It happens quick, too quick.
In a blink, he’s grabbing me by the jacket.
A bolt of fright strikes me.
My back lifts off the hood of the car, maybe just an inch, like the absolute final scraps of breath, of life, is spent on fighting his touch.
The heels of my boots press lamely into the windshield, as if I can kick myself down the hood and fall onto the icy road. But the fae’s fist is too firm in the front of my parka, and I’m too depleted.
Faintly, I’m aware of his other hand rummaging over my body—and I think he’s digging through my pockets, searching me.
I hear the distant clatter of my things hitting metal, all the stuff I have shoved into my pockets falling all over.
I worm against his hold, against his search—his coldness.
That glare aimed down at me doesn’t soften. It’s winter latched onto aloe vera, it’s the frosty hue of iceberg lettuce, it’s the insides of a fucking cucumber, pure coldness—
And it’s looking down at me.
The reach of Emily’s torch is disturbed by her falling blood trails, distorting fragments of light into something reddish and murky, but the light dances over the glossy pallor of this fae’s skin, the sharp angle of his nose, the shadows cutting along his jaw—and it’s a face of cold fury.
My insides constrict, and it’s more than the tension suffocating me, it’s the instinct to curl up into nothing and disappear.
But I can’t. I’m stuck here, pinned under his gaze, my heart thumping louder and harder with each passing second.
A drop of pee escapes again, the warmth quick to freeze against my flesh—and just as it does, he rips his hand out from the depth of my parka pocket.
I flinch—as if I expect him to have ripped out my guts… but instead, it’s the blue curve of my inhaler in his grip.
Bee shouts something.
More garbled noise.
Before I can drag my dazed gaze to her, my sight fading away with the last of my life, the winter fae brings the inhaler to my face.
I feel the graze of plastic against my parted lips.
If I had more sense, more awareness in the moment, I might flop away from him, cry out at his touch, or screech the question thrumming in my mind like a violin cord, struck:what the actual fuck is happening?
But death has me.
There’s no fight left in me.
There’s nothing but fear rattling around the insides of my limp body.
The fae shoves the mouth of the inhaler between my lips. It digs into my teeth before he turns it, then it pushes in further—
He presses down on the metal top, and that sweetly bitter medicated air rushes into my mouth.
My chest swells. But just a little.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
Bee’s garbled voice echoes in the daze.
Distantly, I understand she’s telling the fae what to do, to feed me this medicated air, once, twice, and the third puff of pressure from the inhaler floods my prickled lungs.
