Reign Check

  “Okay, everyone. We’re going to start in just a moment,” Mr. Crane announced. “I’ll be around to hand out your samples.”

  I looked at Rhys. “You need to go back to your home.”

  He smiled. “I thought the teacher wanted you to make me feel welcome, Princess Nikki.”

  “Don’t call me that here.” My eyes darted around the classroom.

  “Don’t worry. No one can hear what we’re saying right now.”

  “They can’t?”

  “No. I’ve used magic to shield our conversation.” He looked incredibly sure of himself. Cocky, actually.

  Now that he mentioned it, I suddenly realized I could barely hear anyone else around us. The chatter in the classroom had become muffled and specific words indiscernible.

  I swallowed hard. “You’ve put us into an invisible magic muffle bubble?”

  “That’s one way to put it. Thought we could use a little privacy in the center of this human chaos.”

  My palms were sweating, but I fought to remain calm. “I’ll ask you again, Rhys. Why are you here?”

  He watched me closely for a long, uncomfortable moment. “It’s my job to protect my kingdom from harm and investigate anything that might hurt us now or in the future. So I’m here to investigate you.”

  “Investigate me? I’m not planning on hurting your … your kingdom.” Even knowing he was magically shielding this conversation, I nervously glanced around at the class of oblivious students.

  “But how do I know that for sure?”

  “Because I’m telling you.” I gritted my teeth and glared at him.

  The faery king was wearing black jeans and a green button-down shirt—both looked brand-new. The last time I’d seen Rhys, he had pointed tips to his ears and graceful, iridescent wings.

  At the moment, however, there were no tips and no wings. He looked entirely human.

  As if he’d read my mind, or at least had followed the direction of my eyes, he touched his ears. “It’s called a glamour. Much like I’m able to hide our conversation right now, I can hide certain things about myself I don’t want just anyone to see. That way I can more easily fit in around here. It’s quite simple, really.”

  “Magic,” I said quietly. Even after everything I’d seen with my own two eyes, it was still hard to accept.

  “Yes. And you …” He took a moment to examine me in greater detail. “I believe you literally shift form rather than using a glamour, yes? I’ve heard of demons changing forms before. It’s”—he made a sour face—“disturbing.”

  “You need to leave right now.” My head had started to throb with frustration and growing anger, and that wasn’t a good sign. I had to remain calm or my own, very non-graceful, non-faery black wings might pop out of my back. I was quite sure their presence would disturb more than just Rhys.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Your unwelcoming attitude only helps to confirm my suspicions about you.”

  “What suspicions?”

  “That despite your innocent appearance, you’re actually a dangerous and deadly creature of darkness. Just as I suspected.”

  That earned him a full-on glare. It sounded like he was being flippant, yet the expression on his face was anything but.

  “I’m not dangerous or deadly,” I said. “Or particularly dark.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out.”

  “At my high school using a glamour.”

  “Consider me undercover.”

  “And there’s nothing I can do about this?”

  “Less than nothing.” He was close enough now that I saw his brown eyes also contained gold flecks.

  “And what happens if you mistakenly decide you’re right about me?” I had to ask.

  All feigned friendliness vanished from his expression. “Then I’ll do what I have to in order to protect my kingdom.”

  A shiver raced down my spine as I got another flashback of that sharp sword nearly touching my throat. If he decided he was right—that I was evil—was he seriously going to kill me?

  I really didn’t like this guy.

  While I tried to figure out what to say next to make him leave me alone, I noticed Mr. Crane standing directly in front of us. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear what it was for a moment.

  “ … it’s like you’re not even listening to me.” His words suddenly became loud and clear. “I don’t want to have to repeat myself again.”

  “What?” I said. “Sorry, uh, I was focusing on something else.”

  “Yes, I see that, Nikki.” Mr. Crane looked at me sternly. “But you’ll have lots of time to get to know Rhys better after class. Okay?”

  He thought I was so taken with the new student that I was oblivious to everything else going on. How embarrassing.

  A small frog, smelling of formaldehyde, was plunked down between us. Belly up. Greenish gray, dead and slimy.

  “Rhys, I’m not sure if they already covered this in your previous school,” Mr. Crane said. “Let me know if you have any questions. Otherwise, I’m sure Nikki will be happy to help you out.” He then moved on to the next pairing.

  “Happy” definitely wouldn’t be the word I’d use when it came to the undercover faery king.

  Deadly, dark, and dangerous. That’s really what he thought I was? How could I prove I wasn’t anything like that?

  I’d been told there hadn’t been any other human-demon offspring in a millennium. That’s a thousand years Darkling free until I was born. It was forbidden for humans and demons to have children together due to the whole “Darklings are dangerous” thing. Also, it was very rare for a demon even to be allowed to enter the human world, to prevent their meeting any humans to mate with.

  Obviously my father had totally broken the rules to be with my mom. It was kind of romantic, really. My mother, on the other hand, never knew he was a demon. She knew him only as a college student who’d abandoned her when she was eighteen, alone, and pregnant, and I’d promised my father I wouldn’t tell her any differently. For now, at least.

