Page 5 of Fake Dating a Human 101

In the grand doorway, a tetrad of Lyro guards held tight to gold chains clasped to the gilded collar at the dreamslipper’s throat. Mycra Sentorious scanned the faces down the table from beneath her ink-black lashes. Even though she was being led into the feast like a dog, she looked as if she hadn’t a care in the faeborn world, and for that Shayne mustered up a special smile just for her. When her gaze swept across the feast, it caught on Shayne’s magnificent smile.

She didn’t smile back.

Mycra did, however, swallow. The second her eyes met his, a fearful expression appeared.

But by the time the guards brought her to her seat at the foot of the table, the look was gone. Mycra lowered herself gracefully into her seat, and a heaping plate of spellbuns and hot squash was placed before her. She didn’t touch her chopsticks. She didn’t eat. Shayne wondered if her next ploy to escape this household was to starve herself to death.

Frankly, he’d observed her forced to attend numerous events since he’d arrived. She’d been decorated in the finest jewels, blossom wreathes, and gold-braided crowns, and paraded before the Lyro House’s powerful friends like an expensive painting they wanted to brag about. Yes, Shayne guessed she would probably rather be dead than to continue living this way. His guesses were put on hold though when Hans-Der Lyro uttered across the space, “I’ve brought you all here to announce that I’ll be leaving the House for ten days,” he said. Then he nodded to his allies around the table. “As you can see, I’ve brought witnesses to this announcement. Which means, I expect you all to behave until I get back. Or you’ll suffer my wrath and the wrath of my allies who will be checking in on you while I’m gone.” Hans-Der seemed particularly intent on eyeing Kahn-Der—the oldest brother of the Lyro family—and Jethwire—Shayne’s first younger brother—and Massie—Shayne’s second younger brother—and, of course, Shayne.

That was it. Mycra’s bright gaze darted to Shayne’s. It was swift, and pointed, and full of warning. Her eyes dropped to her plate again, and the nonchalance returned like a beautiful mask.

Shayne leaned back in his chair, tapping a finger against the tabletop as he thought about that. For weeks now, Mycra had been warning him that his brothers planned to kill him, which he’d expected since the moment he’d set foot in his childling home. But today the pretty fairy looked different. Today, there was a tone of discovery in her eyes. Maybe she’d overheard something or stole information from his brothers’ dreams.

Shayne dragged his attention over to Kahn-Der down the table. Kahn-Der ate his hot squash in modest bites, his shiny white hair falling out of place when he leaned forward. Even while eating, the fairy possessed a crooked smile. He hadn’t reacted to the news of Hans-Der’s ten-day-long departure, which meant he already knew about it. Which meant he might have even crafted a plan to make the most of it.

Shayne’s gaze hopped to Jethwire next, where the flute he’d stolen from a sea siren rested quietly beside his dinner plate. Then to Massie. They were the only two Shayne thought weren’t a threat, since they’d both made it clear they didn’t desire the chair belonging to the heir of the household. But Massie lifted his head from his soup just a little. He stole a look at Jethwire, and Jethwire looked back.

A wide smile spread across Shayne’s face. He set down his chopsticks, finding no use for them now. How could he eat when it was so painfully obvious his brothers had a plot to kill him? Even the smell in the room had changed to one of hushed hatred and stabby intentions.

Truly, he wondered what had taken them so long. Every day he’d waited for the cold iron stab of Kahn-Der’s long-bladed fairsaber. He’d hardly slept in giddy anticipation of it. Shayne lifted his goblet of spiked citrus. He drank slowly, savouring the sweet and sour taste. It wasn’t like Kahn-Der to show mercy, and Jethwire and Massie were possibly worse. Shayne guessed they planned to either torture him until he was an eternally broken fairy—unfit to be seen in public or to take his birthright chair—or they’d kill him outright. Probably the latter.

It was hilarious that his brothers thought they could beat him. Sure, the Lyros had always been masters of unfathomable torture. But Shayne had spent many years as an assassin, and he possessed no shortage of ways to end them in style. Now that he’d decided not to kill the poor dreamslipper, Shayne’s plan had been to play along as the returned prodigal son for a while and sneak back out of the House when a good distraction presented itself. But maybe destroying everyone was the best way.

