Free Entice by Carrie Jones

moments before it reached us, people started screaming, running madly away from the tunnel and back up toward the stairs,” he said.
    I remember seeing something about this on CNN . There were bombings, a terrorist attack. Almost two hundred people died.
    “We were stuck in this massive wave of humanity. The heat coming from the tunnel was immense, and then came the cloud of fire. ‘Cloud’ is not the correct word truly. It was a massive rolling beast.”
    Everything inside of me tightens up and I grab Astley’s hand again. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Couldn’t he fly?” I ask.
    “No. He was one of the few kings who could not. He never taught me, which is probably part of the reason why I utterly fail at landing, but I digress.” He hauls in a huge breath as a starchy man in a suit unbuckles and heads to the restroom. “He saw what was coming and he grabbed me by the other arm; then he lifted me above his head and threw me. Instead of saving himself, he threw me, Zara. He threw me all the way up the stairs.”
    His voice breaks with emotion, raw and jagged, an ache so huge and real that I cannot believe he is sharing it with me. I think about Nick and how he’s never trusted me enough to tell me about his parents.
    “Is it hard to tell me this?” I ask.
    “Quite.”
    I wait. “Then why are you telling me? I don’t mean that meanly. I just—I just want to know why you are if it hurts you to do it, you know? I’m not making sense, am I?”
    “You are. You usually make sense, Zara. Honestly. I am telling you because you are my queen and I count you as my friend and because you deserve to know.” He takes a sip of his cranapple juice. I wonder what I haven’t told Astley, what he should know about me, what I haven’t told Nick. Astley’s hand shakes and he finishes his story. He had landed on a sea of people, knocked his head a bit, and passed out. When he woke up, he was in a Spanish hospital; Bentley, their butler, was hovering over him, his mother had gone mad with grief, and his father was just gone.
    “He saved me, Zara.”
    I nod and grip his hand tighter. He squeezes back and then lets go. He uses that same hand to tuck my hair behind my ear as he says, “He saved me. He had an instant to choose my life or his and he chose mine to save. That’s how I know that pixies can be good. I have seen it with my own eyes. I know what my father was. He was good. And that’s what I want to be, what I want my people to be.”
    I pull my lips in toward my mouth. Tears threaten. “You are,” I say, and I believe it without a doubt. “You are good, Astley.”
    He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I hope so.”
    Astley suddenly sits up all intense. “Do you smell that?”
    “What?”
    “Pixie. A powerful pixie.”
    I focus. “Maybe. There’s that Dove soap smell. I just thought it was the restroom and you.”
    “Lovely.” He unbuckles his seat belt. The flight attendant scoots right over. “Sir, I need you to sit down.”
    He stares at her like she’s asked him to eat a truckful of Twinkies. His frustration slams into me like a fist. It’s not intentional. I just
feel
it.
    “The captain has turned the seat belt sign back on,” she insists.
    We hit some turbulence just as she says, “Sir, I must—”
    “He has diarrhea!” I interrupt.
    Astley gasps and his whole face and even the tips of his ears redden. I feel a little bad about it, but it’s
so
going to work and, seriously, it was the only thing I could think of.
    “Oh!” She is at a loss for a second and staggers back a step as Astley rushes past her toward the bathroom. I don’t know how he’ll sneak out of there to check out the plane, but it was the best I could do on the spot. The flight attendant and I make eyes at each other.
    “He’s horribly embarrassed about it,” I whisper. “He had bratwurst. Or maybe it was the baked beans. Either way you might want to get some deodorizing air spray.”
    Ten minutes later