City of Fae

“Step out of the booth.”


I lifted my hands and shimmied out. Like the general who’d attacked Reign on the train, this fae warrior bristled with weapons and was taller than I am by several feet, and lean, like a long-distance runner. His neutral face said “don’t-fuck-with-me.” He didn’t look as bone-breakingly strong as some of the fae, but that didn’t mean I was going to test him. Fast? Yes, he could definitely outrun me. I glanced at the smashed window, searching for Reign’s distinctive profile, but I couldn’t see much beyond the burgeoning crowd.

“Running would be foolish.” The fae yanked my arms out at my sides and frisked me with clinical detachment. “You will come with us. Any resistance will be met with deadly force.”

“You can’t detain me. I’m human. I haven’t done anything wrong.” I did want to run. Knowing what I did about the queen, and how Warren had reacted to my human presence in Under, I wasn’t entirely convinced the FA had my well-being at the forefront of their thoughts. My body tingled and my heart raced, throbbing adrenaline through my veins. The familiar itch in my palm crawled up my arm, sprinkling a restless twitch in its wake. The urge to bolt wouldn’t abate. I flexed my hand into a fist, trying to work the sensation out, but rather than dissipating the tingling surged. A jolt went through me, tensing muscles, and before I could think about what I’d done, I’d snatched my cup from the table and launched coffee into the fae’s face. He spat a curse and reeled back, his right hand reaching for the dagger sheathed at his thigh. A snarl sounded—my own. I sunk my hand into his hair, fisted it into a knot, and punched him downward, throwing all my weight into the move. His forehead cracked against the table and he collapsed. I stumbled with him, trying to untangle my hand as my heart thudded in my ears and the tiny voice of reason screamed at me, demanding to know why the hell I’d just face-planted a fae cop into a café table.

“Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God.” I clambered off him, scuttling backward. He groaned, fingers twitching too close to his knife. I snatched the blade away from his reaching fingers and blinked into his dazzling eyes as he tried to focus on me and failed. A terrible, almost undeniable urge to finish him sparked in my mind. Thoughts struck, vicious and precise. I should kill him. Kill him now, before he recovers. My fingers curled around the dagger handle.

End him.

Reign strode in—impossibly unruffled considering he’d leaped through a window. He raked his gaze over the fallen fae and arched a questioning eyebrow at me. “Remind me never to piss you off.” He clamped his hand around my upper forearm and dragged me onto wobbling legs. “You okay?”

“Yuh-huh.” The sharp, alien thoughts dissolved into figments of my imagination.

He eased the dagger from my death grip and pulled me toward the door. “We need to leave. Now.”

Adrenalin surged through my veins. I gave the waking fae one last look. “This puppy has teeth, asshole.” A grin slashed across my lips. We’d garnered an audience who gasped as we rushed by their tables. So much for going somewhere quiet. Outside, a small crowd gathered around the recovering fae Reign had dealt with. All snapped pictures with their cell phones. I heard cries of, “Reign!” “It’s Reign,” “Sovereign,” as he dragged me through the crowd and could imagine tomorrow’s headlines. ROCK STAR REIGN BEATS FAE AUTHORITIES UNCONSCIOUS. Or, REIGN OF TERROR, oh yeah, I liked that one, maybe I should write it.

Reign veered us down a side street lined with terraced houses, leaving little room for hiding places. He stopped suddenly and I plowed into him with an oomph. He steadied me and grinned. “Ready?”

“What for?” I panted.

He closed his arms around me. In the time it took to blink, we’d shifted from one place to another. The world did a horrible tilting, liquid ripple, and before I could focus we stood on the flat roof of a tall building, the London skyline stretching far and wide around us. Head spinning, I pushed away from Reign and bumbled backward. “Whoa, jeez, give me some warning when you do that.” Doubling over, I planted my hands on my thighs and concentrated on my breathing. Breathe in, breathe out … Nice and calm. No need to panic. I hadn’t just knocked an FA warrior unconscious and then fled the scene with London’s most notorious fae.

Reign’s presence simmered like an electrical charge, making it damn difficult to think peaceful thoughts. “I took out a fae,” I mumbled. Cracked his head open on the edge of a table, if I remembered correctly. I’d locked my hand in his hair and mustered a surge of strength out of nowhere. And those thoughts … Was that the adrenalin? Sure, adrenalin can do odd things, but I shouldn’t have been able to best a warrior fae. “That’s not possible.”