Since the announcement was complete, Hans-Der lifted from his seat while dabbing his lips with a cloth. “Shall we retire to the meeting room?” he asked his ally Lords.

Seven powerful fairy heads nodded. Seven fairies stood. Seven fairies left, until it was just Shayne along with his brothers in the dining room, a quiet dreamslipper, and a handful of lesser fairies in burlap carrying in sugar plums on bronze platters for dessert.

No one touched the dessert.

Shayne set down his goblet of spiked citrus and turned to glance at Kahn-Der down the table. He pulled his mouth into a smile. “Let’s die together then. Tonight,” he said.

And just like that, everyone in the room froze like an icy wind had blown in from the mountains. Like the words had been spoken by a ghost.

No, it wasn’t thesuggestionthat shook the pebbles in the floor and made the curtains shudder an exhale. It was the words that every Lyro brother had heard once before. Words meant to remind them of the fairy who used to sit in that empty chair at the far end of the table.

Kahn-Der, of course, reached for a sugar plum after all and bit into it with all the fake nonchalance of a stage actor in the North High Court’s seasonal Yule ceremonies. “What would make you say such a thing, Brother?” he asked. He licked the purple juices from his shapely lips, and his ice-blue gaze fired up to Shayne, sharp and laugh-worthy.

Shayne held his gaze like that, smiling just a little wider. “We’re evenly matched, I think,” he bluffed. Obviously, Shayne wasfarabove Kahn-Der’s level. “Therefore, chances are we’ll both die in the end, right?” He took his goblet and downed the rest of his spiked citrus all at once to meet the absurd level of Kahn-Der’s drama. Then he slammed the goblet on the tabletop, making glitter puff into the air and swirl in the breezy current fluttering through the room. “I’ve been waiting for this for weeks. Meet me on the roof—just like in the dreams you sent me. Unless you’re a coward, of course? I can’t imagine the embarrassment you’d bring to this family if you didn’t show up.”

Jethwire choked on his plum across the table. He bit his lips over a diabolical grin, proving that even though he wished to see Shayne as a lifeless fairy corpse by the end of the week, he could appreciate a good verbal arse-whacking.

Kahn-Der was not so generous with his smiles. Instead, a death song chanted from his deep blue gaze. His fingers tightened around his plum, and streams of purple juice leaked through his fingers, running down his hand and dripping onto his silver plate like fairy blood. But the oldest Lyro brother kept a relaxed posture as he dropped the plum’s pit and reached casually for a cloth. He dabbed his hand dry,seeminglost in his own dark world.

“I applaud you, Brother, for being willing to face me,” he finally said to Shayne, “and for not running off.”

Shayne sighed, smiled, and pushed his full plate away as he stood, letting his sliding chair send a sharp sound through the dining room. “Yes, well, not all of us are cowards.”

Shayne whistled as he rounded the table and headed from the feast toward the maze of hallways he’d gotten lost in so many times as a childling. Just another trap Hans-Der had devised to keep his family close. To ensure they never found their way out.

Something tickled the back of Shayne’s throat as he pushed open the dining room doors. He coughed, and then he paused, glancing back into the dining room where his plate rested, heaped with delicious looking, untouched food. He wasn’t foolish enough to eat it and ingest whatever poison might have been hiding inside. He rubbed a hand down his neck, remembering how his throat often acted up when the dry snowy season approached. His shoulders relaxed, and when he saw Kahn-Der sizing him up, Shayne winked. Just a little bat of his eye—yet a full promise.

The frostiness of Kahn-Der’s gaze followed Shayne until he kicked the dining room doors shut behind him.

It was less than three hours before Shayne realized his mistake. He stared at himself in the dull mirror of his bedroom, his reflection going in and out of focus. He’d tried to upheave the spiked citrus the moment his stomach grew warm, but it was much too late for that.

It started with his abdomen feeling pricky, and then it moved to his limbs, and it hit his eyes last. His breathing grew strained, and he leaned forward against his dresser as he fumbled around for his fairsaber, knowing he had to get out of this room. Knowing they would come for him any minute if he didn’t.

Knowing he had a prisoner to free before it was too late.

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