was impossible.
“Congratulations,” Ms. Friar said grandly. “Benjamin has received a message from the fates and your mission is ready for you.”
“Great.” Cara bit her lip, practically vibrating with excitement. “So what am I doing?”
“First of all,” Benjamin said, rubbing his hands together, “the totem you must reclaim is for the material element of wood. It’s a small wood statue and it has a demon face on it and a bunch of runes. It’s a very dark wood. You’ll feel the power coming off it once you’re anywhere near it. So there won’t be any mistaking what it is. Second, you must go protect the fae prince, Dayen of the fae realm. He lives in-”
“I know where he lives,” Cara said, immediately feeling as if she’d just been tasked with going to get some dental work. “I’m from the fae realm. I know who the royals are.” She was being short with a professor and even though it was just Benjamin, he rose an eyebrow as Ms. Friar cleared her throat. “Sorry,” Cara said. “Just…I can’t stand fae royals. But I guess that’s my problem.”
“I’m sure you’ll learn to deal with that,” Ms. Friar said a little dismissively.
Cara sighed. She knew enough about life as a well-trained fae warrior at this point to know that you didn’t always get missions you liked. Sometimes you were tasked to command troops into a battle you didn’t care about. Sometimes you had to fight your way through a gang of vampires to obtain some stupid artifact just because a witch told you to. There was no telling what a fae warrior might be asked to do, especially in this day and age. But there was no arguing with your destined duty. You didn’t get to pick and choose sometimes.
“Alright,” Cara said, taking a breath. She tapped her boots together on the floor and looked up at Benjamin, still smiling beatifically. “Protect Prince Day. Never met him but I’ve heard he’s...a character. Or something. I don’t know. I’ve heard he doesn’t care much about the throne but to be fair, his parents were killed, I think. I never paid much attention to the royals. I just know they’re dead. So, who am I protecting him from?”
“Oh, we don’t know that,” Benjamin replied with a careless shrug.
“Oh.” Cara blinked at him. She smoothed her hair back. If she was going to be hanging around in the fae realm, she hoped she wouldn’t be expected to go full fae to blend in or something. Those fancy clothes and ornate hairstyles had always made her uncomfortable.
Though for all she knew, she might end up in the fae realm for good. There was really no telling what the life of a fae warrior might be like. She had only hoped she’d be tasked with something in the terran world for the most part.
“Well, then who am I reclaiming the wooden totem from?” Cara asked. “Who has it now?”
“We don’t know,” Benjamin said.
“Are you kidding?”
“Cara,” Ms. Friar addressed her sternly, “we are at the mercy of the fates. They tell us what they tell us. But you have been trained in investigative skills, sorcery, weapons and combat, history and lore…among other things! This is what you have been training for, for the last seven years. You are nineteen years old and the time is nigh. Go out there and protect Prince Dayen and find the totem. We’ve told you everything we know. It’s not much but it’s what you get. We’ve already contacted Prince Dayen and he’ll be expecting your arrival. He requested that you go to his penthouse on the terran side. He lives in Manhattan.”
“Christ,” Cara muttered.
“Cara!”
“Sorry,” Cara said. She stood and drew herself up a little taller. “It’s just a little surprising, I guess. Wasn’t what I expected.”
“You’ll do wonderfully,” Friar assured Cara, drawing closer. She clapped her hands to Cara’s cheeks. “And you can bond with your fae people. I know there are precious few here at Brunswick.”
“Mmm...great,” she said through her smoothed lips. Friar let go and Cara rubbed her jaw. “Right. Well, thank you.” She nodded at Benjamin and Friar. “I won’t let you down.”
“Of course not!” Benjamin said.
“And who knows,” Ms. Friar said with a shrug. “Perhaps this prince is your intended mate. The fates can be funny that way.”
“Yeah right,” Cara said, and blurted a laugh so hard she clutched her stomach. “A fae prince? I’d rather die.”
The thing with fae was, they could travel between dimensions easily. That meant they could slip between the terran world and the fae realm with ease as well as any other dimension they pleased. Some fae, a very select and special and tiny population of fae, could not only travel between and amid dimensions but also manipulate their fabric. This was an extraordinarily powerful skill to have.
Cara had that skill too. She had told one person about it (other than her own parents) and that had been Ms. Friar who she had sworn to secrecy. She liked being a gifted and skilled warrior fae. She didn’t like having such a rare and forceful power that could potentially rip apart the fabric between dimensions.
She was hoping it would simply never come up.
She had used the power with her mother standing by, watching carefully. The experience had terrified both of them. That first time, all Cara could remember was the incredible sensation of power pouring through her and the unshakeable assurance that she could do a lot of harm with that power. It was too much and it definitely wasn’t for her. Ms. Friar had required her to learn to use her power responsibly, even if she planned on never using it at all. Cara had complied like a good student. But she’d hated every minute of that training.
Physical combat. Now that was a power she understood.
