Pretty Little Fairies

by Sophie Stern

  Why is someone watching Luther’s shop?

  What are they looking for?

  I lean against the wall and hesitate for just a moment. Maybe I’m completely overreacting. Maybe...

  But then I hear it.

  Footsteps.

  Loud ones.

  A group of soldiers suddenly marches by me and I flatten myself against the wall and turn my head down. It doesn’t matter because they don’t seem to notice or care that I’m there. Instead, they walk by me, round the corner, and knock on Luther’s door.

  Of course they do.

  I peer around the corner. There are six soldiers and they’re headed by a man in a long, white robe. He draws attention to himself. I can’t tell if it’s more distracting that his robe is a pure white and he’s somehow managed not to get any mud on it or the fact that his hair is a bright silvery white. He’s not old. Not by a long shot. His hair, though: it’s incredibly unusual for someone of his youth.

  The door opens and I hear a faint, “Hello? Can I help you?”

  “Wizard Luther,” the man says. “You are under arrest for treason against the Fae King.”

  “Treason?” The wizard says. “What? I don’t understand.”

  Before he can say another word, the man in white motions for the soldiers to seize the wizard, and they do. They grab him and haul him out of the house.

  “But this is outrageous,” the wizard says.

  “Don’t mess with me,” the man in white hisses.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Really? We have word that you’ve been harboring demons.”

  “Now, Wyatt, you know that’s simply a lie,” the old wizard says.

  Wyatt – the man in white – smiles at the wizard, but it’s the deadliest, darkest, and most horrifying smile I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of smile that only an evil villain in a twisted fairytale would be capable of making.

  “I know that you’re not going to be making your demon potion anymore,” he says. He takes an amulet from his pocket, drapes it over the wizard’s neck, and spins it. Then he motions for the soldiers to take the man away.

  So that’s how he’s going to get the wizard away without anyone noticing his protests.

  He hung an amulet of invisibility on him.

  Oh, it doesn’t actually make him invisible, but like my own amulet, it makes him unnoticed. The guards leave, hauling the crying and shouting wizard away. In his distress, he kicks the potted plant across the alley and I see the charmed stone fall from the plant. One of the guards, unaware, steps on it and crushes it. The wizard is wailing, shouting. He’s begging for anyone to take notice of him, but no one so much as looks outside to see what the commotion is about.

  I look at the wizard as he passes and for a brief moment, we make eye contact. I don’t look away. I won’t. He’s the one I came here to see, after all, but I know that even with my limited strength, I’m no match for so many guards. Not when they’re obviously faes, too.

  “The book,” he says to me. “Get the book.”

  But no one else is around and no one seems to notice either our interaction or the fact that a group of soldiers is hauling away a soldier. I hear clattering and banging from within the house and I creep over to the blue door and, standing just outside, peek in.

  Wyatt has his back to me and he’s knocking down bottle after bottle of what I know is my only shot at saving my sister. I know it has to be the potion. It just has to be. He laughs and sneers as he knocks them to the ground. I move away quickly, fighting the urge to bolt inside and try to grab one of the bottles. I’m not so stupid to think I’d be able to escape.

  If the Dark Wizard of Dark Falls can’t get away from this guy, I won’t be able to either.

  Instead, I move around the corner and once more, duck out of sight.

  Then I wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  Within a few minutes, Wyatt emerges from the house and leaves. He walks swiftly, but goes in the opposite direction from where I’m hiding. Once I’m certain that he’s gone, I go into the wizard’s house. It’s completely destroyed. I don’t know what it looked like before, but I can guarantee it didn’t look like this.

  Everything is smashed.

  Bottles are poured out on the floor. Jars are knocked to the ground. The table is turned to the side. Even the chairs are now broken and strewn about. It’s not much of a shop, but it’s obvious that it was once very loved.

  Every bottle of demon bite antidote is gone.

