Page 2 of My Faire Lady

“What the hell, Scarlet?” Jeremy says, jumping off the unicorn and thrusting out a hand.

I let him help me to my feet, biting back the pain as I force in a shallow breath. “Sorry about that.”

Boden ducks under the rope and strides toward us, his lips pressed into a thin, knowing line.

I lower my voice and step closer to Jeremy. “The spell snapped at the last second. I—I don’t know what happened.”

“You know exactly what happened,” Boden says into my mind.

Baring my teeth, I whirl on him and fix him with a glare. “What did I say about staying out of my head?”

Unbothered, he wraps a hand around Shadow’s reins and presses them against Jeremy’s armored chest. “Take Shadow to the stable, and give her some extra feed.”

Jeremy shifts his gaze between us, but takes the reins and leads the pegasus away. Without an audience, Shadow fans out her wings and ruffles her feathers against the breeze. A pang of guilt spears into my heart. She should be free to roam about the world as she pleases. But for her and all the other magical creatures, this is the only place they’re safe.

Magic doesn’t exist anywhere else. Not anymore.

Boden jerks me toward him. “When are we going to tell them the land is losing magic?”

“We’re not,” I hiss under my breath. “The magic is fine.” I take off toward the edge of the arena, dust billowing around my armored boots.

Boden keeps pace. “We can’t keep pretending like nothing is happening, Scarlet. Last week, your spell keeping the sirens’ lake clean faltered. It was easy enough to brush off as an accident—or user error.”

I curl my lip.

“But this?” he continues. “Something is wrong with the magic. And if the spell on the border breaks, humans might start to remember the strange, unexplainable things they see here.”

“The magic is fine,” I repeat through gritted teeth.

But even as the words leave my lips, I doubt them. The consecration was meant to be infinite—sustained by the presence of a Murrell witch. If my mother was still alive, maybe she’d know the rune our ancestors used to bottle the magic, but she died far before she had the chance to teach me.

And, try as I might, I can’t find a record of the spell.

Boden drops the argument with a long sigh as we follow the path toward the quad. Dense trees curl overhead, giving a slight reprieve to the blistering sun heating my armor like a hotplate.

“One of the barmaids quit this morning,” he says.

I curse under my breath. “Another?”

He grimaces. “And the seamstress.”

I groan and drag a hand across my jaw. If we don’t have enough humans to work the booths, the visitors start to look too closely at the creatures. “But it’s opening weekend. They’ve only been working a couple hours.”

A hum comes from between his lips, and we come to a crossroads in the path. Shoppes line each side like a miniature village, and in the center of the quad, water bubbles from the fountain. My stomach pitches. It’s been nearly two decades since I found my mother’s lifeless body at the foot of the marble, but the stab of grief has yet to fade.

“It’s the lowest turnout for opening weekend yet,” Boden murmurs, scanning the shoppes.

Across the quad, a phoenix tamer performs for a crowd of two.

Worrying my lip between my teeth, I swallow as we take a left and cross the small footbridge over a trickling creek. Will-o’-the-wisps twirl over the marshy ground—their lithe, transparent bodies weaving between cattails and twisting through the slats of the bridge.

A weighted silence stretches out between us, and I flex my hands—anything to rid my palms of the sting of a failed spell. Or to distract myself from the heavy, familiar look on Boden’s face. My father died the moment my mother passed, thanks to a rune she drew on him to join their souls in life and death.

Boden took it upon himself to raise me. And as he leans against the brick wall beside the enchanted entrance to our compound, I know him well enough to read the fine lines bracketing his mouth.

Dread curls deep in my stomach, knotting like a noose around my ribs. “What is it?”

Silently, he pulls an envelope from his back pocket and presses it into my palm. Stamped in bold, capital letters across the front, reads FINAL NOTICE. My hands tremble, vision tunneling on the bolded words.