She wondered if this Prince Dayen had a home gym or something where she could train while she was protecting him. She shook her head, still reeling at the idea that she would have to be the fae prince’s bodyguard pretty much twenty-four-seven if only because there was no telling what the threat to his life actually was or what it had to do with the wooden totem. She wondered if he would remain in the terran world or if they would return to his castle in the fae realm…
This mission had a lot of questions marks.
Cara sat back in her seat on the train and sighed. She’d bid her goodbyes to her fellow seventh-years. They’d all congratulated her on the mission and she’d only smiled tightly and nodded. They didn’t understand how annoyed she was with the very idea of fae royals and also how infuriating it was to have so little information to go on. She knew who she was protecting and where he lived and...that was about it.
“Unbelievable,” Cara muttered to herself.
The passenger sitting opposite her on train looked at her like she might be a little off and Cara narrowed her eyes. “What?”
That made him look away real fast.
Cara, though she generally felt more comfortable in the terran world than the fae realm, was always a little dizzied by Manhattan, but she did not dislike it. She had only been a few times, on nights out with her fellow seventh-years when they all had some free time and none of them were visiting with anyone.
Some of the girls were more acclimated to the human world than others and
that led to a lot of time spent explaining things like Uber and ATMs to Isla the mermaid or Freya who was just plain sheltered.
“Grand Central!” The voice was muffled on the loudspeaker. Everyone was starting to get up.
Cara shouldered her backpack. She’d used a spell to get her things down small enough to fit in her bag. Only the fates knew how long she’d be away. It was better to be prepared for anything if she possibly could.
“Prince Dayen, here I come,” she said to herself, as she shuffled along with the crowd out onto the platform and into Grand Central Station.
“Ma’am?” The doorman glared at Cara as if she were trying to get away with something. She cleared her throat and stood up straight. It had taken her an hour longer to find Prince Dayen’s building than she’d intended. That was embarrassing. It wasn’t as if the streets of Manhattan were difficult to figure out. Now it was dark and chilly. She wrapped her jacket tighter around her and stomped her booted feet on the sidewalk.
Dayen’s building was very tall and very fancy looking. It was right across from the park. Cara didn’t know much about Manhattan real estate, but she was pretty sure that meant it was very expensive.
“I’m here for Prince- I mean for Dayen. Dayen...ah, Deleigh?” They’d given her one more piece of information. Dayen’s family name in the terran world.
The doorman took his phone out and consulted a list before opening the big, glassy doors for her. “Yes, ma’am. Elevators to your left.”
Cara followed his direction to the guest elevator that looked as if it had just been built and which had a ridiculous number of buttons. There was an elevator operator as well.
“Fortieth floor, please,” Cara said. The operator had a key card and he buzzed the fortieth floor.
When Cara got out, she thought she might be in the wrong place suddenly. The building and the mirrored doors to the penthouse were just as absurdly lavish as she might have expected for a prince, but none of it seemed like the kind of place fae royalty would live. She had not even known any of the fae royals spent any time at all in the terran world.
She looked at her own reflection in the doors. She seemed short for a fae. She was a little short for a fae but she had forgotten that after so many years among other magical folk. She’d only visited home a few times. She wondered now how tall Prince Dayen was as she pressed the doorbell.
“Hello?” A woman answered the door and with her fae senses, Cara knew she was a bear shifter. She was an older lady and pretty in an earthy sort of way, her graying brown hair in a ponytail. She wore jeans and a sweater. “Can I help you?”
Cara knew that Prince Dayen was pretty young. Not much older than her if she remembered correctly. She wondered briefly if this was Dayen’s girlfriend and almost laughed out loud.
Imagine a fae royal dating a maid and a bear shifter at that! Ridiculous!
“I’m here for Prince Dayen,” Cara said firmly, clasping her hands in front of her. “I believe he’s expecting me.”
“Oh!” She nodded, opening the door wider. “Yes, he said a young lady would be here to see him. Please come in. He’s not here just now-”
“Oh yeah, sorry I’m late,” Cara said, frowning. She still felt silly for briefly getting lost. “I’m not used to Manhattan.”
“No worries. I mean that he hasn’t been in all evening,” the woman said as Cara made her way inside. “Gone out on the town like he always does. But he said you should wait for him. Can I get you something to drink or eat? He has a lovely kitchen. Fully stocked!”
Cara clenched her fists, abruptly and intensely frustrated. She didn’t know why she was surprised exactly. Of course Prince Dayen wasn’t here to greet her. He was one of them, one of those useless royals who thought being a fae was all about wearing pretty clothes and painting glitter along your ears and going to balls. All they cared about was bloodlines and the royal court.
Infuriating.
She might as well take advantage of his food and drink then, she supposed.
She crossed her arms, gazing around the place. Everything was white and shiny or slightly beige and less shiny. There were fae tapestries and paintings on the walls that gave Cara a stab of homesickness she hadn’t expected. But they also made the penthouse feel like a museum. There was a quilt on the back of the pristine white couch that seemed out of place and Cara squinted at it before heading to the kitchen after the maid.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m starving. I’m Cara, by the way.”
“Nina,” the woman said, grinning at her. “How do you feel about pesto and wine?”
