Curia Cloisters are going to hear all about it. Until then, they stay with me.”
The fae woman sniffed. “Empty threats. Guards—prepare for our departure.”
A guard turned back to the fence and raised his sword at my poor fence again.
“Don’t you dare!” I snarled.
The guard froze mid-swing.
I suspiciously glared at him, but relaxed when he didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for?” the older fae woman demanded.
“I…can’t,” the guard slowly ground out.
Suits and the older fae swung around and stared at me, varying degrees of horror and terror flickering across their expressions.
“No, no it can’t be possible.” The older fae shook her head as she stared at the night mares. “They haven’t bound a monarch in a century. They couldn’t possibly bind us to you. It would send the Night Court on a path of destruction!”
Suits tugged on his tie, losing some of his prim-and-proper-edge. “They chose. We’re not needed—we can’t do anything. She’s already bound!”
I rolled my eyes at their theatrics—blissfully ignorant, or I probably would have been rolling around on the ground.
I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with fae. Since I was an Unpledged half fae there was always a chance one of the fae would decide I had to join them—and because the Courts have absolute jurisdiction over all fae, half or otherwise, it would have been hard to fight.
But I knew very little about the Night Court. My bio father was from the Night Court, and given how he had abruptly divorced my mom when I was a toddler, I didn’t have a burning desire to get to know his Court.
The fae moaned for a few moments as my irritation grew.
“That’s enough,” I said, using the same, firm, no-nonsense voice I used when I was working with the Drakes’ dogs. “You either explain, or you leave here knowing that you are never getting these horses back.”
The older fae turned her attention to me, her anger making her expression cruel. “They chose you. How could they have chosen you? It was supposed to be Lady Chrysanthe—or someone proud and noble. Not a half human!”
“Get off this property, now,” I ordered. “I don’t want to see you again.”
“We can’t leave you,” Suits pleaded.
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re our new queen!”
“Though you don’t deserve it, human,” the woman growled.
That’s it. I’m done.
I turned to the barn and stalked in its direction.
Ever since the spiders I’d taken to leaving at least two cans of wasp spray. I climbed over the fence, found them, and stalked my way back to the rude fae.
The guards, surprisingly, stumbled back a few steps.
“Wait, give us a chance to explain, Queen,” Suits begged. “You need to come with us.”
“Hard pass.” I popped the lids off the spray cans. “And don’t call me that.”
“It’s not a matter for you to decide.” The older fae scowled. “We don’t want you either. But it’s out of our hands since you somehow courted favor with the night mares. You have no choice but to go with us to the Night Court.”
Suits grabbed me by the wrist and tried to pull me across the pasture, but he severely underestimated the strength of a farm girl.
I dug my heels in, ripped my wrist from his grasp, and slammed him in the side of the head with one of the cans of wasp spray.
He toppled like a tree, groaning as he held his head.
I guess for all of their manipulations, fae don’t fight dirty.
I raised the spray can I hadn’t whacked on a fae skull. “Whoever tries that next is going to get a face full of wasp poison.”
Suits slowly stood up and held his hands out. “We don’t intend to harm you,” he said in a classic case of fae wordsmithing.
He could have just said they won’t harm me, but there was a good chance that was a lie, so he used the word intend instead.
“That’s not good enough,” I said.
The old lady glared at me. “You are a viper,” she said. “Our Court will eat you alive!”
“Lady Demetria, this is not an appropriate time,” Suits muttered. “Guards, if you would escort our new queen to the car, we must take her—”
“Oh, you must?” asked a sweet, clear, feminine voice.
Suits turned around—probably thinking to tell off the interrupter—but clamped his jaw shut when he saw who it was.
A male vampire—lethal with dark hair and eyes such a dark shade of red they were almost black—was cradling a petite blond who was just a little older than me.
She held a ball of crackling electricity in her