Prison Princess (Paranormal Prison) - CoraLee June Page 0,19

he wasn’t drunk. He was just sitting there with that woman on his lap. Okay. Point taken. I knew this routine. In prison, if you wanted to show how tough you were, then you went ahead and punched out the toughest guy in there so that no one would fuck with you. Usually that was a werewolf, but that didn’t matter right now. He’d been kind to me last night, and now he wanted to make the point that I didn’t matter to him. How to do that? Hold that fairy.

Fine. I got it. I grabbed an apple off the table and took a bite, letting the juice coat my tongue and giving myself a chance to not say what I wanted to.

“Princess?” He lifted an eyebrow. “You need something?”

“We’re leaving, right?” This might be the best piece of fruit I’d ever eaten, and I couldn’t even enjoy it because he was being such a...such a… My temper flared, and in that second, a tree sprouted through the floor of the inn. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was in full bloom with one of the branches shoving the fairy off him and hurling her across the floor.

The inn fell silent. Gasps and yells followed as a momentarily stunned Cypress jumped to his feet, staring at the tree.

Horror flooded me. I wasn’t going to fool myself. That tree had come because I’d gotten angry. I’d literally destroyed this place. I stared upwards as the tree kept rising, knocking out floor by floor of the place until it towered so tall it was through the roof. I covered my mouth with my hand.

I’d...I’d done that.

How had I done that? I didn’t have that kind of power. Hell, I wasn’t sure I had any at all. I’d never shown any before the other night. I might as well have been magicless. I stared at the apple. Was it the apple’s fault? I set it down, just in case, and stepped back.

I hadn’t even felt anything. Just a stuttering of my brain. Like I hadn’t been able to control my thoughts.

Everyone in the place turned toward me. I tried to swallow. “I…” What was I supposed to say about what I’d done? It was exactly this sort of thing that got someone put in the prison to begin with. I’d just broken the law, and I didn’t know how.

Cypress grabbed my arm, hauling me backward. “Come on. Out. Now.”

“But I...but I…”

“Don’t say a fucking word.” He ran, and this time, I had no trouble keeping up with him. I was properly dressed and able to move.

Tears flooded my eyes. I’d just destroyed these people’s livelihood. I didn’t even know how or why. Well, I knew why. That fairy. On his lap. But why was I so concerned with what my captor was doing? Was I seriously so desperate for affection that I would do this?

I struggled to stay with him, though my boots were significantly more comfortable than the slippers I had worn before. Women and children on the street walked toward the inn as we fled it. Their murmurs of confusion filled the space. “Did you see what happened?”

I shook my head and ignored them. “Keep up,” Cypress growled loudly before squeezing my arm tighter. I was so ashamed and a little drained. What had I done? How had I done it? After nodding toward an empty alley on our right, Cypress yanked me over to it and slammed me against the brick exterior of a tall building. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

My cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “I-I don’t know.”

“You just randomly conjured a tree in the middle of a crowded inn?” he growled. Cypress looked back at the street as a Fae man fluttered by, before drawing his attention back to me.

“That’s never happened to me before,” I stammered.

“Well, of course not. The prison wards made sure the moon couldn’t power you up, and the wards protected against any other reserves your birthright had.”

Yes, that made great sense. And now that he’d lined it up for me, I understood. I still didn’t know the why or how. “Cypress, I don’t even know how I did that.”

“Well, that fucking sucks.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Because we can’t prevent it if we don’t know how you did it in the first place or even why.”

I was glad to see we were on the same page. “I..I was mad.”

“You were mad?” He lifted an eyebrow, which just proceeded to