That other fae, back on the street with the trap, the fae with one blue eye and one golden eye, he gave a warning to this one. He spoke the words in English—as though he meant for me to hear him.
To understand him.
‘They are a fragile kind.’
“Not weak,” I murmur and I look up at him from beneath my lashes. “Fragile, remember?”
His glare is a flash of white in the dimness, his mouth is a twitch of an almost snarl, but these are just warnings before he’s gripping my shoulder—
And a hollow scream is ripped out of me.
It wrangles my throat, twists my body, and freezes me, that ugly, horrid scream.
The warrior has his thumb digging into my wound, pushing easily through the congealing barrier, until the entire length of his thumb is in me,grazing my bone.
The scream doesn’t stop.
It rips through me, thrashes me.
My legs give out—and I feel every bit of his thumb leaving the inside of my flesh as I fall.
I hit the foliage with a thud.
My breaths are ragged.
Twisted on the forest floor, I hold my shoulder and watch, wide-eyed, as his boots press into the soil, right in front of my face, and he crouches over me.
Patient in the dying harrowness of my cries, he waits until the strangled sound is softening into moans wisped with whimpers.
“This,” he starts and lifts the phial pinched between his thumb and index finger, “will heal you—and force you to sleep.”
My mouth quivers with the harsh breaths grating through me. I fling my wide gaze to the phial, crumbled chalky powder glittering at me through the glass.
But this is no negotiation.
He doesn’t give me a choice.
There is no decision for me.
It is his.
And he makes it, swift.
In a blink, he’s got my chin in his grip and his knee digging into my chest, pinning me down.
The pressure of his fingertips pushes in-between my teeth, forcing my jaw apart, and he flicks his thumb against the cork of the phial.
It pops off and hits the foliage.
It all happens so fast.
Before I can fight him, before I can try and twist my face away from his incoming hand, he’s pouring powder into my mouth.
The cough strikes me instantly.
It’s a jolt that lifts my back off the ground as a hacking fit steals me.
The warrior’s grip shifts from my jaw to the entire bottom half of my face and clamps my mouth shut.