The food was good. Cara couldn’t complain about that. She ate her fill of pasta along with a salad and then dessert and coffee. Nina the maid apparently had some work to do, so Cara sat at the counter when she was done eating and yawned and rubbed her eyes and played with her phone, sipping a second cup of coffee.
It was after midnight already. Her backpack sat on the floor at her feet.
Where is this dumbass?
When the door buzzed and Nina ran out to answer it, Cara just leaned on her hand and watched. She let in a guy around her age, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, his lustrous white-blonde silvery hair falling around his shoulders and one lock hanging artfully over a gray-blue eye. He was gorgeous. But he didn’t look like any kind of prince Cara had ever seen, pointy ears or no.
“Forgot my keycard,” he was grumbling to Nina who nodded as he walked in. “Geez…” He pushed his hair back with a sense of infinite grace and Cara wrinkled her nose. “Alright…”
An assistant, Cara thought. Must be. Some annoying little toadie who looked after Dayen’s every need. Ugh.
He’s cute though, Cara thought as she looked him over. By most fae standards he might be considered pretty gorgeous. She didn’t think so. But he was cute in a way that she liked more than that. He was a type of sexy and fun-loving cute. She sipped her coffee and watched him scratch his head and sniff and toe off his shoes as Nina quietly spoke to him.
No, this guy was definitely not a prince. They would never be so casual and comfortable-seeming. They all had massive sticks up their asses.
“Oh, that’s her?” The guy was saying. He nodded in Cara’s direction. “Interesting.”
He strode toward Cara in his sock feet and rested his hands on his hips authoritatively. She swiveled around on her stool to face him. He fixed her with his gray-blue-eyed stare. His eyes glittered in the dim light.
“You’re the fae girl from Brunswick?” He asked, smirking. “On some important mission?”
“Yeah, I have to protect this asshole prince,” Cara said, meeting his smirk with her own. “What can you tell me about him?”
The mystery fae guy grinned widely, looking her up and down. “Oh, he’s obnoxious. Total shithead.”
Cara chuckled at his honesty. “I knew it.”
He laughed. He looked utterly pleased by the conversation as he stood there. He was just like her, she thought. The prince obviously treated him like shit and he probably didn’t get a like-minded person he could talk to about it very often. She hoped they could be friends.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said, leaning on the counter to face her. “You’re here to protect him?”
“Yeah, that’s all I know,” Cara shrugged. “I’m not really supposed to talk about it except to him but I don’t know that much anyway. Protect Prince Dayen with my life. That’s the mission.”
“And then you graduate.”
Huh. He knew about the rules of Brunswick. That was interesting. “Yep.”
“You must be pretty tough to get through seven years at Brunswick,” he said, pushing his hair back. She followed the motion with her eyes. He did everything so damn gracefully. That part of him seemed almost royal. But it didn’t compute with how he spoke and dressed and the things he was saying. “Must be a badass.”
“I can handle myself,” Cara said simply. The modesty wasn’t false. She could but she didn’t feel the need to brag about it
. Puffing yourself up just made you look weak, in her opinion.
“You think you could take me?” he asked, wagging his eyebrows.
She laughed, just a little bit charmed. “With my hands tied behind my back.”
“Huh.” He nodded and she detected a little attraction. Not that she was averse to it, but fooling around with the prince’s assistant could get really dicey if she wasn’t careful.
On the other hand, she’d been stuck in a girls-only school for seven years and he was cute and there was the slight chance this was the guy, the mate.
She wondered…
She had only just realized she hadn’t gotten the assistant’s name yet when he burst out laughing. His laugh sounded mellifluous. She’d heard other fae laugh like that. Her own laugh seemed rough and far too human by comparison, but his was smooth and low. She felt her eyelids getting a little heavy.
Beautiful. Even if she didn’t know why he was laughing.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore,” he said, waving a hand. Abruptly, he bowed low just like fae subjects did toward royals at court. “Prince Dayen Deleigh of the Realm of the Fae. At your service.”
Cara immediately turned crimson and her mouth became a tight line. “You’re lying.”
“He’s not,” Nina said, seemingly appearing out of nowhere and looking apologetic. “He just likes to tease. It’s him. Prince Day.” She shook her head at the apparent prince and clicked her tongue. “That was very mean, Day.”
Cara’s instantaneous ire turned to astonishment.
She called him Day? Like he was just some guy?
But when she turned her head, there the Day in question was, grinning and looking as cocky and smug as every douchebag Cara had the misfortune to run into when she and her fellow seventh-years had gone out to have some fun and scope some boys.
What an asshole.
“Great,” Cara said, looking him up and down with disgust. “Just great.”
Prince Dayen, or “Day,” she supposed, was still laughing and Cara wished she could punch him in the face rather than protect him. He was really getting a kick out of making her look stupid. And she did. She had been so sure he was not the prince that she had stopped just short of accusing him of lying but he really hadn’t. He hadn’t given her a false name or said he was anyone else. He’d just let her put her foot in her big mouth.
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