No. I don’t believe it. Severn cares about me.
He’d said as much in the coatroom, and it made sense that Briar had only been trying to plant doubts in my head to break us up. Which, unfortunately, had worked. I’d walked right into Briar’s trap, and I felt like a complete fool because of it.
“Well, yeah,” Coral said. “That’s the point. Ember is banking on the fact that Severn will do anything to get you back.”
After exchanging a few words with the winged check-in attendant at the front desk, Coral grabbed my upper arm with shocking strength and gave me a shove toward the elevators. “Now, time to get you settled.”
She jabbed the elevator button. When it opened, no elevator attendant was staffing it like Azalea, nor were there any buttons inscribed with a foreign fae language. In fact, there were no controls at all. Instead, Coral tilted her face toward a camera aiming down at us.
“Shine, it’s me. Tenth floor.”
A light switched on as the doors swept closed.
I gave Coral an inspecting look, trying to figure out everything I could about her from her stance and clothing. In one way, she was just like the Manhattan fae. Aloof, otherworldly beautiful, utterly condescending. But in another way, she was starkly different from the fae at Wilde Tower. The only thing that was cloaked about her were the faint tiger stripes on her skin, which she had glamoured to look like tattoos. The rest of her—her coral-colored eyes, her impossibly long ponytail—she left bare for the world to see. She would have stood out in Wilde Tower’s sleek, professional boardrooms, where the fae cloaked every tiny detail about themselves that marked them as non-human. But the vibe in LA was more open, accepting, quirky. I suppose she didn’t get a second glance on the streets of LA.
“You don’t glamour yourself very much,” I observed.
She remained facing the reflective doors as the elevator swept upward. “We aren’t fond of hiding who we are.”
Locke had told me that Black Ember philosophically disagreed with the Decree of Prague that created the Gifted Realm to indefinitely hide the Gifted Ones and allow them to blend in with human society seamlessly. Instead, he wanted for the world to once more know about the Gifted Ones’ existence, to let his kind live out in the open.
“But you hide your tiger stripes,” I said.
She lowered her sunglasses to give me a scathing look. “The decree still stands, against our wishes. We can’t legally show wings or horns or anything that explicitly sets us apart from humans. But anything wecanshow, we do.”
The elevator doors opened, and she grabbed my arm again and dragged me down a hallway decorated with gilded statues. With a start, I realized they were stylized statues of the Gifted Ones. There were winged creatures, mermaids, beautiful fae—to a human eye, the statues probably looked like mythological characters, but in fact, they were most likely portraits of the hotel’s current residents.
We reached a room labeled “1002.” She swiped a finger over her lips and then touched the keypad, which unlocked.
Interesting, I thought to myself, observing how she had used magic to unlock the door.Even their magic is different.
The door opened into a beautiful suite with retro-glam furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows. As terrified as I was, it was impossible not to marvel at the view. The windows looked out onto the Santa Monica pier and the ocean beyond. I’d never seen the Pacific Ocean before except on the plane ride over, and I found myself uncontrollably drawn to the windows, resting my hands gently on the glass as I marveled.
“Someone will bring you food,” Coral said flatly from the doorway. “And clothes, since we burned the ones you brought.” She smirked again.
Remembering where I was and how much danger I was in, I spun from the windows and said, “You’re just going to leave me in here? For how long?”
She gave a tight shrug. “Not up to me.”
“What about Black Ember? When will I meet him?”
“He’s running an empire. He’s too busy to meet withbait.”
She started to close the door, but I held out a hand. “Wait, listen, you’re really mistaken. I swear those photographs online were misleading. Severn and I aren’t married. We were only play-acting for Severn’s wards, and a photographer took a picture. We did have a brief relationship, but I ended it yesterday. We aren’t together anymore. So however you intend to use me against Severn, it won’t work. We’re done, and I can prove it. Check the gossip columns. Our breakup was…very public.” I felt myself going red as I recalled all the cameras.
Coral hesitated before begrudgingly saying, “We’ll look into it.” She slid back down her sunglasses and left, slamming the door behind her. There was a mechanical whirr of a lock, and I raced back across the room, tugging on the doorknob.
“Wait, let me out!”
But it was useless. The doorknob was locked with fae magic—they would only let me out when they wanted to. I spun back around, raking my nails through my hair, trying to take stock of my situation. I’d been abducted on a hijacked plane under orders from Severn’s greatest enemy, who was under the wrong impression that we were married, when in fact, as of yesterday, we weren’t even dating.
Search the room. Look for a way out.
I quickly checked the nightstands for phones—they’d been removed, unsurprisingly—or any other way that I could possibly get out or send a message to Zara. The windows didn’t open, probably for security. The only other room besides the enormous bedroom suite was a sumptuous bathroom with a soaking tub and luxury robes hanging on the back of the door.
Finally, after searching every vent and corner, I sank onto the bed and stared at the endless ocean outside.
No way out.
