Prisoner of Fae

by Abbie Lyons

  Prisoner of Fae

  Enchanted Penitentiary

  Abbie Lyons

  Published by Abbie Lyons, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  PRISONER OF FAE

  First edition. April 25, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Abbie Lyons.

  Written by Abbie Lyons.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Also by Abbie Lyons

  Free Series Starter

  Afterword

  Chapter One

  SEATED BEFORE THE JUDGE, there was one thing I knew for sure: the only thing I was guilty of was attempting to throw the greatest party Los Angeles had seen in years.

  The problem was that, as far as the entire courtroom was concerned, I was probably guilty of murdering my best friend in the entire world the night of that party. Losing the only person I truly cared about was bad enough, but being falsely accused of killing her? That’s the stuff of nightmares, baby.

  Because I loved April. She was my twin, my bosom friend, my true BFF. We were going to grow old together and end up as old-lady Fae in our rocking chairs, telling stories about the good old days.

  But now she was dead.

  And somehow, these people thought it was my fault.

  “Emerald Jones, how do you plead?” the judge—his official title was “arbiter” but that’s so pretentious—called from his seat up high.

  Fae courtrooms aren’t all that different from human courtrooms. They’re a little glitzier and glammier, sure—everything’s more colorful and bedazzled. Prime example: the judge’s gavel was covered with rhinestones. But the basic idea is the same. A table for the accused (that’s me!) to sit at, a witness stand, you get the gist. Law, but make it fashion.

  “Innocent,” I declared without a single bit of hesitation, which immediately drew gasps from the crowd. Most people considered it a slam dunk kind of case. Even my lawyer, an extremely nice dude named Constantine who really believed I was totally clear of any wrongdoing, advised me to plead guilty and hope the law had mercy on me.

  “Are you absolutely certain about that?” the judge asked in his booming voice, as if to intimidate me. But there was no way I was backing down now.

  “One-hundred percent!” I said, maybe a little too cheerily. All the Fae newspapers were already trying to portray me as some sort of gleeful psychopath party girl, and I had to admit, I didn’t always do the greatest job of proving them wrong. I was the happy-go-lucky type, and even in a situation as terrible as the one I’d found myself in, I had trouble being all miserable and serious.

  Because one moment, it’d been 11:59 p.m., almost my eighteenth birthday. And the next, I was on my back, on the floor of our house, alone.

  I didn’t remember what happened.

  And, again, I loved April. Had loved, past tense, I guess. But seriously: she was my best friend. If someone had ever tried to hurt her, I would have gone for their jugular.

  And that someone could never have been me.

  “Very well.” He shuffled through a few papers. “I see that you have nobody here to testify on your behalf. Is this still the case, Ms. Jones?”

  I swallowed. Finding somebody to stand up for you wasn’t so easy when you’d made the kind of risky life decisions I had. Again—I was my own worst enemy when it came to projecting an aura of innocence. There was only one soul who would’ve taken the stand for me, but she was dead. How ironic that the only person who could save me now was the very one who all of Fae society thought I killed. So not cool.

  “That’s correct,” I said. “All I’ve got is myself.”

  I thought maybe that’d at least get me a few sighs of pity, but nope. Nothing but scoffs. And to think that I’d woken up that morning with the strange hope that maybe I’d be able to get myself out of this mess. But now I could feel my chances at walking out of the courtroom a free lady diminishing. If my lawyer had an ace card to pull out of his pocket, now was the moment. I gave him a little nudge in the side with my elbow, but he simply gave me a sad look in the eyes.

  To put it plain terms, I was shit out of luck. And the thought was chilling as a bucket of ice water to the face.

  “In that case,” said the judge, “the prosecution is welcome to present their argument to the court.”

  The opposing lawyer was a sharply-dressed Fae in a pale blue three-piece suit that seemed to shimmer when he moved. Just the sight of him made me want to gag. But what really made me feel awful was seeing April’s family seated behind him. They’d always thought I was a bad influence on their daughter—if it weren’t for me, they figured, she never would’ve run off from the Invisible Cities all the way to the—gasp—human city of Los Angeles. And now they were certain that I was the one responsible for her death. The looks on their faces said it all—they wanted to see me prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  There was only one roadblock for the prosecution, but it was a big one. Aside from me and April, nobody who attended our party was Fae. And Fae society would never dare let some measly human testify in one of their courtrooms! So, yeah, they had nobody to bribe to make up some story about seeing me up to something shady that night.

  But that was just as big of a problem for me, seeing as how I didn’t do it. Any of the human party-goers—who all had a great time, mind you—would’ve testified that I was a perfect hostess doing my best to make sure everybody was having fun. They would’ve told the judge that there was no way I was guilty.

  And that left us at kind of a standstill. With nobody available who was actually witness to any of the events, the prosecution didn’t have an airtight case. But that didn’t matter. Fae Law didn’t always require stuff like concrete evidence—one of the many ways we were ironically behind non-magical types. If enough other Fae took the stand and dragged my name through the mud, that would be good enough to send me to the slammer.