  I forced myself to look at Rhys again, surprised to see that his face had paled, his jaw had tightened, and his attention had now shifted from me to the frog.

  “The frog is dead,” he stated.

  “You’re so observant.” I picked up the X-Acto knife—better to have control of a potential weapon than to let him grab it first—and realized my sweaty hand made it difficult to get a good grip.

  His lips thinned. “It’s barbaric.”

  “It’s fairly disgusting, sure, but we have to do it.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “We just have to.”

  Anger flickered in his eyes and the gold flecks there appeared to swirl. “You agree with this disgusting human practice of murdering innocent animals for meaningless experiments?”

  Okay. Overreacting much? “If I don’t, I’ll get a failing grade on this assignment. If it grosses you out, I think you can do a simulated dissection on the computer instead.”

  Without another word, he brought his hand down on top of the frog.

  I cringed. “What are you doing?”

  “Be quiet, I’m concentrating.” His hand began to glow with a strange, dim light and his brows drew together. After a moment, he shook his head. “It’s too late. I can’t save it.”

  Before I could say anything else, he swore under his breath, got up from the desk so quickly that his chair skittered backward, and stormed out of the room, casting a very dark look at the teacher.

  “Nikki,” Mr. Crane said when Rhys was gone. “What happened? Where’s he going?”

  “He, um, wasn’t feeling very well.”

  Mr. Crane nodded with understanding. “Not uncommon during this particular experiment, I’ve found.” He watched as a girl, covering her mouth with her hand and gagging, ran out of the room next.

  I felt off balance. First from having to talk to Rhys at all, and second from his furious reaction to the dead fr
og (may it rest in peace). And what had he meant by saying it was too late to save it? Was he trying to bring it back to life? Could he really do something like that?

  Apparently not, since the frog was still majorly dead on arrival.

  I didn’t know all that much about faeries, other than they were territorial and dangerous and had wings and pointy ears that could be covered up with a glamour.

  Now I knew they might be card-carrying members of PETA.

  At least Rhys was gone. But I didn’t feel relieved. Not yet.

  “Check it out,” a guy named Pete two rows up from me said. “I totally slayed the slimy beast.”

  He’d cut the frog’s head off and had mounted it on the top of his knife like a frog lollipop.

  The sight of it made my oatmeal breakfast suddenly decide it wanted to make a reappearance. I clamped my hand over my mouth before I hurled right then and there. Thankfully, I didn’t. But it was hard to breathe. My eyes burned and my back and temples itched. Worried equally about vomiting in public and turning into a horned, winged Darkling, I got up from the desk, grabbed my things, and ran out of the classroom.

  “There goes another one,” Mr. Crane said, and sighed to himself as I whizzed past him.

  Luckily, he didn’t try to stop me.

  3

  After a few deep breaths in the hall outside the classroom, I began to feel better. I didn’t see the girl who’d run out, but I did see Rhys sitting halfway down the hallway with his back against the lockers.

  I’d hoped he’d taken the dead frog as a bad omen and gone back to the faery realm.

  My first instinct was to return to class, but instead I marched over to where Rhys sat. He glared up at me, anger at my biology class’s mistreatment of innocent amphibians still apparent in his expression. I also saw something else there, something a bit more raw. Sadness and … grief? That’s what it was. But why would a dead frog affect him so much?

  It surprised me a little and I lost some of my determination.

  “You need to go back home,” I said simply.

  He got to his feet and I took an automatic step back from him, suddenly reminded how tall he was. Before I’d met him, I’d always thought faeries were small and delicate. And, well, not real. But Rhys was very real. And not small or the least bit delicate.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I accomplish what I came here to do,” he said firmly, despite that strange grief-filled look in his eyes.

  It wasn’t just the frog. Something else must have happened to Rhys. Something bad.

  “And what was that again?” I asked, then held up my hand. “Oh, right. The ‘Is Nikki Donovan a threat to faery life’ thing. Well, trust me, I don’t have any deep, dark secrets.” I paused. “Except for the one you already know, of course.”

  He studied me for a moment. “Have you told anyone else what you are?”

  “No.”

  Chris didn’t count. I hadn’t technically told him anything. He’d seen it with his own two eyes.

  “So you think you can still fit in here”—he glanced around—“pretending you’re a normal sixteen-year-old girl?”

  “That is the general idea. And since I was a normal sixteen-year-old girl until last week, I’m surprisingly good at it. Feels very natural, actually.”

  Confusion now clouded his expression. “But … why would you want to do that? You’re royalty—a princess—and yet you’d choose a life like this?”

  “Didn’t realize I had a choice. Besides, this is what I know, and believe me, I’m perfectly fine not living in a castle all the time. It’s not like I’m just going to give it up for a tiara and … uh, whatever else demon princesses get.”

  Still he looked confused. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of you?”

  “No, not me. Of … of the prophecy.”

  Hadn’t expected that answer. “What prophecy?”

  “The one about you.”

  I blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  That earned me a skeptical look. “You seriously don’t know about it?”