  “Fuck,” I groan, looking around. I run my hands through my hair. What the hell am I going to do now? I came all this way for the antidote and now any hopes I had of getting it are gone.

  Taking a deep breath, I look around.

  The front room is obviously the workspace and storefront. There were shelves of different items, but those have all been destroyed. A small door at the back of the shop is ajar, so I go over there and push it open. It leads to a small living space. So this is a house, after all. There’s a tiny kitchenette, a bathroom, and a bed. A trunk at the foot of the bed is open: its contents are everywhere.

  Wyatt really didn’t leave any stone unturned, did he?

  I wonder who the hell this guy is or why he thinks it’s okay to come into a space like this and just utterly destroy it. He’s no hero. He’s no good guy. He’s the villain in my story and it’s obvious that the wizard understood this, as well.

  The wizard.

  What’s going to happen to Luther?

  He told me to look for a book, but I don’t know what book I’m looking for. With a sigh, I plop down on the bed and drop my head in my hands. Are they going to kill him? They’re definitely going to kill him. Those guys didn’t come for the joy of trying to save him. They definitely want to ruin him in every way possible, but why?

  That’s one thing I don’t understand.

  Demons are bad. They eat fairies. They hunt us down and devour us. They’ll eat shifters and vampires from time-to-time, but for the most part, fairies are their first choice when it comes to edible snacks.

  But why now?

  Why have the demons come to our world all of a sudden?

  I look up at the pictures that are hanging on the wall. Weirdly, most of them are untouched. I stand up and move to them, adjusting them. A few of them are crooked. I can’t clean up Luther’s home. There’s simply no way. I can, however, make sure that his pictures are left unbroken and undamaged.

  One of the pictures catches my eye. It’s of a much-younger Luther and he’s with someone I recognize: a much-younger Martin. Together, the two of them are standing side-by-side and they’re grinning. They look like they’re on top of the world. I don’t know if Luther is ever coming back to his home in Dark Falls. I would venture a guess that if he’s not already dead, he’s about to be, so I lift up the picture. I can take it back to Martin. At the very least, it’ll be something he can remember his teacher by.

  As I pull the picture down from the wall, it catches on something. I tug and the picture comes free, but then I realize that there’s something on the wall behind it.

  A little knob.

  How peculiar.

  Curious, I reach for the knob and tug. It pulls open to reveal a tiny hidden space behind the picture.

  Could this be what the wizard wanted me to find?

  I reach up and grab the book that’s hidden inside the space. It’s old, covered in dust, and leather-bound. Yeah, I think it’s pretty safe to say this is what he wanted me to find.

  “Oh Luther,” I whisper, looking at the book. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  Chapter 5

  Edward

  The problem with being King is that nobody really likes authority figures, so managing a group of people who really don’t want to be managed isn’t easy. I spend the afternoon working in the library and trying to come up with a plan for getting the demons out of my city.

  My first step is to find out where they’re co
ming from. I’ll start sending out scouts who can patrol the borders of the city, as well as the neighboring towns to Dark Falls. Surely one of them will be able to come back with more information as to where the demons are from and what is luring them to our city. Monsters don’t just wander around looking for food. They only come when they’re called or summoned somehow.

  The second step is going to be to find more either more cures for demon bites or to increase production of the potion currently used to treat the bites. The Dark Wizard, Luther, is perhaps our best bet at defeating the demons in our city. He discovered an incredible potion called anquan that essentially works as a way to remove the demon’s venom from the wound. Demon bites are fatal to fairies, but death generally takes a few days or even a week. Sometimes a fairy can survive for two weeks, but that’s rare. In normal faes, the bite always results in a fatality. Dark fairies have known to be able to hold off from dying for slightly longer, but I’m not sure why. There are legends that dark fairies – the fairies whose wings aren’t a glittery white but a deep, midnight black –have angel blood in their veins. Perhaps that has something to do with their inner strength.

  I don’t know.

