But he batted my hand away and kept studying my drawings with an odd expression. I thought of his brother, Locke, taunting me for wanting to marry a faerie prince and asking if Severn had slept with me yet. Red was already creeping up my neck. No, I didn’t want to marry a faerie prince, but I might not mind losing my virginity to one…
“Where did you see these images?” Severn asked. “I do not recognize them from the tower’s tapestries.”
I didn’t meet his eyes, afraid he would be able to tell what I’d been thinking. “I didn’t see them anywhere. I heard about them. My mother used to tell me bedtime stories about faeries.”
He flipped to the next page, the fae horse with wheat berries woven into its mane and a blindfold over its eyes. “The Sightless Mare,” he said, then looked at me keenly. “Yourmothertold you this tale?”
I nodded.
He narrowed his eyes, looking me over, and then grabbed my chin and jerked my head upward so he could study my face. He stared at me for a good long while, and then satisfied, he let go. “You have no fae blood in you, so your mother must have been a human. How did a human know about our realm? Was she a prisoner? A servant?”
I raised an uncertain shoulder. “She was a waitress.”
“A waitress who knew about the Sightless Mare? Unlikely. She had some contact with the fae realm, I assure you. Such tales cannot be written down in any books; magic forbids it. She must haveseenit herself.”
My heart started pounding. I had assumed my mother’s faerie tales, strange as they were, were stories she’d invented herself or based on something she’d read in a book.
Now I started to think about my mother’s unpredictable behavior. How we moved so often when I was a little girl. How she had terrible night terrors from which she would wake up screaming…or occasionally moaning a man’s name in a way that made me blush.
“Well, I can’t ask her. She died five years ago.”
“What was her name?”
“Alyse O’Dell. She was born in—”
“That’s all I need.” He closed my sketchbook, still looking troubled by this. “I will place some inquiries and see if a human of that name has ever been associated with any of the courts.”
“Thank you,” I stuttered as he suddenly stood, once more looking regal and cold.
He tilted his head slightly. “Do you intend to quit?”
I stood up, too, in alarm. “Quit? Because of the attack?” To be honest, it hadn’t occurred to me. Now I realized that any sane person would give their resignation immediately after a rival fae sent a demon army to attack their workplace. But I couldn’t imagine leaving Henry and May. The simple truth was they needed me. And I was already so fond of them, and for the first time in my life, I actually felt like I was making a home for myself. A stable life.
I shook my head. “No.”
He grunted. “Good.” He kept those turquoise eyes on me, the eyes of a prince who had been so terribly cruel and could be cruel still. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “None of my other subjectscanquit,” he said at last. “They are bound to the court. But not you. You are the only person in this tower who can walk away from me whenever you like.”
He looked as though this truly sent him brooding, and I wondered what life must be like for someone with such power over others.
“Henry and May’s dad must have been able to walk away,” I said softly.
His expression hardened immediately. “Do not speak of things you know nothing about.” The cruelty had returned to his voice. He whipped around and started to leave, but feeling bold, I grabbed his arm.
“Wait!”
He looked down at my hand on his arm with incredulity that I would dare touch him, but I was getting tired of his arrogance, and I lifted my chin high. “Tell me what happened to Marco. I deserve to know.”
He spun on me, looking terrifyingly like some otherworldly god, his eyes simmering, reminding me that he wasn’t human. “Marco Conejero was slain by Black Ember while in my employment. He went to the Sun Court to deliver a message, and instead, Black Ember turned him to stone and had him delivered back to me as a garden statue.That’swhat happens to humans who get too involved in the fae realm, Willow. To humans who get too involved withme. So do yourself a favor and don’t ask about my world. Don’t ask aboutme. You’d do well to remember your place and stick to it.”
He strode out of the apartment and slammed the door.
I sank back onto the couch, shaking. Not because of his cruel words—those I was used to. No, it was because I had felt a throbbing, still-raw hurt behind his words.Severn blames himself for Marco’s death.
Severn’s cruelty to me, I realized, was because he was trying to protect me from succumbing to Marco’s same sad fate.
ChapterNine
Even with the aid of magic, it took several weeks for the fae to repair all the damages to Wilde Tower. I soon found out that Black Ember’s demons had made it as far as the main lobby before Severn and Hemlock had smote them. The demon horde had scorched the building’s entrance and melted the glass in the turnstile. The lobby had been coated two inches thick with ash and sulfur dust that made the whole building reek. While fae worked on repairs, Henry and May and I spent as much time as we could outside, checking items off the checklist. We visited the Met, taste tested pizza at every pizzeria we could find until we all had stomachaches, and blew bubbles in the park.
