“Layla, do not go out there! That’s exactly what he wants!” Penny yelled as Layla stormed from the closet.
She stood before the front door of the mansion. Fire danced between her fingers. She stared at the flames, already anticipating forming a fireball to hurl at him. She’d never been able to make one before. She’d tried, but she could never seem to muster a large enough flame to create a sustainable ball. It always flickered and snuffed out.
Gritting her teeth, she focused all her attention on seeing the fireball form in the palm of her hand. Still, the flames only sparked and danced between her fingers. Exasperated, she dropped her hands to her sides. Her body shook as she balled her hands into fists.
“I can’t sit here like a damsel in distress and wait for the FGs to return. What if they do and he kills them? What if he breaks through the barrier before they get back and I’ve done nothing to defend myself? I can’t do that, Penny. I can’t.” Although the words were in her mind, they came out hard, like a stone refusing to budge even in the strongest current.
“If you go out there, he will capture you, and you could be killed,” Penny replied after a few seconds of silence.
She lifted her head higher, her shoulders straightening. She was determined to be stronger than she had ever been before. “I don’t care.”
“You do,” Penny contended. “You do, but you can’t see that yet. Once he has you and the king starts torturing you for answers, you’ll be sorry you ever gave up without thinking through the consequences.”
Layla hesitated. No one knew her better than Penny. The AI had been her constant companion her entire life. She’d heard every thought. She’d experienced every setback. Although they were different and had different ideas about the things that happened, they were the same.
She took a long, shuddering breath. Even with all that knowledge and experience, Layla knew Penny would never understand why it was so important to her to keep fighting. She’d ran from The Wand and look where it had gotten her?
She was alone. And no one was coming to save her. She laughed bitterly. If she was going to die, she wanted to die fighting.
“I’m going out there,” she whispered.
Penny hummed nervously. “Don’t do it, Layla. Please wait! The Fairy Godmothers will return. They’ll make sure you’re safe. You’ll see.”
Layla ignored her. If they were alive, it wasn’t worth risking their lives for her own. She did what she knew she should’ve done to begin with.
Flinging open the door she stared out at the man. A hazy film stretched from the ground and up and over the top of the building, creating a dome around the manor house. Layla nudged it with her finger. It bulged but didn’t burst. She smirked at the man standing just beyond the perimeter.
“Who are you?” she asked. She stood, her legs spread apart and her hands on her hips.
“The question you should be asking yourself is not who I am but who you are, Layla Dione.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the mention of her name. How had he known that? Her fingers dug into her sides as she forced herself to maintain her tough girl stance. She glowered at him.
“I know who I am,” she snarled. “But if you want me to trust you enough to go with you, you have to tell me who you are.”
He smiled coolly at her. “My name is Kaden Juniper. I’m Crown Prince Kimari Titus’s personal guard and captain of the security team. I am here to protect you, Princess.”
She didn’t believe him for a second. Not with his smug expression and hatred in his eyes. Humans despised the fae. That’s why the fae royal family had been slaughtered twenty years ago. Still, the longer she could keep him talking, the more likely it was she would come up with a plan for escape.
She scoffed. “You expect me to believe that? You forced us to take an invasive blood test. You killed that man. You tracked me down to an abandoned mansion. You have to know that there is no draking way I am going to willingly leave with you.” She held up a finger after each grievance. Her skin tingled with magic as she stared him down.
The muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched and his eyes narrowed for a moment, but then his features relaxed and he motioned around them. “There’s nowhere for you to go, Princess. And, the longer we wait here, the more time I have to break through the protection wards your group of friends left. They won’t last long.”
“Layla, be careful.” Penny’s voice resonated through her mind like a bullet as Layla took a step forward and almost stepped through the protective barrier. “He’s goading you,” her PEA chided.
Layla clenched and unclenched her hands. The man licked his lips, clearly anticipating being able to spring on her the moment she got angry enough to cross the border.
“You know what,” Layla said, “I don’t think you have the power to break the protective wards. If you did, you would’ve done it already.” She leaned forward until the tip of her nose was touching the barrier. “I bet you don’t have any magical abilities. I bet you’re just a human who wishes he were as powerful as the fae are. I bet you’re jealous of our magic.”
She knew she was stepping into dangerous territory. But he had tried to rile her up. Now it was her turn.
“You’re nothing but a coward trying to scare an innocent person.”
He scoffed at her. “Innocent?” he sneered. “You honestly think you’re innocent in all of this? Do you want to know why your parents, the fae queen and king were killed? Let me enlighten you. They were traitors. They plotted to kill King Renard, but he got to them first.”
Well, that something she had never heard before. Then again, she didn’t spend much time with human loyalists. She’d been taught that they were little more than terrorists in fancy clothes who had the king’s ear.
“You honestly expect me to believe that?” she asked. “King Renard is a murderer. He formed an alliance with the elves and the fae and agreed to rule as part of a triad. And then he slaughtered his greatest competition for power. He killed an innocent little baby.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? You are that little girl!” Kaden spat.
Layla couldn’t believe that he was going to such lengths to convince her that she was the lost princess. She’d heard the rumors, of course. That the princess had somehow survived. That she was out there, waiting to be discovered. That the people would rally around her. But it was all a farce. There was no princess other than the pile of bones rotting away somewhere in the Lunameedian countryside.
“I’m not who you think I am,” she finally said.
He shook his head. “You’re blind to the truth that’s right in front of you.”
Ice flooded her veins. This man clearly couldn’t be reasoned with and Layla was too exhausted to keep trying.
“Believe what you want to believe,” she whispered as she began walking backwards. She turned to reenter the manor house when the rumble of dozens of motorbikes thundered over the countryside. Her back stiffened. She was too late. She knew that if the FGs arrived and Kaden was still here, he would kill every last one of them. He’d already proven he didn’t have a conscience.
She faced him again.
He pulled out the silver device and held it out to her. “If you don’t believe me, take the test again. See how your blood reacts.”