ROSES

  The Devious Fae, Book 2

  KATERINA MARTINEZ

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by Katerina Martinez

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  “You’re not seriously expecting me to wear that, are you?” I asked.

  Elaith studied the dress they were holding up for me and frowned. “What’s wrong with it?”

  It was a hideous, floor-length, pastel green monstrosity, with beach-ball shoulders, a square neckline, and enough ruffles to make me look like an oversized, startled chicken.

  I lowered my eyes. “If a dress from the nineteen-eighties went back in time and screwed a dress from the sixties, this is the weird love-child that night of drugs, booze, and sex would produce. I’m not wearing it. I don’t care what weird rules your people have.”

  “Booze?”

  “Sure, ignore everything else I just said and ask a stupid question.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “You don’t know what booze is?”

  “I also don’t know what the eighties or the sixties are, but judging by the context, I suspect they’re dates?”

  “Yes. Don’t you have calendars in Arcadia?”

  “Well… sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “If you were immortal, would you have need for dates?”

  I frowned. “I’d still need to know what day of the month it is. How would I plan events otherwise?”

  “You’d use the moon, stars, perhaps magic. After a while you would intuit things.”

  “Wait, you’re telling me the Fae don’t know what day it is?”

  “We do, but it’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand. In any case, we’re veering off course—I don’t see what’s wrong with this dress, and besides, you must wear it. It’s what you’ve been assigned.”

  “But it sucks. Can’t I pick something else?”

  Elaith’s eyebrow cocked. “Would you like a moment to tell the designer what you think of his work?”

  “You mean he’s here?”

  “He sure is, and I’d be sure to share your sentiments with him when I see him later on. He’ll argue that this dress is what all the young ladies want to wear, and that if you knew what was good for you, you would wear it as well.”

  “You mean he’d threaten me?”

  “No, but you are trying to pretend like you are one of us, are you not… Avery?”

  I swallowed what I had been about to say, because he was right. I was trying to pretend to be one of them. Why? Because my bitch of an ex-roommate, who had been one of the Fae all along, stole my identity and fled back to Earth without me. Now I looked like her, I lived in her house, was cared for by her servants. I clearly also had to wear her clothes, because if anyone learned the truth, there was a high chance that I’d end up dead.

  Arcadia wasn’t kind to humans; especially those that ended up here against their will.

  “Elaith, I beg you,” I said, “Don’t make me wear this thing. I’m going to look like some kind of green scarecrow. I mean, what even are these things?” I asked, squeezing the bulbous shoulder-mounted balls.

  “Those are called flourishes, and they’re the hottest thing in fashion right now. Trust me, you’ll blend right in wearing this.”

  I shook my head. “I hate this so much.”

  Elaith grinned a forced grin. “I didn’t ask for this either, and yet, here we are. Now, put it on. You’re expected downstairs shortly.”

  Without much more encouragement, Elaith turned around and headed out of my room, so I could have a little privacy. With the dress now in my possession, I walked over to the mirror and held it up in front of myself.

  I groaned.

  “What the crap is this?” I asked myself, although I wasn’t really myself.

  Gone was the pale girl who wore cut up tops and dark jeans and arguably too much dark eyeliner. The woman staring back at me had sun kissed skin, her cheekbones were high and sharp, and her ears were long, and pointed. Kady was beautiful, stunning really, with those sharp, blue eyes of hers, but she wasn’t me.

  The one thing I’d been able to keep, the one thing that was mine, was the color of my hair. Instead of blonde waves and curls, my hair was long and red, the color of fresh strawberries. A color which, I thought anyway, went pretty well with green for the most part.

  The only problem was, the green dress I was being forced to wear was essentially a garbage bag with balls on it.

  How anyone thought this thing was fashionable, I would never know. I had struggled even getting it on, my limbs resisting the commands to fit the straps around my shoulders. Every inch of me rebelled against the idea of looking like one of them, but I had to, for my own survival.

  The Duchess Invidia, Kady’s mother, had assured me, if anyone found out I was human, her hands would be tied. The House would expect to see me executed, and she would have to pretend like she knew nothing. That meant, my best bet was to put on the dress and the best performance of my life.

  “It’s not all bad,” Rell said, startling me.

  “Christ, Rell,” I shrieked, spinning around to face the little creature, my hands flying up to my chest. “How long have you been there?”

  “Literally this entire time.”

  “Did you just watch me get changed?”

  The little red dragon was sitting on my bed, his wings furled behind his back, his tail coiled around his side. He rolled his burning, amber eyes. “No, I looked away. I’m a gentleman, you know.”

  “Whatever. You know I don’t like it when you just show up in places.”

