“Whatcha reading, Lucian?” comes a high, playful voice off to my right.

  Perched atop a precarious stack of books on my desk is Lavender, a twenty-centimeter-tall pixie with pink skin and an ever-present glint of mischief in her eyes. She kicks her tiny legs back and forth with restless energy, clearly bored and itching for entertainment.

  “It’s Kael, Lavender,” I reply dryly, barely glancing up as I turn the delicate page of an ancient Elvish tome. It’s one of the academy’s few surviving volumes on Elvish magic—a priceless chronicle of lost wisdom that I personally preserved after the senseless war against the elves.

  So much knowledge was needlessly destroyed. We humans, so short-lived and arrogant, erased the lifetimes of insight that older, wiser races had gathered. How foolish we were.

  “Want me to translate that book for you?” Lavender offers with a sly smile and a flutter of her wings.

  “No, Lavender. As tempting as it might be to have this text translated into Common,” I say, pausing to scribble down another line in my own translation, “I’m well aware you’d ‘helpfully’ translate it into some other obscure language I don’t speak.”

  Lavender throws her head back with a dramatic pout, scrunching up her nose. “You’re no fun, Master Kael.”

  “Already regretting our pact, my little fae friend?” I reply sardonically, gesturing to the Elvish-to-Common dictionary propped up beside her, nestled in the pile she’s made into a throne.

  “Absolutely not!” Lavender exclaims, stretching her arms high above her head.

  Unfortunately, I make the mistake of looking up. She’s neglected her clothing again, her tiny pink body shamelessly bare. The sly look she gives me confirms it’s intentional—another not-so-subtle attempt to steal my attention.

  “Forming a pact with you has made life much easier!” she continues, rolling onto her back and stretching her legs in a clearly provocative fashion. “Before I met you, I spent years chasing my next meal. Watching you read dusty old books is far better than starving.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I mutter, eyes narrowing at the page. “Now put some clothes on and stop trying to distract me.”

  “Fine…” she sighs, clearly annoyed.

  With a flash of light, a tiny blouse and skirt appear on her—just enough fabric to be considered clothing, though it leaves little to the imagination. She sits back up with a smug little grin, clearly proud of her compromise.

  “What is it you hope to achieve by teasing me like that?” I ask.

  “Well,” she says with a sigh, shaking her head in mock disappointment, “I was kinda hoping you’d ask me to fix the size difference so we could make love. Then I’d shrink you down to my size.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “It would’ve been ,” Lavender corrects with a grin.

  “Being reduced to sixteen centimeters is a cruel joke.”

  “Relax. You’d return to normal,” she scoffs. “I couldn’t maintain a spell like that for long anyway.”

  I turn the page of the tome I’m translating. The chronicle I am currently reading is a detailed account of elves forging pacts with the fae. Apparently, it was once common practice to enter into mutually beneficial agreements: the fae would grant access to their magic in exchange for small, regular offerings of blood. Not enough to sicken or shorten a lifespan, but sufficient to carry the lingering essence of life that fae could feed on.

  When I learned the elves used these pacts to augment their magical ability, I naturally wanted to try it myself. That’s how I came to meet Lavender. She’s a lesser fae, not even five hundred years old. When I found her, she was nearly starving. Desperate. She accepted my offer out of necessity.

  I followed the instructions in this tome exactly. I bound her to a pact—she would obey my every command and grant me access to her magic. In return, she would take only the blood I provided her once per arc, and never more.

  “Making love…” I look up from the text mid-sentence. “Do fae even feel love?”

  I ask out of academic curiosity, not romantic interest. The passage I’m working on discusses how patron fae often act as caretakers to those they’ve bonded with.

  “No. We are incapable of love,” Lavender says, dropping her flirtatious facade. Her voice goes flat—emotionless. “But if you were sad, I would try to make you happy. If you were in danger, I would try to protect you.”

  “Because I’m your meal ticket?”

  “Because you are my meal ticket,” she corrects.

  She pauses, then adds with a wink, her charming facade slipping back into place, “But I very good at pretending to love.”

  “If I’m just a meal ticket, why do you carry on like that?” I sigh and roll my eyes.

  Her teasing smile falters. She looks down, her expression frozen—an eerily perfect, doll-like smile devoid of warmth. “Because I’m afraid you’ll stop needing me. That you’ll get bored and end our contract.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Is that true?” I ask, unsettled by the sudden shift in her demeanor. She’s never frozen like that before.

  “We fae can’t lie.” She looks up again, still wearing that haunting, unmoving smile.

  “I don’t know how many years I’ve got left, Lavender. But I promise—as long as you keep helping me with my research, boring as it might be—I won’t throw you away.”

  At my words, her joy returns like light breaking through fog. She flutters from her throne of books and lands gently on my shoulder, hugging the side of my head. Her barely clothed body presses against my cheek.

  “Oh, thank you, Master Kael!”

  “Are you trying to entice me again?”

  “Is it working?”

  “I have a wife, four concubines, and ten children,” I reply, deadpan. “It is working.”

  “Nuts. Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  All of a sudden, I hear raised voices and the loud of a door just outside my office.

  Lavender immediately flits off my shoulder, darting into the cluttered mess of research equipment and tomes on the side table to my right, vanishing among the chaos like a startled bird.

  Before I can even rise from my chair, let alone slip out through the secret tunnel hidden behind one of my bookshelves, the door to my office flies open with a bang. It crashes into a precarious stack of books, sending them tumbling across the floor in a chaotic avalanche.

  “I will come back later—I need to see him ” roars Lord Cromwell as he barrels into the room like an angry rhinoceros in nobleman’s robes.

  His eyes lock on mine—and somehow, his face manages to contort with even more fury.

