YENA

As I walked to the bakery from my house, I started getting a funny feeling.

Lily was saying to me that something was wrong.

That she could sense danger.

Adan set up the meeting at the bakery to make it convenient for me. I was glad.

I didn’t want to go to campus. It had become a place full of unpleasant memories for me at this point. Even though school was out right now, there was still plenty of activity there, and I would rather avoid it.

I arrived a couple minutes early, but Adan and his professor friend were already there when I walked in.

Adan stood when he saw me. He pulled a chair out for me and did a small bow as I approached, but then quickly sat back down, before I could tell him to stop with all the theatrics.

The woman seated beside him gave me an anxious look. I assumed she was taken off-guard by Adan bowing to me. She was wearing all black and had chunky, black-framed glasses and auburn hair that was pulled up into a tight, round bun.

I sat at the table quickly and extended my hand to shake hers – before she could think any longer about whether she was supposed to bow to me.

“Hi, I’m Yena. It was so nice of you to meet up with me like this.”

The woman shook my hand.

“It’s my honor, really,” she said with a smile.

I could not have expected the way that shaking her hand would make me feel.

Lily reacted, telling me something was wrong.

“Wrong,” she was just repeating over and over. “Wrong, wrong, wrong… you can’t trust this human, no…”

I shook my head and tried to focus.

Yes, alright, Lily was right a lot of the time.

Yes, her instincts were more accurate than my rational thoughts, sometimes.

But I just needed to talk to this lady. I could look her up later if I needed to, make sure she was legit. I told Lily to be quiet.

The professor started telling me all about the design program, and the classes that were being offered this coming semester. She gave me a booklet that had all the courses listed.

“Thank you so much,” I told her. “I feel better, now that I can start getting prepared.”

“It’s no problem at all, and I want to apologize to you, too, about the delay with your enrollment.”

I took a deep breath. “What can you tell me about that? It was confusing to me, what the reason was for the delay.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, we did send you an offer letter in the mail, standard for all of our admissions. And when we didn’t receive your reply, one of my colleagues called the palace.”

“And?”

“And I believe he spoke to your husband, who told him that you were no longer interested in the program.”

My whole body went hot.

Lily wasn’t going to be quiet anymore.

I took another breath, trying to even out my temperature so I could get my face back to its normal color.

“Thank you for letting me know,” I told the professor.

“Here.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. “If you have any more problems going forward, you go right ahead and call me directly.”

I didn’t know what to think or feel.

I’d started seeing red.

Nolan lied to me…

Lily was howling, “No! The human lied!”

And there was something strange coming into my senses. It was an odd smell.

I’d been around humans before, on my honeymoon with Nolan. That’s how I knew this lady was a human right when I sat down – I could smell it.

But over the past few minutes, her scent… changed.

“She’s afraid,” Lily told me. “That smell is fear.”

I put the business card into my pocket and thanked the woman for her help.

“And thank you too, Adan,” I said, keeping my voice very calm. “For setting this all up. I really appreciate it.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you today, Yena?” the woman asked.

“No, thank you very much.” I rose to stand and so did the two of them. Adan took a couple big steps over to the door and held it open for me.

“I look forward to speaking with you again soon,” the woman said. She smiled, but as she did so, her mouth twitched.

I thought about it all the way home. Replaying it in my mind.

There was just something weird about the look on her face at the end. The way she flinched.

But I looked down at the business card in my hand, and it really looked legit.

I planned on calling the number on there the next day to follow up.

“She was lying…” Lily said, repeating herself in a sing-song voice.

Part of me wished that wasn’t true because I needed this person to be on my side with getting me into school.

But another part of me hoped that it was.

Because it was unbearable to think that I’d just gotten confirmation of Nolan not being the good and honest man that I thought he was.

ADAN

Adan drove the human woman back to her apartment and waited till the car was parked before he said anything to her.

She’d started getting scared when Yena asked the question about Nolan’s involvement with the school.

Even though it was all in the script. Yena had even phrased her question the exact way Adan had predicted and written out in the notes.

So why the human started faltering at that moment, when she’d been performing pretty well up until then… Adan could only think of one reason why.

It was because she was committing heresy in that moment. Telling a malicious lie about the prince.

She’d suddenly gotten scared of being caught.

Yena had been too wrapped up in her own emotions to notice this, but the woman even darted her eyes around the shop as she said the line about Nolan. It was wildly dangerous for her to start losing control right in that critical moment.

While Yena was looking away and taking a deep breath, Adan had reached under the table and squeezed the woman’s leg – hard. She jerked back to attention and started course-correcting.

But when Yena next made eye contact with the human, there was some doubt in her eyes.

Adan wondered how strong Yena’s senses were. If she smelled the woman’s surge of fear and adrenaline.

Parked now on a crumbly street in a very sketchy part of town, Adan took off his seatbelt and turned his body so that he was facing the woman directly. She took off the glasses and turned her head to look at him.

“Did I mess it up?” she asked. Her voice was paper-thin.

Adan shook his head and said, “We’ll see.”

He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer and noticed that she twitched.

It was his wallet that he was pulling out.

“Kerr will wire the ten grand tonight. Soon as I call him, which I’ll do the moment you step out of this car. But as a token of good faith…”

He counted out ten crisp hundred-dollar bills and handed them over. She snatched them up in a hurry and flew out of the car, heading up some uneven concrete steps toward her sad little home.

Adan drove home slowly, smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, one after the other.

He was thinking over the meeting. Walking through in his mind, each moment and each reaction. Trying to see how well he might’ve fooled Yena.

It wasn’t a given, with her. She was pretty smart.

But all in all, it seemed like Yena was verging on the side of believing Adan’s gimmick.

When he got home, he sent her a few texts to follow up. Started out telling her she did a great job, and the professor was impressed with her.

Her responses made it sound like Yena was buying Adan’s lines, so he pushed a little further. Sent a few texts in a row that would keep her thinking for a while.

The prof did mention after you left, that it’d be best for you to travel to the human world ASAP. So you can start preparing for classes.

She said she just wants to make sure you’ll be successful at the school. So let me know if you need help getting airline tix or anything – you probably want to get a flight out this week.

He smiled, reading it back.

Then called Kerr as he poured himself a whiskey.

Kerr answered the phone by asking, “Good news?”

Adan smiled. “Good news.”

“You are one slick bastard, you know that?”

“What can I say?” Adan chuckled. “They don’t call me the best for no reason.”

“So when’s she leaving?”

“Should be soon. She’ll keep me updated. So once I’ve got the date, time, and flight details, I’ll pass them along.”

“Sounds good.”

“The second she is on that plane,” Adan said, “we’ll be set to make our next move. And finally take him out.”