Page 34 of Fae Trials

“One who doesn’t care for a former prostitute infiltrating her way to the Fae Courts.”

Heat flared across my cheeks, and I sucked in a deep breath. What I had done with Elijah didn’t count as prostitution. Boyfriends brought their girlfriends gifts all the time, and if he had thought our relationship was transactional, it didn’t reflect on my morals.

“What do you want?” I snapped.

“To warn you to leave this academy before you get hurt.”

“I’m supposed to believe you care about my wellbeing?”

He raised a shoulder. “What occurs in your mind is of no consequence, but you are making a mockery of the fates with your insistence on mating with one of us.”

I bared my teeth. “But I didn’t choose this!”

His gaze skimmed my wings. “Each time you so much as think of us, your wings become incandescent. It’s desperate and unseemly.” He sniffed. “Next, you’ll trigger your own heat and present yourself to us on your hands and knees. Anything to entrap one of us into becoming your mate.”

“What?” I choked on thin air.

“Ah, yes.” His smile turned cold. “Apparently, you have no memory of your life as a half-blood and no memory of how you cheated fate.”

My mouth dropped open. Not because of the implication that I’d done something dishonest—Prince Rory had already made that accusation and threatened me with beheading—but at the notion that faeries went into heat. Like fucking animals.

Prince Caulden walked a slow circle around my body. “Flying classes won’t work on a girl like you.”

“Why?”

“You have an imbalance in your wing-to-bodyweight ratio.”

“Is that your way of telling me I’m fat?” I placed my hands on my hips.

Chuckles broke out across the gymnasium, and Prince Caulden smirked. “You’re not the most svelte of females.” He waved his fingers over my breasts, which Elijah had always described as perfect C’s. “Your wings are dreading carrying all that excess weight.”

I clenched my teeth. This was total bullshit. Very few humans on the Isle of Fae had the opportunity to become overweight, as we didn’t have as much access to luxuries from the outside world. A tiny plan hatched in the back of my mind. It was pathetic, but it would put this ice prince in his place.

Shaking my head, I walked across the room toward the pool at the other end. If Prince Caulden was the kind of petty bully I suspected, he would follow.

“Don’t turn your back on me,” he snapped.

“Walk faster if you can’t handle the sight of a girl with a real ass,” I snapped back.

Prince Caulden strode at my side, his icy glare freezing the side of my face. “What are you doing?”

“You’ve just given me an idea for training my wings.”

“What?” he said.

“They need more strengthening than anyone else’s, right?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he frowned down at me as though I’d asked him a trick question. What a dick. He could dish out the insults, but at the first sign of making a twat out of himself, he turned mute.

Everyone gaped as we passed. Helen walked on my left, her presence giving me moral support. I’d only just met the girl, but the fact that one high faerie in this academy had offered the hand of friendship had meant a great deal.

At the edge of the pool, I shouldered off my blazer and let it fall to the floor.

His gray eyes gleamed. “Is there any purpose to this charade?”

“You implied my wings wouldn’t support my bodyweight. I’m going to train them in the water.”

“What?”