  “Look, I learned a fancy new trick, and I’m going to use it, okay? I’m sure you’d use your new tricks if you knew how.”

  I turned my nose up at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You can try to deny it all you want, but you’re different from when we got here. I can tell.”

  I was lying. I knew exactly what he meant, but there was no way in hell I was going to admit it, or even say it out loud. Something had happened to me in the time that I’d been here, and it had nothing to do with the way I looked.

  This was something else.

  Something that went a little deeper than that.

  I still had nightmares about the night when that butterfly thing attacked me out beyond the gates that surrounded Emerald Hall. It was always there, waiting for me, taunting me from within the darkest parts of my mind, and when I dreamed, it would chase me into the maze. There was nowhere I could go to get away from it, nowhere to run.

  Nowhere I could go to escape that awful, two-toned voice that sounded like it was coming from inside of me.

  “Thea warned me not to eat the food here,” I said, “She told me it changes you. She was right.”

  Rell shook his head. “I don’t think it was the food, you know. That butterfly did something to you, and then the Viscount—”

  I stuck my hand out at him. “—please, let’s not talk about that jackass.”

  “That jackass is the reason you’re still alive. He’s put his neck out there for you a couple of times already.”

  “Not by choice.”

  “Maybe not, but he’s the reason why we’re both still standing right now, I guess.”

  I frowned at him. “Do you have Stockholm syndrome or something? He kidnapped us both, and the only reason why we weren’t killed on the spot back at my apartment is because you were quick enough to invoke the Fae Rites that are keeping us both alive.”

  Rell unfurled his wings, stretching them and giving them a good shake. They didn’t look like dragon’s wings, not really. They were more like a moth’s wings, pale red, and covered in beautiful spots, and dots, and patterns in deep, dark hues that shimmered in the light. He leapt off the edge of the bed and walked over to where I was. He couldn’t have been larger than a cat—or more like an overgrown iguana—which meant he had to look up at me as he spoke.

  “I don’t trust him anymore than you do,” Rell said. “I don’t trust anyone here, and that includes you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No, listen to me. Kady proved that none of these people can be trusted, but they can be held accountable if there’s some kind of agreement involved.”

  “You mean like a Fae Rite?”

  “I don’t think there are Fae Rites for everything, but I think if we strike deals with the people here, they’ll keep true to their words.”

  “So, I have to go around signing agreements with everyone I meet. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Nobody asked us to sign anything when I invoked the Rites. It just happened, and look at how the Viscount has behaved with us so far.”

  “Maybe he’s the only one of these people who will stick to his word.”

  “That’s possible, but we don’t have to bet on that. We can just
make sure we have them spell their intentions out for us, that way they can’t go back on their words.”

  “I hate to bring this up again, but the only thing stopping the Viscount from doing away with us is his hatred of paperwork.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true… you had some kind of creature inside of you; a foul, Arcadian parasite. He sucked it out of you and took it into himself. I don’t know how difficult it was for him to dispose of it, but I hardly think it was easier than paperwork for the Monarchy.”

  I paused and eyed the little dragon suspiciously. “What… you think they don’t want us to know that they have to do what they say they’re going to do? Sounds like they’re giving up a vulnerability, there.”

  “I mean, I’m not saying they won’t try and screw us around any chance they get, but we can avoid another Kady situation by making sure we know what they want out of us, and what we’ll get in return. It doesn’t hurt to be direct.”

  “Direct is the only way I know how to be.”

  Rell leapt onto the vanity causing some of the bottles on it to rumble and shake. “Oh, I know,” he said, “And it’s going to come in handy now that we know what we’re dealing with.”

  I frowned at him. “You’re saying we a lot. I don’t trust that.”

  “We’re in this together, Avery. And by the way, I’m glad you don’t have to pretend that you’re Kady even behind closed doors.”

  “You can thank the Duchess for lifting that curse Kady had put on me. Can probably thank the Duchess for a bunch of things… but out of everyone here, she’s the one I trust the least.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  A knock at the door caught us both by surprise. I spun around on my heel again, my hackles raised, my heart wedged inside of my throat. I didn’t want to do this, I wasn’t ready. Elaith had spent the last week or so teaching me manners, decorum, etiquette. They had taught me how to talk to the Fae, but it all felt wrong and unnatural to me.

  I spent my life hating ‘the man’ and trying to avoid it where I could. That was why I hung out in dive bars with weirdoes, making arguably good, grungy music, away from the judging eyes of normal people. Not only was I about to be judged, I was going to get full-on scrutinized by the Fae, a breed of people who expected nothing less than perfection.

  And they were behind that door.

