“Jensen too,” she adds. “All of them need to be realistic. You all think you will bring him back to this place? How?”
I have so much to say, yet I open my mouth, and nothing comes out.
“You can’t just bring him back here—they labeled him as a fraud. All of his design credit went to Vincent, and he will be escorted out—kicked out! Laughed at!” She shakes her head like she actually wants to shake me instead. “So much damage has been done—so many lives…”
I know she talks about the TP shifters and how they were banished from the lives they had grown to love. This place feels so wrong without them and with the AI robots walking around. This place is an abomination. Vincent erased everything to do with Pierce—scrubbing him from this place.
She continues, walking towards me. “If by some chance Pierce is alive, it’s been fifteen years on a barren planet, April. What do you think you will find? Bits and pieces of him?”
I stand with my chin held high. “I will bring him back.”
“I hope you do. I really do,” she says with a quiver in her voice, “but this is a very dangerous game you’re about to play. Even knowledge of you looking for him will land you in prison by some made-up charge. Vincent knows Pierce’s sentence is up. Does he think Pierce is still alive? Fuck no. But even still, he can’t know you’re looking. Even a one percent possibility will send Vincent into a frenzy.”
“I need to speak with Zoya.” She must know the key to Pierce.
Zoya laughs. “Why? She is a wilting flower—a babbling lunatic nowadays. It’s heartbreaking.”
“I need to talk to her.”
The Fairy Godmother has never let herself live with what she did. After Pierce was sentenced and taken away, she realized her grave mistake and betrayal that day. She was manipulated on the highest level, and I don’t think Pierce blamed her. A part of me thinks she had an enchantment spell thrown at her that day because she seemed indifferent and oddly robotic.
I will never believe she did that willingly. They convinced her that Pierce was trying to overtake FGI and throw her out—which, ironically, was the very thing Vincent was doing.
Utter bullshit.
There was no expression of anger on his face when Zoya cast her vote against him, just a blank mask of stone. Zero shock or outrage. It’s like he knew she was manipulated and had already forgiven her, almost as if he knew what would happen all along and had prepared himself.
Pierce’s insight is such a mystery.
Zoya refuses to touch her wand, which gives her youth and power—wanting a slow and painful death like Pierce. Slowly committing suicide to punish herself, which I don’t blame her for. If I sent Pierce Charming to his death, I’d feel the same. But I know it was not her, and I need to tell her that.
“I don’t know what good that will do…” She trails off, biting her lip in thought.
“I want to ask her some questions.”
“About?”
“Pierce.”
She laughs. “Oh, of course about Pierce. Who else would you be inquiring about?” She shakes her head and studies me for a few minutes. “Why didn’t you ever try and gain his attention?” She eyes me up and down. “Why your horrid clothing? I have given you so much shit about your clothes, and never have you changed. If you were so obsessed with Pierce, why have you never tried to be noticed?”
I blanch. “Get Pierce’s attention? Are you insane?!” The very thought has my cheeks heating. I could barely contain myself when he looked at me. Just the thought of him holding me in his arms so many years ago on Jensen’s mission still makes my body tingle.
Where to even begin?
Where to even start?
She smirks at me like she can see the obsession on my face. “He was not that scary, April. I know you have a killer figure under all that frump. You should have worked it.”
I snort.
She eyes me and raises a thin brow. “I get that he was very intimidating. But you didn’t make it easy either with your god-awful suits,” she points out with a scrunched face.
“April, he’s a Charming. You can’t blame him. It’s in his blood. Pierce is a beauty vampire. Ever heard the term?”
Beauty vampire.
I raise a brow. “Can’t say I have…” I trail off with a frown.
Zoya smirks. “You, who’s obsessed with Pierce, don’t know where he came from?! I thought you knew.” She laughs.
I want answers if I’m to find him. Or have any hope of finding him.
“The Charmings? Well, aside from that being his last name, I don’t know anything about them,” I say, eating up the new information like it’s a drug. I have lived in a box, sheltered since I was little. So it’s no wonder I’m clueless. “I get that it’s his last name. What else?!” I ask. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?”
“Lord.” She shakes her head. “I’ll let Zoya inform you—I have zero patience for long stories.” She looks pained. “I’m not a good storyteller—just ask my kids. I hate it, and I have to leave soon.”
I laugh. “I’ve heard,” I say in my best Zoya accent, “there was a princess. She was a good girl to her mother. She ate all her vegetables. She met a prince but decided to pursue her career first. She lived happily ever after. Go to sleep.”
She looks impressed. “Very good. I’ll tell that one tonight to Layla.”
Dion pounded her with his fist when they turned their backs. I caught it, and it made me laugh.
Looking up, I find Zoya studying me. “What?”
“I have to tell you something.”
My eyebrows raise. “You do? About Pierce?” My pulse jumps.
“No.”
“Who?”
“You.”
