I frowned at the air in front of my nose. I hadn’t managed to open a rift, let alone a door. And I’ve been opening rifts by accident all week. It was just my luck that trying to do something I’d been doing by accident would lead to utter failure.
Wel , not utter failure . The space in front of me was empty, as in, no other realities existed inside it. I’d actual y cleared a space so nothing but Faerie remained. I reached out with my power and shoved. Reality moved again, bunching around the edges of empty space like a sheet shoved away from the edge of a bed. I waved my hand through the space, using no power.
Nothing happened.
I pushed with power, and reality shifted. Which is weird, but not helpful. Moving layers of reality didn’t help us get out of this room. I reached out again, and then swayed as my knees buckled.
Falin caught my shoulders. “Okay, now I’m insisting that you go to sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re trembling and you can barely stand.”
Okay, he had me there. I leaned back against his chest, my eyes heavy. “You just want to get me in bed.”
He chuckled, the sound vibrating through me where we touched. “I won’t deny that, but I don’t think you’l be much fun until you get some sleep.”
True.
He leaned down and scooped me off the floor. I lifted a He leaned down and scooped me off the floor. I lifted a heavy arm around his shoulders and leaned into him.
“Do you love her?” I whispered the question so softly I wasn’t even sure it made a sound, but Falin went stiff around me, every one of his muscles locking as he froze.
“What?”
If he’d heard me, he knew who I was talking about, so I didn’t ask again. As the silence stretched, my chest tightened as if the dread I felt had become a hand pressing down on my lungs, slowing my heart.
Final y Falin said, “Once, I think that I thought I did.”
“Do you stil ?”
“She’s cold, calculating, and cruel, except for when she wants to be kind,” he said, which I noticed wasn’t exactly a
“no,” but he did start walking again.
“Why do they hate you? The other fae, that is?” Caleb, my father, and Nandin al disliked him, and I hadn’t seen much evidence that the members of his own court liked him any better. “And why do they cal you the queen’s bloodied hands?”
“Your second question answers your first, at least in part,”
he said as he set me down on the edge of the bed. Then he took a step back, and conflict showed clearly in the hard angles of his face. He stared at me for a moment before he reached some conclusion, though it didn’t seem that he liked what he’d decided. He closed his eyes and peeled off his glove. He opened his eyes again as he opened his hand, palm out so it faced me, but he kept his gaze down, not looking at me.
Thick, dark blood coated, or more accurately, saturated, Falin’s palm. That didn’t completely surprise me. I’d seen Falin kil before. Hel , he’d kil ed, or at least mortal y injured, a gremlin to rescue me before we were even friends. The depth of the blood did shock me, at least a little. I could almost see it pooling on his skin, as if it would drip at any moment. How many had to die at his hands for there to be so much blood?
so much blood?
He looked at me, just a quick cut of a glance, and whatever he saw in my face made his shoulders tighten so fast his hand jerked back an inch. I don’t know what I’d shown him, or if he’d only seen in my expression what he expected, but as he started to pul on his glove I jumped to my feet. I reached out for him, for his bloody hand. Yeah, the blood freaked me out, the fact he’d kil ed that many people scared the hel out of me, but I trusted that they needed kil ing. And besides, I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge anyone for the blood on their hands.
When I reached for his hand, he jerked away from me.
“Don’t.”
“I know it doesn’t spread or wipe off,” I told him.
He took a step farther back, stil out of my reach, and studied my face as he pul ed on his glove. “That’s right, you touched the Shadow King.” He shook his head. “I would never touch you with these hands, Alex. Not here.”
I stared at him. Then I rol ed down the top of one of the long opera gloves the queen had created for me and pul ed it off my fingers. I held up my own bloody hand.
Falin’s eyes flew wide. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head. Then he grabbed my hand in both of his gloved ones.
“No, Alex. Who—” He stopped. “Coleman.”
I nodded. “I’m not exactly lily white either.”
He gently pushed my fingers until they curled over my palm, then closed my entire fist in his hands. “You shouldn’t be stained by this. Let me take it from you.”
“What do you mean?”