Az frowns. “We don’t. But it shouldn’t be that way. He has a power, Blaise. The abominable type. One he shouldn’t have. One that allows him to control her.”
The memory of illusory comfort and ease washes over me, but it’s been diluted by time. It’s not as if I can access the feeling again. The feeling when Kiran picked me up and carried me out of my father’s manor, plunging me into a blissful peace before he deposited me back at Othian castle.
It seemed a kindness then, and I’m not entirely ready to say that it wasn’t.
Despite that, it’s a dangerous power, being able to control the emotions of others. “You think he uses that power to keep her in love with him.”
Az’s gaze snaps toward me. “Is there another option? It’s not as if Asha could love a monster like him.”
Somewhere inside, my heart crunches like the topmost layer of ice beneath our feet.
“I suppose only monsters love monsters,” I concede, finding my gaze drifting back to the wagon.
It doesn’t seem fitting, with everything I know about Kiran, that he’s controlling Asha’s emotions like that. But how much do I really know about Kiran?
I know he’s searching for a solution to Asha’s mortality. I can’t think of another reason he’d be researching liquid moonlight in the library. I also know he’s doing so in secret, without alerting her to his actions. On one hand, that seems like the actions of a male who would force a woman to love him, assuming he plans to make her immortal without her permission. On the other hand, if he’s controlling her emotions, why hide it from her when he could simply make her want immortality?
Unless he’s not completely aware of what he’s doing to her.
Unless he chooses not to be completely aware of what he’s doing to her.
I know what that’s like. To tuck the wrongness away. To ignore the way it mildews like forgotten crumbs in the pockets of your life, hoping if you let it alone, it will simply disappear.
I don’t know whether Kiran is controlling Asha, but I do know this: he and I are the same. Both of us would do anything to save the people we love.
He won’t understand when I betray him, but he should.
Because he’d do the same to me, if it was Asha stuck in an indefinite slumber.
“I’ll keep my ears open,” I say, and Az smiles.
The pile of coin in my pocket grows heavier.
CHAPTER 2
NOX
Blood doesn’t taste the same here as it does in the world from which I hail.
It must be infused with more of the metallic elements than I’m used to back home, because the blood of the hare that I just strangled slides like grease in my mouth, almost stinging, it’s so bitter.
I fight a gag—my throat’s insistence that the blood doesn’t belong—just to get it down.
I don’t complain, though. I don’t deserve to leech off the blood of others and have the experience remain pleasant.
“You done yet?” Farin asks, a wry look of contempt curling his lip as he watches me feed. One would think that the male who likes to feed off the screams and suffering of others would be less disgusted by my eating habits, but alas—I suppose he’s nearly as self-aware as his mother.
Warm blood drips down the sides of my lips and dribbles off my chin, speckling the dirt floor of the cave within which I’ve been hiding during the daylight hours.
Farin was the one who brought me the hare, as well as a handful of berries that squirt red when I bite into them, flushing my mouth with a sour liquid that honestly isn’t much better than the blood. He hunts for me during the day, but only because he doesn’t want to waste time on it at night, the only hours in which we can travel together.
He doesn’t kill the hares for me. He makes me do that myself.
There’s also a part of me that wonders if he picks the berries for their color, but I’m careful with my words around Farin. There’s an evil simmering within him, under the surface. Like his keeping me alive is the cracking earth obscuring a molten underground river, and I’m treading on it barefoot.
“The sunlight is fading.” Farin crosses his arms and nods toward the horizon as if I hadn’t noticed the harbinger of my certain death fading from view. As if I don’t have an internal dial always clicking, wondering how precisely it matches up with when the sun will return.
I toss the hare to the side after draining it of blood and choking down the raw meat on its bones. Farin cooks his own meat during the day, but he doesn’t bother with enough for me. Probably figures I don’t mind eating it raw, though Farin’s been in my head, in my body, so I suppose he should know better.
“I’m coming.” I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. It’s already stained a dark crimson from previous meals.
The last of the daylight fades, and we slip into the night.
The island is frigid at night, which I find disappointing as someone who would have preferred milder weather for a change. I can remember sitting at the feet of merchants in need of my mother’s travel wares. They told stories of the beaches of Charshon and their voyages to the Forgotten Isle. I’m positive they always spoke of it being warm, especially since that was all they could think about as they shivered in the Mystral chill after being robbed of their coats by bandits on the Serpentine.
This island is a letdown at best. The nightly wind bites through my thin shirt, because apparently Blaise forgot to weave me a coat. Or maybe she just thinks all islands are warm. Which would be understandable.
The animals here are massive. A hare on this island would probably consider their counterparts from our world food. The flora is peculiar—petals and leaves have a tendency to swivel independently of the wind, like the plants themselves are eavesdropping. The greenery is sparse toward the beaches (which Farin avoids because of the cold spray of the waves, and I avoid because I’m still not confident he won’t try to shove my head under the water). But toward the center of the island, it’s lush with needled plants that seem well-suited to surviving the cold.
“There’s something else here,” Farin says as we trudge through the sand, the weight of its resistance taunting us. “Someone. Something. A mission we have to fulfill.”
Farin thinks the way to get off this wretched island is to fulfill the story in whatever tapestry we’re woven into before Blaise can start another. Before she traps us in a different place, a different time.
He clearly has more faith in Blaise’s weaving skills than I do.
I love her, but if I’m going to be honest, I’m just glad she didn’t weave us into a void.
Still, it’s not in my best interest to dampen Farin’s hope. As long as he expects us to beat the tapestry to its conclusion, as long as he thinks we can free ourselves from the island, he has no reason to kill me.
At least, he doesn’t think he has a reason to kill me.
Apparently, Farin was unfortunate enough to be the first fae upon which the Old Magic placed the lying curse. Back then, the curse hadn’t had time to dilute over the course of generations, and he died instantly the first time deception passed from his lips.
He’s not eager to repeat the experience, and he knows if he kills me, Blaise will ask him about me when they’re reunited. Then he’ll have to admit the murder to Blaise, ruining his chances of stealing her from me.
It’s not my pick of reasons to be left alive, but I suppose I’ll work with what I have.
“What exactly do you think we’re looking for?” I’m not really looking for an answer, just an excuse to keep Farin talking. I don’t know why, but I feel safer when he’s chattering than when he’s quiet, even though I always trail him from behind.
He rips a branch from a nearby tree as we forge a path through the overgrowth.
“A story,” he says, turning back to me with an obnoxiously sincere look on his face. “What else?”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I’m stuck on an abandoned island in a forsaken realm with a monster, and that monster also happens to be a dreamer.
Not that I’m inherently opposed to dreamers, but just about everything about Farin gets under my skin at this point.
“A story? So you think if we can get to the end of the story, fulfill our purpose on this island according to what happens in the tapestry, we’ll be free?” And you’ll go back to snatching my body, I don’t add.
