Page 17 of Fairies Don't Fall

“I feel for the moon that way, too,” I said, wanting to defend him for some unknowable reason. Maybe because he was still massaging my scalp and it felt really, really good. Also, I did love the moon more than anything else.

“Really?” Max asked, cocking his head.

His gaze was so disturbing. I cleared my throat. “Yes. I’m a midnight fairy, you know, so the moon is like liquid energy for me. I bathe in moonlight and it dissolves not only dirt, but all the cares of the day. At least it used to. But it’s still nice. So, you should definitely have the moon in your woods.”

“In the caverns.”

I shrugged. “You have my promise. May as well use it.”

“I have your promise, yes. We’ll see what you make of it.”

Chapter

Six

The sauna Max took us to after he’d washed my hair was off the shower room. It was bigger and smelled like pine forests and Max.

“Ooh, we get to go into your personal sauna?” Ruin asked, her big hazel eyes glowing slightly.

I looked at Max. “You have your own sauna?”

“That’s right. It’s where I keep my beast, but not today.”

“Oh, your beast likes saunas? Weird,” Ruin said, looking around and studying the claw marks in the walls. She swallowed hard and then glanced at Max. “Those are big claws.”

“Rules,” Max said, holding up his hand, pointer finger raised, looking between me and Ruin. “No talking. Particularly about the size of my beast’s claws. No talking,” he said, holding up another finger. “And no talking,” he said, with a third finger.

I raised my hand. “Are those three different rules that I missed because I didn’t catch a change in your intonation or…”

He pointed at me. “You’ve just broken all three rules. Try again.”

I pressed my lips together and looked at Ruin. She had her face squinched up, trying to contain the urge to ask him a million questions about his beast’s claws and who knows what else.

“Good. Now detox, Princess Sparkles. If you need to leave, tap my shoulder.” With that, he put me and Ruin on the second bench, then sprawled out on the bottom one, like he was blocking the exit in case we decided to run.

He was lying like that, showing so much of his skin and muscles and all of it openly displayed other than whatever the towel hid. It looked so small and delicate.

Ruin yanked my arm, turning me so I stopped staring at Max. Right. No staring. Good idea, because seeing that bare face, with that bare skin, so at odds with the typical fairy physique, was positively disturbing. I wasn’t here to be disturbed by a werewolf.

I lay down on a bench, closed my eyes, and let the world become smoke and steam. My claws were still out, so I absently scratched the wood, which released a slight scent of pine. Pine wasn’t an ideal wood for somewhere this moist. They should have used cedar. What kind of trees would he want in his woods? It was usual to only have a few genus of species that blended well together, depending on climate and elevation.

Did Max really consider the moon his mate? How would that work with him trapped in the undercity of Song? I dozed, with the smell of Max below me while I lay on the bench above him, letting the heat melt my bones. The scent came from my pores, death, rage, and bitter sorrow. It rose from my skin while the memories played like a dream.

I’d come on my enormous dragonfly, circling through the darkness, down through the smoke caused by the burning south wing of the Queen’s palace. I held my breath as we circled lower, and there, caught by the fingers of the pale moon, was the Queen and her court in the dark, glittery pools of their fairy blood.

I leapt off the dragonfly’s back and spread my wings, circling down to land beside my mother. Her eyes were open, glazed, looking up at the sky with an expression of regret on her lovelyface. Her heart had been ripped out of her chest, leaving a gaping hole surrounded by the elaborate lilac silk, generously splashed by the dark liquid that swam around her.

I couldn’t breathe. The smoke wasn’t the problem. So much death, so much pain, so much anger… I couldn’t do anything but crouch next to my mother and soak in her blood.

“The werewolves are moving south, burning everything. My Queen, do we retreat to the Earthlands, or do we fight?” Vervain stood beside me, looking down at me like he didn’t see the fallen. His face was impassive, otherworldly, with a sparkle of the galaxy across his bone-pale cheekbones.

I stood slowly, thick viscous fairy blood dropping off my fingers. “I’m not the Queen. In her memory, we kill. We destroy. We devastate!” The last word came out as a shrieking roar of doom that rumbled across the sky along with a flicker of thunder and a stir of the clouds. The blood came to life with me, and those who followed me, my rage infecting them with a hunger for vengeance that became everything. We ate the hearts of our enemies. We devoured them like their leader, Malamech the Dark Lupin Sorcerer, had our Queen. I killed so many, soaking up their blood like I’d done my queen, becoming more powerful, more ruthless, more like the enemy, so I could defeat him.

I killed so many wolves, so many ways, until I had become death. They called me the death fairy, whispered of me as I flew above them, carried on the wind of vengeance.

The scent of wolves drew me, and I fell, burying my claws in a chest as I bled one out, slow, so I could soak in the death more satisfyingly.

“What the crap! Are you making out?” The shriek broke through the haze of blood and rage.

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