  “Uh, come in,” I called out, feeling suddenly way too awkward in my own skin. Of course, most of that was the dress’ fault, but still.

  When it opened, I was instantly relieved to see Thea peeking through on the other side, her violet eyes wide and bright. “Hey, it’s me,” she said.

  “Holy shit, Thea. You damn near gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry, I just wanted to see if you wanted to stand with me when the parade starts?”

  I was about to reply, but then she entered the room, and I saw what she was wearing. It was the same dress I had on, only hers was blue and purple, and had a couple of design variations. Hers had shoulder-balls as big as mine, ruffles too, but it was somehow even boxier than mine was. It made her look like a cardboard cutout of herself instead of a real person.

  A real person with two working legs, and not a single fin.

  “You don’t like it?” she asked after seeing my reaction to her entrance.

  “No, no,” I said, “No… it, uh, it looks great on you.”

  Thea frowned. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just not used to… your fashion.”

  She spun around, the blue and purple of her dress flashing with the green of her hair, some of it which was tied up in tight plaits. Thea was a completely different woman to the one I had found in the tub that night, and good for her for coming out of it on the other side. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was—"Your tail,” I ventured, “What, uh, happened to it?”

  “Oh,” smiling, she blushed, “I can kind of shape change; Elaith taught me how. They said Mermaids are a summer Fae thing?”

  “Summer Fae?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m one of them.”

  “Didn’t know that was a thing.”

  “Well, now you know,” Rell said, “And as much as I’m enjoying this heartwarming little exchange, you’re going to be late if you don’t leave right now.”

  “Oh…” I looked across at Rell, then back at Thea. “I guess we should head down then.”

  Thea nodded, then held the bedroom door open for me. “After you, Lady Kadeera.”

  “I’m never going to get used to that,” I said, sighing and shaking my head. “Time to face the music.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Emerald Hall was about to come alive with light, and sound, and magic, and I had no idea what I was in for.

  Thea and I had found a spot on the balcony of the first floor, overlooking the foyer and the main entrance, where we could watch the parade as it unfolded underneath us. Other members of the house had also found good vantage points near to and around us, and they waited eagerly for the festivities to start.

  As a half-breed, Rell wouldn’t normally have been allowed out of my room, but I had insisted he be given the right to join me, and my request had been granted. It was weird having any kind of clout, but I guessed being the lady of the house had its perks.

  “Look at all these people,” Rell said, the little dragon perched half on the balcony edge, and half in my arms. “I’ve never seen so many pointy-eared bastards in my whole life.”

  “Could you keep it down?” I whispered. “They’re going to hear you.”

  “I know, but there isn’t anything they can do about it is there?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t make me regret fighting for you.”

  “Okay, okay. Oh, look! There’s a whole army of servants down there carrying food. Think we can get some?”

  Rell was right. There were servants all over the lower floor, arranged in such a way to create a corridor that went right through the foyer, under the chandelier, and through the arch beneath the grand staircase. From where I was, I could just about see the entrance to the study room off to the right; it too was blocked off with people, beautiful people, most of them holding up silver platters covered in food and drink.

  There had to be a hundred or so Fae in this room.

  “I don’t think that’s for us,” I said.

  “It should be,” he said, “You’re the lady of the house, aren’t you?”

  I realized the man standing next to me was leering a little. He had sharp eyes, high cheek-bones, and a couple of piercings along his pointed ear. His eyes moved from mine, down to Rell, then up to mine again, and I remembered… I’m not Avery, none of this should’ve been new to me, and Rell wasn’t even supposed to be here.

  “Be silent,” I hissed, “Or I’ll put you back in your cage.”

  Rell fired daggers at me from his eyes, but seemed to get the message. I hadn’t wanted to scold him, but I had appearances to maintain. Right now, I was Kadeera Nightbloom, the Lady of Emerald Hall, daughter of the Duchess, the fairest Rose in all the garden of Spring… or some shit.

  The man leering at me turned his eyes away, apparently satisfied with my answer to Rell’s question, and nodded to the man next to him. Looking around, there were only a few whispered conversations going on, mostly between some of the women bunched together across the way from us.

  One of them seemed to be looking over at Thea and me, then another one looked, and a third one. When they realized I was watching them in return, they stopped whispering and pretended to be talking amongst themselves.

  I shuffled a little closer to Thea. “I feel like everyone’s looking at me,” I said.

  “They should be,” she said, “You’re the lady of the house, and you’re wearing one of the finest outfits here.”

  “Really? Because we seem to be the only ones wearing these monsters. Why do those girls get to wear actual clothes?”

  “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be a statue in the garden. I much prefer standing here wearing this, uh, thing. You really don’t like it?”