Page 1 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
1
Ten years.
It was a long time to wait.
But revenge was a patient master, and I was its creature.
From up here in the fly loft, the stage looked so small… and yet the audience looked smaller. In the dimness, they stared at the performers who threw flame into the air. The jugglers caught it, tumbled with it, danced with it, like it was a beautiful partner and not a deadly one.
At my side, Eric shifted, worrying the cuff of his shirt. He wasn’t usually this agitated, and we’d fucked twice today, so he’d had a chance to get out his pent up energy.
Then again, this wasn’t any usual performance.
And this wasn’t any usual audience, as a pair of horns jutting from the darkness reminded me.
These were fae.
Prince Sepher of the Dawn Court lived here outside the capital—exiled. (I might’ve had something to do with that.) In his exile, he’d gathered the misfits and the monstrous—the fae who struggled to fit in at the capital and instead dwelled in the Court of Monsters.
And monsters they were.
At the back, I spotted one with leathery wings, another with feathered. Various horns, curled like a ram’s or stubby and short like a young goat’s, as well as branched antlers that caught the stage light.
My prince had no horns. But he was the most monstrous of them all.
From up here, he was only a shadow amongst his followers, but I knew what those shadows hid.
Claws. Fangs. Slitted pupils. A tail that had swept in agitation the one time I’d properly seen him.
More animal than fae.
I didn’t bother to keep the sneer from my face—they couldn’t see me up here in the theatre’s labyrinthine catwalks.
Eric and I sat above the stage, legs dangling. The prince had quite a set-up in his partially ruined palace with its own theatre. The walkways up here were chaotic and jumbled, some repaired. Below, an impressive thrust stage extended into the seating, allowing the audience to sit on three sides.
It was my favourite stage set-up, giving me the opportunity to perform left and right, making eyes at my spectators, angling my poses to best excite them. Tonight, I’d have one focus, though. He sat right at the end of the stage, front and centre, in a large, gilded chair.
At my side, on the far more mundane seat of the catwalk’s timber, Eric chewed a cuticle. His sovereign ring caught the light, the little flower engraved in its flat surface glinting.
“You’ll ruin your hands.” I gave him a sidelong look.
With a huff, he thrust his fingers into his lap. But a moment later, he was chewing his lip.
“I’ll be fine.” I squeezed his thigh, running my thumb along solid muscle. They were quite impressive muscles, too, thanks to hours rehearsing and performing on the trapeze.
He pressed his lips together. “Hmm.”
My reassurance was a lie. And from his reaction, he knew it.
I didn’t expect to survive the night. But as long as I was successful, as long as I ripped apart that bastard prince with my iron blade, it didn’t matter.
“Are you sure about this, Zita?”
Not my real name, of course. Average women from Albion didn’t have such exotic names. That was exactly why I’d chosen it for the stage.
The great and beautiful Zita will spin impossible feats before your very eyes.It had much more of a ring to it thanMarigold will dance in a suspended hoop and try not to fall and break her neck.
In performance, it was all about the sell.
