Page 30 of Kill the Queens

"In Tarshton."

"Fae territory?!"

"This week."

"So soon?" Her pitch was rapidly climbing.

Shelby scowled. "Would you stop that."

"I'm sorry." She wasn't but she clamped a hand over her mouth and spoke into her palm. "We should go shouldn't we?"

"No!" Shelby sputtered, crumbling the letter in his palm."No, we should not. It feels like a trap. Don't you think it's a trap?" He was walking away now. Ace stood where she was as he began opening the dresser drawers and the desk drawers until he found a small box of matches.

A flame was born as he struck a match and brought it to the single candle on the desk. He stuck the edge of the letter into the fire and let it catch. Ace gasped running toward him.

"Don't burn that! What if we need it?" Ace tried to reach for his arm.

Shelby held the burning letter above her head. "We don't need it. We're obviously not going."

"You can't deny a meeting with the Fae King!"

"Oh yes, we can."

Ace knew they were both motivated by terror at the thought. If they didn't go would they be hunted down? Would the Fae find them and drag them anyway? She didn't want to run away like Shelby had.

"What if he wants to help us?"

Shelby's face wrinkled. "Help us what?" He hissed at her. "Kill the queens? Of course, he does. He wants this land back! Pasia can't survive another war like this. The humans won't win this time and the warlocks will just be passed back off to those terrible beings."

She jumped and managed to grab his wrist but the letter had burned away to hardly anything. Shelby let it go and watched it flutter to the floor between them before he stomped out the flame.

"We have to," Ace said stubbornly. "Where do they want to meet?"

"We don't have to," Shelby repeated. "And it didn't specify, it just said Tarshton."

"Well, I don't know how to get to the king."

"You don't need to know because we aren't going." Hebent and blew out the candle.

We. Ace did like the sound of it. Because the two of them were tied together now. All of this…it was going to be 'we.’

"We should at least entertain the idea." She shifted and placed her hands on his chest, jutting out her bottom lip as she looked up.

"Are you giving me puppy eyes?" He deadpanned.

"Yes. Is it working?" She batted her eyelashes.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Ace growled and turned away. She wrung her hands in front of her and lowered herself back onto the bed. "That letter means something."

"It means I need to get somewhere safe to perform a spell. Somehow they are getting through my last one." The bed dipped as Shelby sat next to her. With the bed so low to the ground his knees practically touched his chest.

“I didn’t think the Fae had magic of their own. Not like yours.” She bumped him with her shoulder.

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