  Satisfied with my progress and happy with my decision to face this problem head-on, I leave the library and go off to find Wyatt. My advisor will know exactly how we can get started with the next steps.

  Only, Wyatt isn’t in his office.

  Or the kitchen.

  Or the study.

  He’s not anywhere in the castle, I quickly discover, which is strange. Wyatt generally spends a few hours each afternoon in his office in order to do things like deal with citizen problems and to work on correspondence with our neighboring towns. Where is he?

  I grab a fairy who is hurrying past.

  “Have you seen Wyatt?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head and keeps on moving.

  “He’s in the dungeon,” another one says.

  “Why?”

  She shrugs and moves to go past me, but I stop her.

  “Is that any way to show respect to your king?” I ask her. I cock my head, curious. What’s with the disrespect today? It’s not often that I pull the “I’m your king” card, but it seems like everyone is giving me the runaround today and I’d like to know why. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, either.

  “No, sir,” she says. “My apologies,” she ducks her head in a sort of half-bow, but then she hurries off before I can say anything else.

  Weird, but okay.

  I have no idea why Wyatt would be in the dungeons, but I suppose I’m about to find out. It’s strange that the castle seems decidedly empty today. Where are all of the guards? I was tucked away in the library for a little while, but only a little while. I wasn’t really gone all that long. Certainly not long enough that my entire team of employees would find it okay to simply vanish.

  The dungeons are located beneath the main castle. It’s the castle where I live and where I run the kingdom. To be fair, it’s quite a large place. It takes me nearly ten minutes to reach the entrance to the dungeons, and I’m a little surprised to find that the door to the staircase leading down is ajar.

  How unusual.

  The dungeons, to my knowledge, haven’t been used in years. Not since my father was king. Once I took over his duties, Cheryl and I felt that imprisoning citizens gave a bad impression of what a noble king should be like, so we all but stopped. This doesn’t mean we don’t discipline citizens for infractions, but it’s so rare that a citizen does anything out of line that the idea of imprisoning any of them feels wrong.

  Only, as I make my way down the winding staircase, I’m surprised to hear...noise.

  A lot of noise.

  It seems as though the dungeons are not nearly as empty as I was led to believe, and shock hits me to my core when I reach the bottom of the stairs and the sounds become even louder. At the bottom of the stairs is a gated doorway. It’s unguarded and, like the other door, is ajar. This is good because I don’t have keys. No one has keys. At least, until just now, I didn’t think anyone did.

  Because the dungeons are supposed to be empty.

  Why would anyone carry keys to a place where they aren’t even supposed to go?

  I push the door open and start walking down the row of cells. I peer into the first window of the first cell. What the fuck? It’s Billy Brandy, the baker. I reach for the hooped door handle and tug, but it doesn’t open.

  Billy stands up and comes to the door. His face is bruised, as though he’s been beaten. I thought he left town. Wyatt told me he’d gotten married and left to live in Dark Town with his new bride. Why is he here?

  “What are you doing in there?” I ask, shouting, but Billy looks confused.

  “King, you had me sent here,” he says.

  “No,” I shake my head, still shocked to see him. I tug on the door again. “I would never have you imprisoned, my friend. I thought you left town.” A shout distracts me and I turn to the cell opposite Billy’s. I move to it and inside, I see the Dark Wizard.

  What the actual fuck?

  Why are my citizens locked in cages?

  Does Wyatt know about this?

  Where the fuck is he?

  I turn to go back upstairs. I need to get the keys to the dungeon so I can let them free. I can let them all free. Surely there must be some sort of explanation for all of this, but when I reach the staircase, I only make it halfway up before Wyatt appears. He’s twirling a ring of keys and he’s got a smug look on his face.

  And then it hits me.

  I’m a fucking idiot.

  “What have you done, Wyatt?” I ask.

  “Something you should have done a long time ago, your highness.”

