I merely spoke true words.
I didn’t look at her, parked on the crates.
I only heard the records shifting for a beat before the touch of her hand came—and she threaded her fingers through mine.
Bee didn’t tell me she was sorry.
Didn’t ask about treatments or give me her condolences.
She said nothing at all, and just sat there…
Holding my hand.
ONE
There should only be darkness.
The blackout should envelop me, swallow me whole, and I should onlyhearthe fae speak around me—I shouldn’t actually fucking see them.
It’s Emily’s fault.
It’s her light that dances over the black ice, glitters over her own blood that streams from the net to the road, and flickers over the tall, muscular frames of the two male warriors who trapped us.
One is ice.
The other is fuckery.
It’s all the spite I can conjure as I’m frozen on my back, sprawled over the hood of the car, suffocating against the tightness in my lungs.
The voices are barbed wire wrapped around gravel—and they take turns speaking, a language that isn’t unlike whips lashing down on the black ice.
Their conversation carries on like the winter fae didn’t fucking slam me down on the hood of the car and blow the breath right out of me, like I’m not suffocating now, or like I didn’t hit my head so hard on landing that I suddenly can’t understand speech anymore.
Why else is it that—as Bee’s lips move and curl around words, desperately uttered words—I don’t understand a single thing she says?
My own lips part—but they part around emptiness. Nothing more than a pitchy sound, a whistle in a failed wheeze.
My lungs can’t drag in breath.
I’m trying, I’m trying…
But there’s a fog draped over me, a weighted blanket pinning me down on the hood of the car, and even just existing here, it’s a serrated ice blade forcing its way down my chest.
All I can do is plead, silently, as the breath leaves me…
Lashes are too low over my eyes, a haze too thick over the road. The dark fae pacing around me shifts between a blurred outline and an icy face aimed down at me.
Bee’s garbled words silence.
I drag my stare to her—and I can hardly make her out through the tightness expanding in my chest, drawing me closer and closer to unconsciousness…
Or death.
Feels like that’s where I’m headed.
No more than a frayed ribbon of air reaching down into my starving lungs, my mind is ebbing away… and I really am suffocating.
That fae, that winter one, he tugs out of his pace and moves for me. A tall, menacing silhouette, broad and muscular, with wintergreen eyes.