  That’s why, I realized, I was destined to lose.

  Fuck.

  First up to the stand was April’s mother, Mrs. Aetheria. Although she was always dressed in her finest floating, leaf-green silks and put together with a whole hell of a lot of makeup and enchantments, she couldn’t cover up her sadness.

  And I felt for her, I truly did. I lost a best friend, but she lost a daughter. And so I did have sympathy. In fact, I wish she could see that. I curled my hands into fists. I wanted the killer locked up as much as she did. I wanted the most extravagant kind of vengeance for April that anyone, human or Fae, could muster.

  But Mrs. Aetheria thought that killer was me.

  And she’d be only too happy to punish me for it.

  Putting her hand on a glowing red crystal ball—-because that’s what us Fae tend to use—she swore to tell the truth. Too bad her version of the truth was hopelessly biased.

  “How long have you known the accused?” questioned the lawyer for the prosecution.
/>
  “Five years,” she answered between sobs.

  “And please, tell us a bit about your history with her.”

  “She was my daughter’s best friend. At least that’s what April thought of her as. But from the beginning, I knew Emerald was trouble. April started staying out later—disobeying me more than ever. She’d always been such a good, obedient girl before that. Her other friends were perfectly respectable.” She conjured up a handkerchief out of thin air and blew her nose. “Emerald changed her. She stopped seeing her other friends—her good friends. Things got worse and worse, until at sixteen years old, Emerald forced her to run away from home. I never saw my little baby again.”

  None of it was true, but I knew yelling that out in the middle of her testimony would only make me look even worse. April was always just as much of a wild child as I was. Even more so, in fact. Her other friends never seemed to get her, at least to hear her tell it, and she eventually decided she’d had enough of them, or they had a fight, or whatever—again, all April’s doing. I wasn’t here to seed drama. And that was the thing: what her mother didn’t know was that April had been the one to encourage me to run away from the Invisible Cities. I’d been apprehensive about it until April convinced me we could live the life of our dreams out in Hollywood.

  “And do you have reason to believe that Ms. Jones is directly responsible for your daughter’s unfortunate death?” asked the lawyer.

  “Objection!” my lawyer shouted. At least he was finally doing something to fight for me. “That’s a leading question!”

  The judge didn’t even pause to consider it. “Overruled,” he declared. “You may proceed, Mrs. Aetheria.”

  Panic coiled in my stomach in spite of myself. How did they expect a girl to ever prove her innocence in a system like this? And how the hell were we going to find the actual killer?

  Or killers?

  “I do,” April’s mom stated plainly. “I think that my daughter wanted to come back home, but that monster over there...” She glared directly at me. “She didn’t want her to leave. And so they got in a fight, and now April is gone.”

  It was basically fan fiction. A story entirely out of her own imagination. April was having the time of her life during the party. I’d been her wingman—which was a hilarious term, considering I had literal wings I could conjure at a moment’s notice—and spent the entire evening talking her up to any male guest that I thought was worthy of her. Because there was no denying that April was beautiful—like, stunningly so. She had these gorgeous, open blue eyes and sheer skin the color of moonlight. I always did my best to play up my own rose-pink bob and what April called my “button nose,” but I knew I would always be an afterthought when she was around. And I was 100% okay with that. Fae magic or no, she lit up the room.

  And I’d never see her light up a room again.

  Back in the Invisible Cities, there’d always been a certain sadness about her. I’d always suspected there was something about her life that she wasn’t letting me in on, but I never wanted to press too far. Her parents were probably part of it (their testimony was proving as much) and her old friends bullied her or something; I wasn’t ever sure, but she didn’t go into detail. I respected that—if she had secrets she wanted to keep, that was more than fine with me. But when we ran away to the west coast, April was happier than ever. She was thriving.

  I’d always suspected that April didn’t have the greatest life at home with her family, but I never pried. It seemed to me like she would’ve been totally okay with never speaking to any of them again. Which obviously made me wonder what kind of ulterior motives her mother might have. She did look genuinely devastated, but was there a chance she had something to do with all of this?

  Babe, try not to let your mind race like this, I reminded myself. Focus. You’re innocent, and there’s a murderer out there.

  And your best friend is gone, another part of my mind whispered. But I couldn’t let the sadness overtake me.

  Things didn’t go much better after Mrs. Aetheria left the stand. From there, a whole parade of figures from my past were all more than willing to talk shit about me, whether it be a former teacher or a neighbor from down the street back in the Invisible Cities. Where are all the nice Fae? I had to wonder. What I needed was someone sweet and lovable, like Gage Tremalt from down the street who I used to play with, or Lady Cymbeline who used to give us milk pudding as a treat. They’d say nice stuff, I knew it. I tried not to be too paranoid of a person, but this was all beginning to feel like one giant conspiracy against me.

