Unless of course, my mind could conjure up a soul glow around a hallucination. Why did I have to think about that possibility? I hated my brain right now.
Falin watched my thoughts shift with my expressions, and then asked, “You want me to tell you just anything you don’t know?” He paused. “You know that I was switched with a human and grew up outside Faerie, right? Well, maybe the spells they wrapped me in weren’t quite good enough, or maybe I was just unlucky, because I was abandoned by the family who should have raised me. I don’t know. I was too young to remember. I grew up in foster care, but never really fit anywhere. I’d stay in a home for a few months and then they’d send me away, off to a new family. When I reached puberty, the spell began breaking down, my fae nature emerged, and a FIB agent brought me to court. I felt like I belonged for the first time. Faerie felt like the home I’d never had. The home I’d missed.”
I studied him. I’d asked him for something I didn’t know, and he’d given me a doozy. I hadn’t known him when he was younger, and I knew very little about his past, but this information fit. In unguarded moments, I’d recognized the part of him that had spent too long without a home, that wanted to belong and be valued. It resonated with me, and had since I first met him.
Well, okay, not when I first met him. The first few times we interacted I’d thought he was a major jerk.
But after that.
The story made me want to hug him, even though the pain he’d revealed was decades old and likely well scabbed over. I hadn’t grown up in foster care, hadn’t bounced around houses, but I’d felt unwanted. I’d felt alienated from my family because of my wyrd ability. Because my father had shipped me off for most of my childhood. Had made a point of disassociating himself from me. So while I couldn’t understand exactly what Falin had gone through, I could commiserate on some level.
I could also understand what he meant about Faerie feeling like home. As terrifying as I found the courts, something felt right when I was in Faerie. It was like a drug I knew was dangerous, but craved. Since my awakening, I’d felt Faerie’s absence when I was in the mortal realm, but my healthy fear was strong enough to keep me away. So I could imagine what it must have been like for him as a teenager.
And the fact that I could, and my reaction to his story, made me leery.
Wouldn’t an illusion my drugged imagination had conjured want to make an emotional connection? And my own mind would be the best to provide the perfect outlet. The fake Death was proof of that fact.
Oh hell. How was Falin supposed to prove if he was real or not? He was acting like the real Falin, my mind’s eye told me he had a soul, and he’d given me a believable story when I’d asked. None of it was definitive, but I had to trust something.
Yeah, so let’s trust the guy who has told you point-blank to never trust him.
But I did. With a healthy dose of caution maybe. But for better or worse, I did trust him.
The sleet continued to fall around us, coating every surface and clinging to my wet, icy hair and clothes. If the drug didn’t kill me, I might die from hypothermia before I got out of the winter court.
“Be on the lookout for Ryese,” I said, approaching the threshold that had reappeared when Falin entered the room.
“Isn’t it usually me telling you to be careful?” Falin asked, a wry smile touching the edges of his lips.
True. But I didn’t say it as I walked through the door, Falin at my heels. We emerged in one of the icy hallways, though at this point, it was more of a slushy hallway. The fake Death followed me a moment later, still yelling.
I scowled at him, hating my own mind that had summoned him and made my insecurity public. Chewing at my bottom lip, I turned to Falin. “That spell you used on the queen earlier . . . ?”
He glanced between me and my illusion. Then shook his head. “It wasn’t a healing spell, and it won’t help you.”
I almost asked him what it was then, but he couldn’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. Hanging my head and doing my best to ignore the verbal barbs from the fake Death, I followed Falin down the corridor.
Ice golems lined the hall. Once before I’d seen them come to life at the queen’s whim, but I wasn’t sure these particular golems would ever wake again. Their carved ice faces had melted, as had much of their heads and arms. I looked away from the misshapen forms. The winter court was dying.
“Have you seen the queen recently?”
Falin shot a grim look at the golems. “Not too long ago.”
“Since the sleet started again?” I asked, and his silence was answer enough. No. He hadn’t.
So she might have relapsed. Or been dosed again.
“Why isn’t Ryese locked up already?”