Page 3 of Fairies Don't Fall

I frowned up at him. “Therapy?” Again with the words not matching the context. I understood most languages very well, but maybe I should have spent some time actually speaking with the natives.

He slowly lowered me until my feet were on the ground and then released my wings. I immediately sprinted full-out towards the nearest exit. I made it two, no, one step and a stumble beforehe grabbed my shoulder and jerked me around to face him. “Where do you think you’re going, Sparkles?”

I bared my teeth at him. “I was going to the library to find out the definition of therapy,” I spat.

“How do you not know that word?”

“Let me go!” I clenched my hands, wanting to punch his sturdy jaw. How dare he hold me against my will? He was so strong and healthy, and I was so weak and sickly. The only chance I had at surviving this was in defeating him in a moment of surprise.

“That’s right. And the first part of that is retribution. That’s why we’re going to return the egg you stole.”

The werewolf girl darted out of the shadows. “Wait! It wasn’t her. She actually saved me when I…” She swallowed hard and winced, staring down at the ground like she’d been caught doing something truly shocking.

She’d come to save me from retribution? Why would she do that? Werewolves only cared about themselves. Everyone knew that.

“Ruin, you stole an egg from the owl god?” the warrior wolf asked soberly. He was so serious that in that moment, he almost reminded me of Vervain.

She glared up at him, finally meeting his eyes. “Max, you know it’s not a god. Just some poor creature that was experimented on by some bored sorcerer until it got free. You’ve let it stay in these caves, but what good is it? It attacks everything that comes in here, and you calling it a god doesn’t help the pack not think you’re insane.”

I blinked at her, then at Max, the warrior wolf. The name was appropriate. “It isn’t a god? Are you sure?” I wasn’t sure of anything. Maybe this was all an extremely vivid dream. That’s probably what it was. Some of my dreams were even more vividthan this. That explained why the warrior wolf hadn’t tried to rip me into pieces yet.

Ruin gave me a look of disbelief while Max’s expression softened into a slight smile. Soft shouldn’t be possible for a warrior wolf, but this man didn’t know that. He must be very young. He probably didn’t even know about the war or Malamech, not if he had that much softness in his eyes. No wonder someone wanted to poison him. He was easy prey. He didn’t know what he was capable of.

“Not a god,” he said. “What’s a fairy doing in the werewolf caves if she’s not trying to steal an owl egg? There isn’t anything else down here.”

I looked around at the desolate caverns, wracking my brains. There really wasn’t anything else in here, not yet, but after the terraform, it would be so beautiful. “I was just…”

“Just…what? Spill it, Sparkles,” he said, hand firmly on my shoulder as he pulled me towards the left fork, the pack with the precious egg dangling from his hand.

“I’m not Sparkles. It was just…” I fished around in the minds of the fairies in Singsong City high above me, combing them for any reason a fairy would come to the wolf caves. None of them blocked me. “To write a dissertation on you,” I said brightly. What was a dissertation? I peered more closely into that mind, not paying attention to where Max was dragging me. A dissertation was an in-depth study on a subject that included a large piece of documentation written and presented to a group of peers. The definition didn’t help, only confused me more, because we didn’t have a lot of documentation in Fairyland. We put our memories in trees and plants, like the massive oak that had grown from the blood of the Queen and her court. It would always hold the memory of their death, their pain. I should go back on another pilgrimage to pay my respects.

“You’re a college student? Aren’t you a bit young for that?” Max asked.

I almost kicked him in the shin, but truly, that was the reaction of a child, so I just glowered at him instead.

Ruin snorted. “Come on, Max. Don’t be so hard on her. She came here for a nice, quiet place to do her pixie dust. She didn’t have to get involved with me, but she did. Why did you? Was it a bad trip? Fairies don’t usually help out other kinds. Or their own kinds. Sort of selfish usually as a whole.”

I stared at the girl. “I’d say the same about werewolves. And no, the trip wasn’t very bad, just cold.” Hanging onto the outside of the train while it went screaming through the night still had my hair standing on end. And my wings were more tattered than ever. It had been rather enjoyable despite all that.

“Max,” she said, turning to the oblivious warrior wolf. “She’s just trying to deal with reality the way she knows how.”

He snorted. “Reality? She did save you from your folly, which is more than you deserve, particularly when you are already in the middle of being punished for your last piece of idiocy. Sparkles, you are going to be well-rewarded for your sacrifice to save my little charge.”

Ruin inhaled sharply and turned panicked eyes on me, that softened into an apology. My skin prickled. How did the young warrior wolf reward fairies? Perhaps he was going to eat me after all. “She didn’t know what she was getting into, Max. I mean, yeah, punish me, but she’s a fairy. She doesn’t deserve your reward.”

He studied me, eyes glowing golden in a way that made me want to hyperventilate, but I was too tired for that. “It is my duty.”

At the word ‘duty,’ I kicked his shins, spun out of his grasp and ran. That time, Max, the warrior wolf, tackled me. I would have been crushed beneath his weight, but he rolled at the lastsecond, so he took the fall while his arms and legs wrapped around me.

I kicked and thrashed, but he was all around me, slowly squeezing the life out of me. “Let me go, you big, stupid monster! I’m not your duty or anyone else’s. Never!”

He squeezed me tight for a second and then murmured in my ear, “You’re triggered by the weirdest things, Sparkles.”

I kicked backwards and managed to get his shin. Ow. That definitely hurt me more than him.

Ruin frowned at us from her place standing, hip cocked while she squinted at us. “Are you guys making out?” she finally asked.

Max rumbled a low laugh that I felt through my back, firmly pressed to his broad chest.

---