“I’m not—” But I can’t even say the words. “I can’t be.”
The way Fiona’s looking at me makes the prickling across my skin a hundred times more painful. “It is true that you do not seem as we do, but the one who calls himself Pan believes in your promise. For he is sure now that the other girl holds no such power. But you, he has a great interest in.”
“No,” I say. “I’m human. My mother’s human, and . . .”
“And?” Fiona drawls. “Who is your sire, Young One?”
I take a step back in shock. My sire . . . my father? “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “But he can’t be . . .” But when I start to step back again, my heel reaches the edge of the chasm, sending a few small bits of rock tumbling into the depths.
Fiona only smiles. “Perhaps not . . . but I wonder, then, how you came to have these?” Fiona reaches out a single, claw-tipped finger and lifts the necklace I’m wearing made from the few blue-gray stones I managed to salvage from my bracelet. “Humans call these deora sí. Fairy tears,” she says with a sneer. “A stupid enough name, but such a powerful and dangerous gift can only be bestowed by one of the Fey.”
Before I can stop her, Fiona gives an abrupt jerk, and the thread breaks. The second the stones fall away, her finger transforms, the sharp, clawlike nail shrinking into a softly rounded manicure. I’m too surprised by her transformation to bother to worry about the stones at first. Instead of the Fiona I’m used to, a lovely and very human-looking girl stands before me. Her skin isn’t iridescent, and her teeth are completely normal.
She smiles—a perfectly normal smile now—but there is something in her eyes that gives away her otherness. “Yes, Young One. They allow you to see through our glamour, but they are not what has hidden you from him for so long,” she says, licking at the air, lizardlike, as if to taste it. “There is some other power doing that work. You would have been discovered long before now had you not been protected by those who were loyal to the Queen’s True Child. Someone knows of what you are. Someone has protected you quite carefully.”
With a shaking breath, I crouch to scoop up the few stones that remain. The second my fingers touch them, the Fiona I know is back. And touching them, I remember something else—a room in London, the foggy voice of my mother as she slipped the bracelet onto my wrist.
Is this why my father had given my mother the bracelet? Why she gave it to me? All those years, could it have been the reason she could see the monsters, and the reason I could see the truth of what Fiona was in London?
I stand back up and face her again. “Why are you telling me any of this? I thought you worked for him.”
With a hiss, Fiona glares at me. “I work only for my own kind. Pan believes in my loyalty, and that gives me power to work against him. To free my people and my world. But if you reveal your true self to Pan, if you give yourself to him, all my work will have been in vain.”
“I don’t plan on giving myself to anyone,” I tell her. “Your plans are safe as far as I’m concerned.”
“It is not enough.” Fiona runs her long tongue over those awful teeth. “You’ve chosen to betray the one ally my kind have in this world. Without the Captain, who will stand with my kind against the one who calls himself Pan? The Captain must be freed.” She gives me a smile that makes the prickling sensation across my skin intensify until it’s almost painful.
Understanding what she intends me to do, I take another step back. But there is nowhere else to go. As I stumble toward the chasm, Fiona’s hand snakes out to grab my wrist and hold me by one arm as I dangle over the gaping pit. She doesn’t immediately pull me to safety.
“You expect me to free him?” I ask, trying not to let myself look down at the blackness beneath me.
“The Captain is your only chance to escape from Pan, to ever see your miserable world again.”
I can hear the soft, distant echo of the shower of rocks I knocked loose from the edge of the chasm. My mouth dry, I plead with Fiona: “How can I save him? I don’t even know where Pan’s keeping him.”
“I can get you to the place where he is being held. Once he’s free, the Captain can help you find your way from the fortress.” Her grip feels like a vice as she jerks me back to solid ground.
I let out a ragged exhale, fear still squeezing my throat.
“Then we understand each other?” the Fey says, satisfaction dripping in her tone.
I glance up, still trying to catch my breath. Her expression is so arrogant, so sure, the panic running through me falls away. “Not even close, Tinker Bell.”
Her expression transforms into something cold and truly terrifying, but I force myself to stay calm. I’ve jumped from one mistake to another out of fear. This time, I need to understand more. I still don’t completely trust the Captain, and I need to know what I’m choosing.