  “There’s a prophecy about me?”

  He seemed genuinely shocked I didn’t know. “Yes. It’s what prompted me to come here in the first place. What made me believe there was no time to waste.”

  The only thing I knew about prophecies was that they were predictions of the future. I had my very own prophecy? That was a surprise. I mean, I didn’t even have a blog or a Facebook page, although I was getting to those eventually.

  “What does it say?” I asked, unable to help my curiosity.

  “All I know is it’s a new one. And it’s raised some immediate and considerable … concerns. Otherwise the news of it never would have reached as far as my kingdom as quickly as it did.”

  A strange shiver went down my arms. “What do you mean, it’s raised some concerns?”

  “That you’re the first Darkling in a thousand years has already put everyone on edge,” he said. “Enough for me personally to come and find out as much as I can about you. The prophecy only adds fuel to the fire.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  He seemed unsure what to make of my reaction. I could see it wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Maybe he wanted me to deny it or get angry?

  He turned away from me. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  I grabbed his arm. “No, I need to know everything you know about this, Rhys. You’re making it sound serious.”

  “I don’t know any more about it. My advisers learned of it only the day before yesterday from a source in the Underworld, which means it is spreading throughout the rest of the dark worlds as we speak. Not only the news that the prophecy exists, but that the rumors of King Desmond having a half-human daughter are true.”

  A wave of anxiety went through me, and I released my tight hold on his arm. I was about to ask him a dozen more questions but stopped at the pale look on his face. He watched me warily, as if waiting for my scary demon-girl reaction.

  “Are you afraid of me?” I asked. It sounded stupid as soon as I said it.

  He hesitated. “No. Of course not.”

  My eyes widened. “You’re lying. You’re afraid!”

  “I’m a king,” he said, scowling at me. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Yeah, you’re a king, but you’re also only sixteen. I’m sixteen and I’m afraid of lots of things. I have a list.”

  “We’re different.”

  “You’re right about that.” I knew he wasn’t going to help me. I hissed out a frustrated sigh. “Do me a favor and don’t follow me, okay?”

  Without waiting for a reply, I went into the nearest bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, staring at my reflection and trying not to think. Unfortunately, not thinking wasn’t something I could control that easily.

  My face was now flushed, which brought out the freckles on my nose that I hated. I pushed my hair back behind my ears and rubbed my lips together. At the moment, I looked fairly normal, all things considered.

  Maybe Rhys had only been trying to get a reaction out of me—trying to get me to sprout my wings so I wouldn’t be able to show my face in school ever again. Getting all emotional was one way to bring out my demon side. Then I’d be just as much of a freak as he was.

  I mean, who had to be a king when they were so young? I’d almost become queen of the Shadowlands—even now, if my father died, I’d automatically have to take the throne—but it wasn’t something I’d ever choose for myself. And why would Rhys, as king, leave his world to come to mine just so he could poke at me like I was his own personal dead frog to dissect? He could have simply sent one of his advisers in his place if he was oh-so-concerned.

  If there was a prophecy about me, my father would have told me about it by now, right?

  And it’s not like I wasn’t safe. The Shadowlands were surrounded by a magic-infused barrier, controlled by my father, that protected the faery and human worlds from the demon ones—the ?
??dark worlds,” as they were called. Since he was king, my father couldn’t leave the castle because maintaining the barrier was his prime responsibility.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated.

  Michael, where are you? I need to see you.

  Since Michael had been my officially designated “servant” the first time I’d met him, we had this telepathy thing between us. However, it didn’t work long distance. I had no idea where he was at the moment. Probably at my father’s castle. In other words, nowhere close to me.

  I desperately wanted to see him again. He’d know what to do. Also, I just really missed him. He was someone who accepted me exactly as I was—horns and all—and I felt totally safe when I was with him, unlike how I felt around Rhys.

  I stayed in the bathroom trying in vain to contact Michael for so long that, by the time I emerged, biology was over. Of all my teachers, Mr. Crane was probably the coolest and most easygoing, so I hoped I could make up the assignment another day.

  After scanning the hall for Rhys, who was nowhere to be seen, I went to my other morning classes and formulated my plan for how to deal with the faery king. Even though he’d tried to hide it, I’d definitely seen a flicker of fear in his eyes. He didn’t know what I was capable of. I’d use that to my advantage and scare him back to Faeryville. It was worth a try.

  It felt like forever before lunch arrived, but when it did I entered the cafeteria, grabbed a sandwich and a piece of fruit—an apple a day keeps nasty prophecies away—and started walking over to the center table that the Royal Party called home.

  Despite my recent friendship with Melinda, I was still considered an outsider. At least, that’s the impression I always got from Melinda’s, well … ladies-in-waiting was probably the best way to describe the brunette Larissa and redheaded Brittany. The three of them had been closer friends before I’d arrived. Now Melinda either spent time hanging out with me or going to her after-school dance lessons—her latest obsession.

  I didn’t get the usual fiery glares from them when I approached the table. They were too busy gawking at the cute guy seated next to Melinda.