“I can’t go back to the dungeons, to the dark, but…Oh, I can’t be in the sun either. What time is it?” I ask, my eyes frantically darting around for the clock. Just moments ago I fully intended to go walking in the sunlight as soon as the sun rose, but now that Andy and Ellie are here, I can’t quite summon up the courage to let myself die.
King Kiran’s eyes narrow, and when his molten stare traces the shadows underneath my eyes, I wonder if he knows who I am.
What I am.
“Why can’t you go in the sun, Blaise?” Andy asks, but Ellie puts a hand on his.
“I don’t think she’s in a mental state to answer our questions right now,” she says, intertwining her fingers with his.
There was a time in my life when the sight of them holding hands would have made me ill.
It still does, but for a completely different reason.
It’s because when I see their fingers interlock, I can feel the phantom of Nox’s touch upon my skin.
The touch I’ll never feel again.
The touch I left behind, the touch I sacrificed for my baby.
My baby who is not here. Who hasn’t ever been here.
Andy nods, and he reaches for me to pick me up, but there’s whispering in the corner—Queen Asha to her husband, and he suddenly says, “I’ll do it. I’ll carry her back.”
Evander shoots a questioning look in his direction and angles his body between me and the King of Naenden, like he expects the king to squelch me any moment now.
“Kiran won’t hurt her,” Queen Asha says, and though she’s human, her word feels as binding as the promise of the fae.
So I don’t fight it when Andy nods and backs away. I don’t fight it when the King of Naenden kneels and tucks his hands under my back and knees, lifting me into his arms.
I don’t fight it when his hand tugs on the sleeve of Ellie’s robes, his rough fingers colliding with my skin.
I certainly don’t fight it when, for the first time since Derek lured me into that dark closet, peace like a warm blanket settles over my body and mind, and I fall asleep in the arms of the King of Naenden.
There’s a moment when the king sets me down, settles me into heated sheets and a soft mattress, that I’m roused from that blissful slumber. He removes his hand from my skin, and I feel its absence like the absence of water in the desert.
Still, I cling to the memory of the peace, to the fact that somewhere out there, it exists.
I think it might be the only thing sustaining me at the moment.
A moment after the king places me down, someone starts wrestling with the sheets, pulling them out from under my limp body and tucking them over my shivering shoulders. There’s a gentle pressure on the bed as someone climbs in and wraps their warm arms around me.
I know without opening my eyes that it’s Ellie. She’s always smelled like rainwater and lavender, and it’s simple to recognize the sweet aroma of her blood as it slips through her veins.
I wish I didn’t know that. I hate myself for imagining what her blood would taste like on my lips.
“You should go,” I whisper, my throat too dry and hoarse for how much blood I’ve consumed.
A hand slips into mine as Ellie pulls it close to her chest. She doesn’t know I can feel her heart beating against my palm, or maybe she does, but she doesn’t understand what that means. The danger it puts her in.
“She kept you locked up in there, didn’t she? In that room?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.
“And then that wretched magic inside you; it locked you up too.”
I swallow, tears stinging the edges of my eyes.
It’s her next statement that breaks me.
“And then we locked you up.”
I start to tell Ellie that I deserved it, but I can’t quite form the words over the lump rising in my throat.
“You were speaking of a baby earlier. Of a baby your stepmother took from you.”
I’m sobbing now, and I don’t even realize it until my chest starts to convulse. “It was stillborn,” I whisper, “She…she didn’t check. She didn’t even look to see if it was a boy or a girl before she sent it away. But when I woke, she told me it had lived. That if I worked at the palace, sent her my paychecks, that one day she’d tell me where my baby was…I thought they were safe…I thought my baby… I didn’t mean to kill her,” I whisper.
When I open my eyes, I can hardly stand the look in Ellie’s eyes. It’s dark in the room, but I can see every tear mark staining her brown skin as she cries with me.
Ellie doesn’t smile; it’s more like a grimace. “I know you didn’t.”
“You shouldn’t be here. I’m not myself anymore. Something happened.”
“I know,” says Ellie, but she’s still stroking my hair. I shouldn’t let myself be comforted by her touch, not when Ellie Payne should hate me. Not when she deserves to hate me.
But I want so badly to be touched, to be held, so I let her.
“You don’t understand. You should be afraid of me. I could hurt you.” Clarissa’s blood might have satiated my hunger for the moment, but if I’ve learned anything from Nox, it’s that the hunger tends to return at the worst of times.
