Мишель Роуэн - Reign Check

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 frog (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.

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.”