one of them, a high Fae. Look at her pointed ears and stunning green eyes. Our species doesn’t possess that kind of sheer beauty and strength, to be honest. She looks a lot like the bitch queen who captured, tortured, and sent us here. We might need an ally like her if we want to kill the demoness.”
“Brigantia, whom you call the bitch queen, actually looks like a pit-bull,” I said. “The usurper uses Fae glamour to cover up her deformity.”
The air rippled with menace, and a chill crawled over my skin. I bet that my evil sister was using a spyglass, some sort of scrying spell, or some other magical device to observe the trial.
I was planning to rile her up more and expose her to whoever was willing to listen. And I’d bet the six-figure salary Rydstrom had offered me that the Furies were monitoring every second of this game, even though I couldn’t see their featureless, worthless faces.
I flipped the bird in the general direction of the sky and shouted, “Brigantia, this is for your ugly ass! I’ll be coming for you.” I grinned viciously as I tried to add a scare tactic to make her lose some sleep. “By the way, your big daddy is going to help me put you down like a rat.”
“E…Evie?” Richie stepped forward, his eyes widening in shock.
I wheeled toward him, removing my boot from the goatee guy’s face. He was down anyway, and he wasn’t a threat to me.
“Hi, Richie,” I said and winked at him. “Glad you still recognize me.”
I’d kept my Fae form since battling Brigantia in Vancouver.
“I—I couldn’t get you out of my mind after you left,” Richie said. “I flew to California to see you. That was how I got taken to another dimension by monsters. I never thought they existed, but Evie, they’re real.”
“You have no idea.” I nodded. “I experienced the same culture shock when I found out about the things that go bump in the night after I dropped out of Columbia. And then I found out I’m actually half Fae.”
Richie sighed. “I always knew you were special, but I never thought you were part Fae. I didn’t even know what Fae were a month ago.” He gazed at me, heat in his blue eyes. “You look good, Evie…even more beautiful than before.”
The terrifying monster he’d seen had paved the way for him to accept my true form. On the other hand, humans were always awestruck by Fae beauty.
“Hey, dude, we’re in the middle of the game,” the pixie-cut girl shouted. “Could you stop thinking with your dick so we can talk about how to kill the demoness? I want to get home for dinner tonight.”
“She is the demoness.” Richie’s redheaded friend pointed at me, jealousy ablaze in her eyes. “The queen described it, and this thing fits the profile. It might look like your ex-girlfriend, Richie, but it’s not her! I told you that you shouldn’t hang up on your ex.”
It was never flattering to be called it, but I ignored the redhead, who wasn’t worth my time and attention. I surveyed the rest of the group.
“I’m Princess Ileana Evelina Greene, the rightful heir to the throne of the Dawn Court,” I said. “The evil queen who forced you into the Wild Hunt to kill me is my bitch sister. Brigantia failed to murder me when I was a baby, since I was smuggled out and hidden in the human world and raised among you. Then recently, she found out about me, failed to assassinate me, and thrust me into the Wild Hunt to take me out. I’m telling you this because I want to give you a choice and make you an offer.”
Richie gazed at me with stars in his eyes. He hadn’t looked at me that way before. The poor guy had probably developed a Fae fetish after his ordeal. His redheaded friend, however, glared daggers at me.
The other contestants regarded me with uncertainty, calculation, or fear. They still surrounded me, probably to prevent me from escaping if they decided to kill me.
“There’s nothing you can offer us,” the goatee dude said as he sat up with a grunt.
“Then you don’t need to take it,” I said. “For the rest of you, listen. First, I’m the biggest badass here. You saw how I disarmed three of you in the blink of an eye, including the dude carrying the biggest gun. I’m a trained warrior Fae. I can kill easily and