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Oh, that’s just so cursed.

And Queeny, looking as pretty as ever in her liquid gold eyeliner, still munching a funny brownie, also turns to her. “So, Lily, I’m sure you’re still confused. Do you have any questions for Queeny, your history teacher?”

Every rolls his dark eyes.

Lily, with an über serious look on her face, asks. “If I’m your guest here, do I get new clothes?”

“Nope,” Queeny answers, shaking her head, “next question.”

Lily-girl moves on as told. “If I’m a fairy, why am I wingless?”

“Some fairies are just born disabled that way. No worries.”

“And Every too?”

“Every’s a different breed of fairy, sister, a shifter.”

“Shifters are fairies?”

“Of course. Actually, they are also classified in the class of mammals, order of primates, family of hominids, genus of homo, and species of Homo-Fairy.”

“Wow, girly, you’re so smart. What a baddie,” Lily exclaims. Her eyes light up like a torch with new batteries.

“Are you being sarcastic?” Queeny asks, scrunching her button nose while reaching over to grab the last piece of brownie.

“No.”

“She’s just that way,” Every adds, drinking a glass of cherry wine this time, his muscular shoulders bunching.

And with that, Glycogen the bodyguard finally arrives carrying an ornament box.

Queeny the sunshine girl claps her hands with glee. “And here he is, my great Gilly Hopkins.”

The man snorts.

Queeny turns to Lily, who seems quite frightened and on the verge of falling out of her seat. “Don’t worry, deary. Glycogen here might be a little intimidating, but that is just to scare the bad guys away. Right, Gilly? Inside, you’re just a soft marshmallow man.”

That is the understatement of the century.

Said man snorts again.

Queeny pats the seat beside her, both guests absolutely forgotten at the distraction of her guard, proving that her attention span is even shorter than the author’s.

Not really. But maybe at the same level.

The burly man pulls the chair out and sits down with a sigh, his large frame eating up nearly the whole squashed marshmallow. Lily watches in fascination as the newly met sugar plum fairy starts untangling his shaggy reddish-brown beard with a comb from the ornament box before oiling it down. A braid starts on the right, bound by a pastel pink rubber band at the end when it is finished.

“Candy floss,” the sugar plum fairy explains the material to her guests, suddenly remembering their existence.

Another queue starts on the left, and once the lady is content, she starts attaching tiny golden bells to his braids. Soon, he becomes a frowning wall of bells.

Lily the Introvert watches their exchange with interest, absorbing everything like a dry sponge.

“All done, pretty boy,” Queeny the Crazy says, studying her creation. “Though you shouldn’t frown this much, my man. Next time I go to the human world for Botox, I might need to bring you with me.”

“You’ve never gotten Botox, lady,” the bodyguard speaks up for the first time since Lily arrived, his voice an octave deeper than she expected it to be. With this kind of voice, he should start a podcast.

“But we might need to start looking into it soon. You’re just thirty-five years, nine months, and three days old, but you’ve been getting so many new wrinkles lately.”