  “You!”

  “Yes, me.”

  “You’re ”

  “Well, it my office.”

  “But your secretary said you were out!”

  “Just got back.”

  “She’s been telling me you were out I’ve come by—for ”

  “Seriously bad luck, that.”

  “You’ve been dodging me!”

  “Now why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know—maybe because I told you we needed your help creating that item!”

  “Oh, , that.” I reach lazily into my desk drawer and pull out an amulet—steel chain, engraved yellow crystal set into a rune-inscribed metal frame. I toss it onto the desk in front of him with a soft .

  “I finished it about four days after you asked.”

  Cromwell strides forward and snatches the amulet off the desk like he’s rescuing a drowning man.

  “Why didn’t you me it was done?!”

  “You didn’t come for it,” I say, smirking as I raise a brow.

  “I you it was urgent! You should have it to me when it was finished!” he growls like an angry bear.

  “Sure, you it was urgent,” I reply with a shrug, “but you didn’t make it urgent.”

  “What?!”

  “Well, you told me the king had a second son that he tried to kill right after his birth, correct?”

  “Well, yeah, he kill—” he starts, confused, but I cut him off.

  “And the first time this fae appeared was when she stopped the king from murdering that newborn prince, yes?”

  “She put the king under her control!” he sputters. “She’s a danger to the kingdom!”

  “And what has she done with that control… in the last, oh, ?”

  “She’s protected that boy—”

  “”

  “She killed some of my and Lord Fobos’ retainers!”

  “Weren’t those men at the time?”

  “She’s controlling the king!”

  I sigh, stroking my beard absentmindedly. “As far as I can tell, this immensely powerful and potentially dangerous fae has used her influence over the king and her magic to protect the boy.”

  “You don’t understand…”

  “No, don’t understand,” I snap, voice still calm but iron-edged. “The fae don’t do anything for free. She’s only protecting that child because she’s been to. The real question is— made the contract?”

  Cromwell’s anger flickers into uncertainty. “Well… I don’t know.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t the newborn,” I say, voice dripping with sarcasm. “And I doubt it was the king, given that he was trying to kill the child at the time.”

  I lean back in my chair, folding my arms.

  “Honestly, I can’t say for certain, but my suspicion? The late queen.”

  His eyes narrow. “But she The fae her!”

  I lean forward and place my elbows on the desk, fingers intertwined, fixing Lord Cromwell with a deliberately calm and composed expression to mask the utter disdain I hold for the man.

  “Every contract has a cost, and when much is requested, much is demanded. This may be a case where a mother's desperate love for her son cost her her life.”

  “Are you saying you support this monster?” Cromwell’s voice drops low, his tone sharp and accusatory.

  “Of course not,” I reply with a shrug. “I may disagree that the child and his fae guardian pose a danger to the kingdom, but I can’t condone leaving our king—or any of our people—under her control.”

  I gesture to the amulet still clutched tightly in Cromwell’s hand. “That’s why I made the amulet you requested.”

  If the boy truly has formed a pact with this fae, he may very well become the most powerful mage humanity has ever seen.

  “So it works?” Cromwell asks, his voice a touch calmer, but still laced with suspicion.

  “Certainly,” I say. “If it comes within a meter of a fae—or someone under the influence of a fae’s mental manipulation, the crystal will glow a bright yellow.”

  I know it works. Lavender was the one who taught me how to construct it, and she helped me test it. His request for this device was what first prompted me to research the fae in depth. That research led me to the study of fae pacts, and from there, to the idea of binding a lesser fae to instruct me further. Lavender had wisely fled from my desk the moment Cromwell arrived, no doubt to avoid triggering the amulet in his presence.

  Cromwell examines the amulet in silence for a long moment before slipping it into his coat.

  “Have you come in contact with Lady Willow or the boy?” he asks, eyes narrowing.

  “Out of an abundance of caution I haven’t and I have increased my surveillance around the academy to ensure I could avoid them… and others” He does not return my sly smile.

  “You better hope the delay you caused doesn’t harm the kingdom.” Cromwell warns as he turns and leaves my office dramatically.

  I glare at the fool as he storms out of my office. I’ve always despised men like him—nobles who rose through nothing but bloodshed, or worse, the sycophants who gained power by groveling at the feet of those who did.

  Our noble king is neither the most powerful nor the wisest among us. And now, with the queen gone, the kingdom has lost its most measured and thoughtful voice. She was truly the better half.

  The door slams shut behind him, compelled by a flicker of magic.

  Lavender reappears in a shimmer of light, flitting through the air before landing delicately on my desk.

  “Is he planning to hurt Auntie Willow?” she asks, curious rather than concerned.

  “I suspect so. Will that be a problem?”

  “Not for ,” Lavender giggles. “For ? Definitely.”

  “It would be a very bad idea to move against Willow. She’s the second most powerful fae alive.”

  “I forbid you from warning her.”

  “I won’t, Master,” Lavender says innocently. “But she won’t need it.”

  She flits up to perch on my shoulder as I return to my translation. Still, my mind drifts.

  The boy.

  Ren Drakemore.

  I’ve heard stories. Promising ones. My old friend Lord Griswald has been requesting more and more books for the child. And not storybooks, advanced grimoires, treatises on deep magical theory, obscure historical texts. The rate at which he’s consuming them is… unprecedented. No normal child could absorb knowledge like that.

  He is something special.

  I don’t believe the fae in his company is a danger to him. But just in case… I made sure one of the books I sent included a grimoire, one that holds a spell designed to challenge a fae, should he ever need it.

  Ren Drakemore is a mystery, but one thing I know for certain: he has extraordinary potential. For what, I cannot yet say.

  But I am watching.