Author: Audrey Grey
Category: Fantasy
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/26854_20
I peer through the shadowy haze surrounding his face, desperate for a shred of humanity. Of kindness. Instead I’m met with the faint glow of pale silver-blue eyes. They’re not as big or as inhuman as I was led to believe. The rest of his features are indiscernible.
An icy hatred too dark to be human brims inside his strange irises. “You poisoned your lands, so now all your animals flee to our side. How, exactly, is that our fault?”
For a moment, I stare at him, aghast at his apathy. “Why are you so cruel?”
“I may be cruel,” he admits. “But is that not the order of things? That bow you nearly used on me, how many animals have you killed so that you can live? Living and dying are two sides of the same blade. Call it cruelty or call it fate, I care not.”
I roll my eyes. “Typical pointy-eared dickwa—Fae jargon. Using cryptic words in place of sense. Just tell me what I owe this Winter Prince and I’ll find a way to pay him.”
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How much can nine neverapples cost?
“The price for stealing just one neverapple from the prince is death.” My mouth falls open and his smug grin becomes wicked. He’s enjoying this. “How do you expect to pay for nine?” he continues. “Do you have nine lives like the pixie to bargain with?”
“You’re kidding.” But of course he’s not kidding. He doesn’t even seem capable of cracking a joke. “What kind of monsters grow such a precious fruit right next to starving people? Is that your thing? Starve us and then taunt us with forbidden fruit?”
When he doesn’t answer, desperation takes hold. “I haven’t touched them. Can’t you just, I don’t know, put them back with your magic or something?”
I can feel his glare behind his hood. “Put them back? You’ve touched them with your human fingers, meaning now the revered fruit is tainted.”
You mother cracker.
I would have laughed at the injustice of it, but his knuckles tighten over the hilt of his fine sword and suddenly I can’t breathe.
The scrape of the blade exiting its scabbard sends my heart ramming into my breastbone, my strangled breaths punching out in violent ivory bursts. The curved metal glimmers softly in the moonlight.
“On your knees,” he says casually. Icily. As if executions of starving mortals are an everyday occurrence.
That’s when I know, without a doubt, he’s going to kill me.
4
I jut out my chin, cramming every bit of my rage into my expression as I glare at the Fae. “Screw you, dickwad. If you’re going to kill me for taking a few stupid neverapples, I’m not making it easy for you.”
Maybe I should run. I should definitely run. Move! I order my legs, who straight up refuse to budge. Either from fear or shock or the freezing cold. My bet is all three.
“Have it your way.”
I’m working on coaxing my stubborn thighs into action when a flicker of white above calls my attention. We both glance up at the distraction to see a swarm of white moths fluttering down from the trees like giant drops of snowfall. They move as one, a cloud of sparkling wings that shimmer and glow.
I’m so in awe of their beauty that I nearly forget about the Fae and the blade he holds, or that I’m supposed to be fleeing.
Nearly.
One by one, they gather around my head. A few alight along my brow, the rest hovering a few inches above my messy, half-fallen topknot.
Like a crown.
One of the moths breaks from the others and alights on the tip of the Fae’s sword. Its gossamer wings open and close as we stare on in stunned silence, the creature’s ethereal beauty in stark contrast to the murderous blade and the monster holding it.
All at once, the moths take to the air and ascend into the darkness as quickly as they came, and my dark reality comes crashing down again.
“What is your name?” he asks.
“Why?” I scoff. “Do you need it to scratch into a murder notebook?”
Suddenly, I feel his focus flit behind me at something. A peek over my shoulder shows a young girl in worn overalls with bright red pigtail braids and freckles bounding up the hill on the other side of the Shimmer.
Jane. She’s calling my name and she has a flashlight.