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I’m so focused on struggling with this pint-sized bundle of aggression that I miss Inara and the two girls until they’re right next to me.
The sprite releases my ear and drops into a dramatic bow, her beautiful magenta hair falling over her shoulder and to her waist.
But Inara doesn’t even look at the sprite. Her icy gaze sweeps over me with disgust, her lips curled into a sneer. She’s model-tall with porcelain skin over delicate features, long silky ultramarine blue hair that tumbles artfully over one shoulder, and legs for days that end in seven-inch crystal pumps.
But it’s her eyes that chill me to the bone; her irises are an ashy-white hue, like frost.
“We have held the Selection ceremony for thousands of years,” she snarls through lips as blue as her hair, “and never once has a shadow recruit acted with as much disrespect as you do now.” She cuts her strange eyes at the sprite. “Why haven’t you glamoured her into submission?”
“I apologize, oh good and wise Evermore,” the sprite begins, giving me the side-eye. “But she just arrived moments ago and according to the new rules this year . . . we are only allowed to glamour them if they try to flee.”
“What do you mean, just arrived?”
The poor sprite is trembling. “All I know is I was ordered to make sure she made it to the Selection.”
“Ordered by whom?” Inara demands in a soft, horrible tone that scrapes down every knob of my spine.
The sprite’s petrified gaze drifts from Inara to someone near the Winter Court’s side, although I can’t see who. Whoever it is, she must find them more terrifying than Inara because she says in a quiet voice, “I don’t think I should tell you.”
Inara glares at the sprite. “Stupid sprite! I should freeze you for a couple hundred years and see if your tiny idiot brain grows any smarter.”
My sprite guide darts behind my head and nestles into the back of my neck. She’s trying to hide. We’re not exactly buddies, but I feel a sudden urge to protect her.
She’s tiny, after all. An easy target.
“Wow,” I say, forgetting where I am or what I’m talking to. “Picking on creatures smaller than you must make you feel really big and strong.”
For a split second, Inara is too stunned to say anything. Her impossibly blue lips part, a look of outrage slowly twisting them into a sneer as her friends tighten the circle around me. The sprite has gone completely still, as has the entire room.
I catch sight of Magus near the doorway. His horrified expression sends my heart into a tailspin.
Way to not grab attention.
A menacing grin flashes across Inara’s jaw. She holds a manicured hand up between us to reveal blue and white magic crackling between her delicate fingers.
“This is going to be fun,” she purrs, turning to her two friends. “Which part should I freeze first?” nly she hovers in place, her eyes traveling over my clothes. “Fae hells. You’re a weird one.”
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I snatch the creature from the air, holding her gently around the waist. My fingers cover her entire body. She wriggles and kicks, and I can’t stop staring at the tiny clothes she wears. The shoes made out of bean pods and soft dress spun from spider silk.
She’s like the Barbies Julia plays with, only her hair isn’t colored with crayons, but a deep, beautiful magenta, and she’s warm and alive.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demands. Her wings beat the air in a blur, sending cold puffs of wind at my face.
“What are you?” I ask.
She gives up on trying to pry my pointer finger back with her hands and glares up at me, arms crossed. “I’m a sprite, and your escort for the next four years. And if you make any Tinkerbell jokes—any at all—I will cast a spell to give you hemorrhoids so bad you’ll never sit down again.”
Well, that sounds horrible.
She bares her ruby lips, revealing razor-sharp teeth. I think I recall something about sprites carrying a toxin, so I release her before she can bite me.
The moment she’s free, she buzzes around my head, a string of curses spewing from her little mouth.
Then she says in her tinkling voice, “Follow me. We’re already late for the Shadow Selection.”
“The what?” I call. But she zooms so fast over the courtyard that I have no choice but to run to keep up. I zigzag around a statue of a faun and lunge over hedges, my boots slipping and sliding on the gravel.
Why did I ever love running?
