City of Fae

If I spoke, would it shatter the illusion, would I go back to being that cold thing? The thing that stabbed Warren. The construct, the tool. Her tool.

Reign worried his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes pinching with concern. “Tell me you’re in there.”

“You can’t trust a word it says,” Warren hissed.

“I have a name.” The words sounded dry, and scratched up my throat, but they were real, not the queen’s; my own, born from my thoughts, and they sounded angry as hell.

Reign rocked back on his heels as Warren stared me down, or tried to. I’d tried to kill him. He had every right to be angry right back at me. “Is Andrews really here?” I asked.

Reign nodded, “Yes, he was here when we arrived. He’s, er …” The words lodged in his throat, prompting him to clear it with a growl. “He seems to think there’s some sort of conspiracy going on.”

“There is.” I twisted onto my back and peered up at the ceiling. “I’m okay, I’m me—”

Warren growled a warning but Reign shushed him. “Hear her out.”

The queen was close to me, but not in control. Her control felt like a terrible feverish madness. In that moment, tied up on my own couch, I might have been walking the tightrope between sanity and insanity, and I was numb from shock, but I was definitely me, back in my own skin. “She wants Warren dead. He’s the last. When he’s gone, the draíocht restraints keeping her locked in Under will shatter.” Damn, my shoulder hurt. I gave it an experimental roll. Pain surged and nausea pooled saliva in my mouth. But pain was good too. It was my pain. Don’t throw up. Get a grip. Everything was just fine. Peachy. “It’s all she thinks about. Even now …” Her voice crept into my thoughts, scurrying, like the thousands of arachnids under her command, seeking me.

“You hear her?” Reign stood back, as did Warren. They loomed, poised should I strike.

“I hear her, but I don’t think she can hear me, else she’d have known I’d slipped her control long before now. Maybe she can’t hear me outside Under?” It was almost comical, how they watched me like I was the deadly one. The problem was, they were right. But Reign had said the farther away from Under, the less control the queen might have. I wasn’t entirely sure if I could blame it all on her control. There was something in me; something harder, leaner, faster. The part of me that knew how to kill. That part was me too. I looked at Reign, at the stoic mask not quite hiding the pinch of concern on his face. He was calm now, unlike when I’d fled his apartment. “You tried to steal my draíocht.”

He frowned, and then remembered what I was referring to, and smiled a salacious know-it-all smile. He smiled! How dare he use one of his cheap smiles on me? “In your apartment, you tried to sex me up to get your kicks.” His smile bloomed into a grin. I growled. “You think you’ve seen me angry, pal, you have no idea.”

“Sovereign …” Warren warned.

“No, this is good.” Reign encouraged. “She feels, she cares.” He turned a brazen gaze back to me. “Tell me how much you hate me.”

I hated that what he’d done meant so much to me. “Is that why you’ve been keeping me around? For a convenient snack? You’re a lying son of a bitch, you know that?”

“I had to taste you, to know for certain what you are. You have the queen’s draíocht in your veins, Alina. You’re not human.” He hesitated. I expected him to look away as he usually did when he was about to deliver something I wouldn’t want to hear, but he didn’t. He glared, unblinking, and delivered the truth. “For future reference, you should know I can’t bespell you, and taking your draíocht is dangerous. You’re made of draíocht. If I took too much it would drain you, possibly kill you. Unfortunately, in my apartment, when we were … close, my control was slipping. I needed to push you away.”

“Why?”

“Because …” he glanced at Warren, who gave him a dry look, clearly not wanting to get involved. “Because if I get too close to the queen’s draíocht, to her … it has an unfortunate side effect. I had to make you leave. I was exhausted, starving … and volatile. I’d have hurt you.”

He hadn’t tried to bespell me. I couldn’t even be bespelled. He’d deliberately pushed me away. So everything I’d felt for him, every tingle, every fluttered heartbeat, every maddening thought; it was all real. Maybe these sensations were the only thing about me that was real? What was I? Tears welled in my eyes. A horrible knot of emotion balled in my gut. Was I even real? “Untie me, please.”