  He pushes me, catching me off guard. My reflexes are good enough that I don’t stumble down the staircase, but with each step forward that Wyatt takes, I find myself moving backwards, back toward the dungeon.

  “You did this?” I ask. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

  Wyatt only laughs.

  “Of course, I did it. What? Didn’t think little old Wyatt had it in him? Didn’t think that weak, weird, wacky Wyatt could do anything like this?” He shakes his head. “You should have known when your son mysteriously died that the kingdom didn’t want you. You should have realized it when Cheryl ‘killed herself,’” he says, shaking his head.

  Realization dawns.

  It was him.

  It was him all along.

  Wyatt is the one who told me my son had died. He’s the one who told me the doctors said it was a birth defect, but I never spoke with the physicians myself. I hadn’t needed to because Wyatt’s word was gold to me. His word has always been gold to me. It had always been more than enough.

  “You killed my son,” I say.

  “And your wife,” Wyatt confirms. “And your sisters-in-law. And soon,” he adds. “You.”

  He pokes me in the chest, pushing me backward again, but I slug him hard in the face. Wyatt seems taken aback. He reaches for his lip, wiping away a drop of blood, and shakes his head.

  “Oh, my lord,” he says calmly. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  He reaches for the amulet he wears around his neck, one I seem to have never noticed before, and he spins it. Suddenly, I can’t see him. I hear him laughing, but I’m confused as I look around wildly.

  “Are you wondering where I am?” He asks. His voice seems to come from everywhere at once. “Good. That means the confusing charm is working. You won’t be able to find me, good sir, at least until I want you to.”

  This time, Wyatt hits me. He punches me in the gut and I keel over, crying out in pain. He laughs, and the sound seems to surround me, wrapping around me like a hug I just don’t want. Suddenly, I’m seized by guards on all sides who drag me down the aisle of the cells. I see Billy’s face pressed to the window. His mouth is shaped like a tiny “O” as he watches what’s happening to me.

  Good.

  I want Bill
y to see this.

  At the very least, if I die, I want Billy to know that I had nothing to do with any of this.

  Other faces appear at the cell windows: faces I haven’t seen in a very long time.

  Faces Wyatt told me had moved or gone away.

  Faces Wyatt told me had been lost.

  I’m shoved into a cell at the very end of the row. Suddenly, Wyatt appears again beside his guards.

  “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Wyatt says.

  Then the cell door slams shut.

  I stare at the door for what seems like an eternity, and then I look around my new home. The cell is dark and dank: exactly how I remember the dungeons being. I walk around for a minute and then I sink the floor.

  “Hey, your highness,” a voice from the next cell says.

  “That would be me, I suppose,” I say.

  “Welcome to hell,” the voice says cheerily. “And good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 6

  Rose

  I LEAVE LUTHER’S HOME and realize I need to find a place to stay. It’s already past lunchtime. It’s past when I should have had the potion. I’ll have a few more hours of daylight, but once darkness comes, there’s no way I should be lurking around the city. No one should. Not after Wyatt’s bold move. I don’t even know who this guy is, but I know he’s dangerous, and I know he’s not afraid to steal people.

  I manage to find a random bench I can sit on near a little park, and I collapse on it. There are trees all around me, which at least gives me the illusion of being isolated.

  I twist the amulet to give myself a little bit of privacy. Usually, the spell works for a few minutes. I’ll at least have five minutes to myself to look at this book without anyone noticing. I don’t think there will be any passers-by, but I’m not from here, so I really can’t tell. The last thing I need is to draw any more attention to myself.

  I need to hurry up and find some anquan potion. I’ve already wasted almost an entire day trying to get this stuff. Who knows how long Tulip actually has? I hate thinking of her and Daisy being at home, alone. I know that Daisy is scared, but she’s also so very brave. Still, it seems cruel that I left her alone while I came to find the potion. It seems totally wrong and mean, but I have to do this for all of us.