Prison Princess

with surprising tenderness. I melted at the contact. “I think of my tenth kill. He was a bad man. He fought hard. I almost didn’t survive the fight. He had fear magic.”
Fear magic? I’d never heard of such a thing. “What’s that?”
“It’s a rare dark magic. It pulls your deepest fears from your mind and makes them feel real.”
Oh, I did know that. “I hadn’t heard that called fear magic. They use that in prison to punish us. You can hear people screaming and yelling. I only had it...once.”
He was so quiet for a long moment that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he spoke. “What could you have possibly done to have deserved that punishment?”
“Remember that man I told you about, Hill, who liked to watch me naked? In the shower?”
Cypress cleared his throat. “As you just told me less than a minute ago, I would have to be pretty addled to already have forgotten it.”
I rolled my eyes. There was the Cypress I’d spent the last couple of days with. Even if he smelled like spice and I wanted to dig my nose down into him and breathe that in like I could get drunk off of it. “Well, I poured itching powder that I stole down his pants. That earned me the punishment.”
He laughed, the sound so abrupt in the dark that I couldn’t help my grin that followed the rich sound. “I’m sorry you suffered fear magic. But good on you. Seriously.”
My lids were getting heavy again. I yawned. A person could get used to this. “What did he do to you that caused your nightmare?”
“He scared the shit out of me.” That was vague enough that I got the point. He didn’t want to talk about it. “What did they show you?”
How to describe what I’d seen? Myself, old, in that prison, behind those bars. Raving. Rocking. Not able to control my mind. Not able to walk. Just in that cell, day in and day out. “Death.”
“Ah, my old friend. Death doesn’t frighten me.”
What would that be like? “What does then?”
“Not dying when you really, really should.” He pulled the blanket up over us. “This night never happened, Princess. It’s just a dream. Go to sleep.”
I closed my eyes, though every cell in my body was awake from the feel of him. I let the beat of his heart lull me to sleep, willing my brain to not confuse his comfort with affection.

Chapter Five
I woke up alone the next morning. I was equal parts relieved and discouraged. I wasn’t expecting his kindness and openness. Every minute I spent with Cypress made me realize there was more to the hardened assassin than I could have ever imagined. A blue dress had been laid out for me on a nearby chair, along with sturdy walking boots and a yellow ribbon. When I got up, I ran my fingers along the fabric. When had he gotten it?
After getting dressed, I made my way downstairs in search of Cypress, but it didn’t take long to find him. My shoulders slumped at the sight of him laughing at the wooden table with a fairy in his lap. Her breasts were barely covered by the leaves taped over them, and Cypress’s large hands were wrapped around her middle. My mouth and heart turned sour at the sight.
“Cypress?” I called out. He spun around and faced me with a lazy grin. I looked at the table, trying to find evidence of the bitter alcohol I’d had last night but found none.
No, he wasn’t drunk. He was just sitting there with that woman on his lap. Okay. Point taken. I knew this routine. In prison, if you wanted to show how tough you were, then you went ahead and punched out the toughest guy in there so that no one would fuck with you. Usually that was a werewolf, but that didn’t matter right now. He’d been kind to me last night, and now he wanted to make the point that I didn’t matter to him. How to do that? Hold that fairy.
Fine. I got it. I grabbed an apple off the table and took a bite, letting the juice coat my tongue and giving myself a chance to not say what I wanted to.
“Princess?” He lifted an eyebrow. “You need something?”
“We’re leaving, right?” This might be the best piece of fruit I’d ever eaten, and I couldn’t even enjoy it because he was being such a...such a… My temper flared, and in that second, a tree sprouted through the floor of the inn. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was in full bloom with one of the branches shoving the fairy off him and hurling her across the floor.
The inn fell silent. Gasps and yells followed as a momentarily stunned Cypress jumped to his feet, staring at the tree.
Horror flooded me. I wasn’t going to fool myself. That tree had come because I’d gotten angry. I’d literally destroyed this place. I stared upwards as the tree kept rising, knocking out floor by floor of the place until it towered so tall it was through the roof. I covered my mouth with my hand.
I’d...I’d done that.
How had I done that? I didn’t have that kind of power. Hell, I wasn’t sure I had any at all. I’d never shown any before the other night. I might as well have been magicless. I stared at the apple. Was it the apple’s fault? I set it down, just in case, and stepped back.
I hadn’t even felt anything. Just a stuttering of my brain. Like I hadn’t been able to control my thoughts.
Everyone in the place turned toward me. I tried to swallow. “I…” What was I supposed to say about what I’d done? It was exactly this sort of thing that got someone put in the prison to begin with. I’d just broken the law, and I didn’t know how.
Cypress grabbed my arm, hauling me backward. “Come on. Out. Now.”
“But I...but