His grip tightened, stopping me. “Stay.”
My heart soared. I looked down at him, wishing I could just melt into him, feel his arms around me. He sighed, and his eyes closed. “You were right,” he murmured, his voice nearly lost in the darkness. “I couldn’t do it alone. I should have listened to you back in Tir Na Nog.”
“Yes, you should have,” I whispered. “Remember that, so that next time you can just agree with whatever I say and we’ll be fine.”
Though he didn’t open his eyes, one corner of his mouth curled, ever so slightly. It was what I was hoping for. For a moment, the barriers had crumbled and we were all right again. I squeezed his hand. “I missed you,” I whispered.
I waited for him to say I missed you, too, but he grew very still under my hand, and my heart plummeted. “Meghan,” he began, sounding uncomfortable. “I…I still don’t know if…” He stopped, opening his eyes. “We’re still on opposite sides,” he murmured, his voice tinged with regret. “Nothing changes that, even now. Contract aside, you’re still considered my enemy. Besides, I thought you and Goodfellow—”
I shook my head. “Puck is…” I began, and stopped. What was he? Thinking about him, I suddenly realized I couldn’t say he was just a friend. “Just friends” didn’t kiss each other in an empty bedroom. “Just a friend” wouldn’t make my stomach squirm in weird, fluttery ways when he came through a door. Was this love, this strange, confusing swirl of emotion? I didn’t have the same intense feelings for Puck that I did for Ash, but I did feel something for him. I couldn’t deny that anymore.
I swallowed. “Puck is…” I tried again.
“Is what?”
I spun around. Puck stood in the doorway, a rather dangerous smile on his face, watching us with narrowed green eyes.
“…talking to the nurse,” I said faintly, as Ash released my hand and turned his face away. Puck stared at me, hard and uncomfortable, as if he knew what I was thinking.
“Nurse wants to talk to you,” he said at last, turning away. “Says to leave his royal iciness alone so he can sleep. Better go see what she has to say, Princess, before she starts throwing her coffee mug.”
I glanced down at Ash, but his eyes were closed and he wasn’t looking at me.
A little apprehensive, I approached the kitchen, where the nurse sat at the table with a steaming mug of what was probably coffee, since the whole room smelled like it. The nurse glanced up and waved me to the opposite chair.
“Sit down, Miss Chase.”
I did. Puck joined us, plunking into the seat beside me, munching an apple he’d gotten from who knew where.
“Robin tells me you’re going on a dangerous mission after this,” she began, cupping her withered hands around the mug, staring into the coffee. “He wouldn’t give me details, but that’s why you need the Winter prince healthy, so he can help you. Is that right?”
I nodded.
“The problem is, if you go through with this plan, you’ll almost certainly kill him.”
I jerked up. “What are you talking about?”
“He is very sick, Miss Chase.” She glared at me over the rim of her mug, steam writhing off her glasses. “I wasn’t joking when I said he’ll be weak. The iron was in his system too long.”
“Isn’t there anything else you can do?”
“Me? No. He needs the glamour of his own realm to heal, so his body can throw off the sickness. Barring that—” she took a sip of coffee “—if you could find a great influx of human emotion, in large quantities, that might help him. At the very least, he could begin to recover.”
“Lots of glamour?” I thought a moment. Where would there be a lot of crazy, unrestrained human emotion? A concert or a club would be perfect, but we had no tickets, and I was underage for most clubs. But, as Grimalkin had taught me, that wasn’t a problem when you could conjure money from leaves and a valid license from a Blockbuster card. “Puck—think you can sneak us into a club tonight?”
He snorted. “I can sneak us into anything, Princess. Who do you think you’re talking to?” He snapped his fingers, grinning. “We can pay a visit to Blue Chaos again, that’ll be fun.”