Page 52 of Obsidian Prince

The spider-kin could not imagine trying to learn all this date related stuff without a friend like Janice to help her. While various strangers poked and prodded, Janice bombarded her with dating advice.

Janice and Lou Willoughby had a happy marriage. The rabbit-kin knew far more about relationships than Liliana could possibly learn in one day, but she listened, and tried to remember all of the many rules and cautions. It was a lot to absorb and much of it made no sense. Some of it even seemed contradictory.

When Janice dropped her at home at six, one hour before the date was due to start, Liliana sat on the edge of her armchair carefully. She was afraid to move for fear she would mess up something that she had paid a ridiculous amount of money for someone to prettify. She opened her fourth eyes. Afraid to look into the future at her date for fear she would see disaster, Liliana decided to watch her prince instead, to see how his day had gone.

She missed some important things while being primped. Detective Jackson questioned the Kodiak-kin that John subdued while Alexander observed behind a one-way mirror. The big man from Alaska got some of the details wrong about the various victims who had been ripped apart while they were camping on the southeast edge of Fort Liberty along the banks of Bones Creek.

The evidence said that they’d caught the culprit. Detective Jackson accessed his arrest records from Alaska. They showed he had a history of angry brawls. He knew two of the victims.

Only two?

Liliana used her fourth eyes to look back at all six victims. The first four had saws or axes in their hands when they were attacked.

Why did most of the victims have cutting tools?

She saw each of the first four victims cutting living tree branches for firewood. Then a roar of rage, screams and blood and … Liliana closed her fourth eyes shuddering.

Focus on the hands and arms of the killer.She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and looked again. The long arms that tore at the victims were bark-covered, the bark peeling in strips to give it a shaggy appearance.

Ah, a Fae. Or something? It looked like an actual tree. Definitely not a bear-kin.

With that in mind, she asked another question:Why? Why did this Fae attack four campers?

A forest spirit, a Green man, woke in a vision with the barely faded colors of the recent past. He’d been sleeping for decades in an ancient hickory that housed his spirit. Many of the trees in that forest had faces within. They were dormant dryads and other Fae. When he saw the campers callously hacking at trees that might be sleeping people, the old man lost in a world he didn't understand, went mad with rage.

She saw Alexander standing next to Detective Jackson as she spoke to reporters, "There is no further danger. The murderer is in the custody of Fayetteville police."

"We were happy to help with the investigation," Alexander added. "We're confident the forests are safe again."

That was not accurate, but it wasn't Alexander or Detective Jackson's fault. They had no way to know. Liliana would have to tell them.

The angry forest spirit had roots sunk in the land that chose Alexander. The Fae prince should be able to calm him, convince him to end his killing spree.

The insistent knock on her door finally brought her back to herself. She looked at her clocks. It was 7:13. Either Alexander was late, or he had been knocking on her door for a while.

She looked out with her fourth eyes. The prince was about to knock her door down.

Liliana quickly opened the door. "I am sorry. I was lost in time."

Alexander stopped, shoulder still turned to shove the door. "I thought something happened to you." His eyes raked over her from the toes of her ballet slippers, up her slender legs, bare, rather than wearing her usual tights. The hem of her new dress was so short it barely covered the lacy underwear. The dipping sweetheart neckline barely covered the lacy push-up bra that matched the underwear and enhanced her modest décolletage. Her hair, as black as the satin dress, was pinned up in softly draped ringlets with sparkling emerald and diamond hair pins that matched the dangly earrings and delicate choker necklace she wore.

Liliana thought having her hair up made her neck look like a giraffe's. Her face was all exposed with her gigantic cheekbones. And the makeup the woman at the salon used made her eyes look huge. She looked like a cartoon dressed for a funeral.

Janice had insisted that a "little black dress" was just the thing for a fancy date, but Liliana always preferred bright colors. The emerald necklace and hair pins were the only part of the outfit the spider seer actually liked. The shoes were nice, too. Janice insisted that Liliana should get high heels, but she'd drawn the line there. She couldn't fight, climb, or run in high heels. So, instead, Liliana got a new pair of black satin ballet slippers with extra-long ribbons that crisscrossed her calves all the way up to her knees.

Alexander stared at her for several seconds, his face full of some dark emotion. She thought maybe he was angry.

"I'm sorry," Liliana said.

"For what?"

"For...not really knowing how to dress for a date."

His hands fisted at his sides. That definitely looked like anger. She must have really messed up, and they hadn't even made it out the door yet. "Liliana, look in my head right now."

"I thought you didn't like it when I did that."

"Just do it."

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