Was Rhi really there? Or was she hearing things as well?
“Look at Kellan. He tries not to watch you, but he is. He can’t let the Dark know how much he’s worried for your safety. They will use you against him, Denae. Prepare for that, because it won’t be pretty. It’ll be harsh and might seriously mess you up mentally, but Kellan won’t leave you.”
Denae looked at Kellan to find him watching her with a bland expression. Or at least it appeared bland, but she saw the way his eyes never left her face, how his gaze pierced her as if trying to tell her something without words.
How could he want her though? She was human. She meant nothing.
Denae shook her head to try and clear it, but the depression wouldn’t loosen its hold.
“You’re strong,” Kellan said. “You can push them out.”
Could she? Did she dare? Denae squeezed her eyes closed and thought of Kellan, but every time an image of them together tried to appear, it was pushed aside.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
His insistence snapped her eyes open, and she saw his unchained hand by his side, one finger held out to her. He was stretched as far as his chain would allow, just ten feet separating them. But it felt like miles.
“You fought off Matt. Remember?”
Matt? Then she recalled her fight with Matt in Kellan’s cave. Denae no longer wanted to be alone. She wanted comforting arms around her, and she knew exactly whose arms she wanted—Kellan’s.
She tried to get to her feet, but it was like something was pushing down on her. It would be so easy to lay there and not fight, so easy to just … give up.
“Denae.”
Kellan wouldn’t stop saying her name until she moved again. She managed to get to her hands and knees and began to crawl toward him, but all too soon her hands felt as if they were caked in concrete. She collapsed.
It was just too much. She couldn’t be strong anymore. She was never the strong one. That was Renee. How many times had her mother said those exact words?
“Fight, damn it.”
The words were clipped, angry. Whispered. Denae lifted her head to see Kellan staring at her, as if willing her to move with his eyes.
A spark of something had her use her arms to pull herself to him, inch by agonizing inch. Until she could go no more. She collapsed, ready to do anything it took to make it all stop.
Strong fingers wrapped around her wrist and tugged her over the floor until she was nestled against a warm chest with thick arms wrapped around her.
“Fight, Denae,” he whispered in her ear. “I can no’ do it for you. Only you can take control of your mind.”
Take control? Did he mean someone was in her mind? Surely not? This depression was something she’d battled when her sister died, and again when her mother faded away and then her father had a heart attack and left her. All within a four-year span.
“Who are you thinking about?”
“Renee,” she answered automatically. “She was so beautiful.”
Something caressed down her face. “The nightmares can no’ touch you here.”
The nightmares. Yes, she knew them all too well. “We were inseparable.”
His arms tightened around her. “You’re strong. Say it.”
“No.” She shook her head. She wasn’t going to say anything that wasn’t true.
“Say it,” Kellan insisted and flicked his tongue over her ear.
Heat instantly spread through her body. Images of their night flashed in her head, pushing past the fog that had seeped into every crevice of her mind.
“Say it, Denae. Tell me you’re strong.”
“I’m strong.” She had to force the words, they were so difficult to say, but once said, they pushed the last of the fog away.
And whatever had taken her mind was no longer there.
“Denae?”
“What just happened?” she asked as she began to shake from the coolness of the room and her wet clothes.
Kellan rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “They got into your mind. They’ll do it again too.”
“That was awful. Everything I felt was what I went through when Renee died.”
“Which is what makes it so real.”
Denae closed her eyes, thankful to be in his arms. If it hadn’t been for Kellan, the Fae would have taken her. That thought iced the blood in her veins.
“Can you fight it now?” he asked in a low voice.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I may no’ always be around. You need to keep them out at all times, but it willna be easy.”
“The one who came to me earlier, Emil. He said they feed off of hope and other such emotions.”
Kellan’s chin rested on her shoulder. “They do. So doona think of happy thoughts to pull you out of their grip. No’ only will they take full control of your mind, but they’ll suck your spirit right out of you.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a bang-up job.”
His fingers lightly caressed her arm. “If you were no’ afraid, I’d be worried.”