  Because, as I couldn’t stop obsessing over, the worst part—well, I guess there were a few worst parts—was that April’s murderer was out there somewhere. I didn’t know what their motives were, but they were walking free. Maybe only a matter of time before they struck again. And no one seemed to care about this reality. Everyone was too intent on pointing the finger at me.

  “Ms. Jones,” the judge eventually called after the prosecution felt that they’d adequately ripped my entire being into shreds. “Do you wish to say anything on your behalf?”

  I did wish to say something on my behalf. I wanted to yell and scream about how they had this all wrong and that they’d be throwing an innocent girl in jail for no good reason. My urge to berate the judge and everybody else who was subjecting me to this unfairness was sky-high.

  “Yes,” I said, and leaped to my feet. Adrenaline shot through me, amplifying my every word. “This is ridiculous. April is dead, my best friend is gone, and you’re barking up the wrong tree with me. There’s an actual murderer out there, and—”

  “Emerald.” My lawyer tugged at my elbow. “Don’t.”

  “What the fuck?” I whispered to him. But then I caught sight of the judge.

  “You’re out of order, Ms. Jones,” he said sternly. “And I suggest you keep your mouth shut. Now, I’ll ask you again. Do you wish to say anything on your behalf?”

  I still did. But now I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. At this point, attempting to defend myself would probably just make my punishment even worse—the judge had basically said as much.

  I looked at my stupid lawyer, at the tearful Mrs. Aetheria, at my own hands tensing and releasing with the effort not to have another outburst.

  “No,” I answered, knowing there was nothing left I could do.

  He didn’t even pretend to stop and think about his verdict.

  “Very well then,” he said. “Emerald Jones, I sentence you to ten years’ time in the Enchanted Penitentiary, with no opportunity for early release. Court is now dismissed.”

  And with that, two buff Fae guards in sharp gray placed me into magical shackles and escorted me out toward my transportation to prison.

  Nothing to look forward to now but ten long, shitty years.

  Chapter Two

  48 HOURS EARLIER

  Sunlight spilled onto the flagstones of our patio, turning the surface golden and winking in the slowly churning waters of our hot tub. In the distance, the buildings of Los Angeles formed a geometric silhouette against the blazing sky, and when the breeze rustled through the palm trees that fringed April’s and my property, you could almost smell something other than smog.

  Almost.

  Humans. Goddess bless them and their fossil fuels.

  I flicked a hand about through the warm air, touching everything up in preparation: refilling the crystal liquor decanters we had on the tiki bar—yes, literal tiki bar; that was April’s idea—sweeping any lingering cigarette butts from the patio, adding a light floral scent to the air to chase away the eau de LA.

  Not that I really minded it. To me—to us—this human city was home. Literally the city of angels—the perfect place to escape. The Invisible Cities of Fae had absolutely nothing on this concrete-and-glass, living, breathing, human-filled paradise.

  “Em?”

  I lowered my hands, the last pinpricks of magic fading from my fingers, and faced back towards our living room. The wall to the p
atio was entirely glass—obviously—and we’d enchanted it so that the sun was never blinding from the inside. All the scenery, none of the squinting. We had plenty of chaise lounges out in case we wanted to bask in the sun (not that we’d ever sunburn) and a dropdown curtain for privacy.

  “Coming!” I scrambled back inside. In our living room, April was stretched across our plush, pale pink couch—again, she was the one with the good taste, so I’d let her decorate—a mischievous grin on her face.

  I raised an eyebrow and folded my arms. “What?”

  She winked and bit her lip. “Well if it isn’t Little Miss Sassy Birthday Girl.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sassy!”

  “Yeah, and the drive from here to Hermosa is a breezy 15 minutes.” April snorted. “I didn’t say you weren’t allowed to be sassy, did I? I mean, goddess, if there’s any time to be sassy, it’s the big one-eight.”

  I wrinkled my nose, flinging myself into the armchair with the shimmery lavender upholstery. “Don’t say it that way. It makes it sound like I’m getting old.”

  “Old enough for some real human fun,” April pointed out, pushing herself to sitting upright. “You can finally buy a vape!”

  It was so adorable how excited she got over this stuff. All the more reason that it’d been so smart to move to the human realm with her, of all the Fae. “And that will be so much more thrilling than conjuring one.”

  “Or just enchanting the clerk to think you’re of age.” She shrugged, her long blonde hair falling delicately from her bare shoulders.

  “Seriously, what’s up?” I said. “I’ve got some more party prep to do, in case you didn’t know.”

  April swept her eyes around the inside of our house. Besides our cushy living room, there was a half-loft lounge area up a spiral staircase, and our twin master suites beyond that. To the right was our kitchen—fully gourmet, white marble, the whole bit—even though neither of us was any good at the human method of cooking. (And the one time we’d accidentally gotten drunk and put a frozen pizza in the oven at 500 degrees? Yeah, let’s say that it took some heavy-duty magic to get the scorch marks off the ceiling.) And, of course, there was our massive patio, strung with what humans adorably called “fairy lights” and filled with every last accoutrement needed for the very best parties.