But it was thecaringin his eyes that made me wrench away from him.
Sneering, I took in the setting. “Such a lovely meadow.” Sarcasm strengthened my words and my spine. “Do you plan to drag me below the ground and bind me to a chair inside another torture cave?”
He jerked his head in a no.
A snap of his finger and his silver threads surrounded us,creating a dome overhead that wrapped down to the ground, encircling us on all sides.
“Now isn’t this endearing,” I said. “You’re trapping me here with your threads instead of your hands. Is the picturesque setting supposed to lull me? Because I knowyoucan’t.”
From what I’d seen so far, no one was able to lull me, something I needed to think about later.
“We couldn’t talk inside the aerie,” he said.
“It’s my understanding that we can’t talk anywhere, or is that rule suspended now that you’ve betrayed me?”
“Ineverbetrayed you, Tempest. Never.”
“You have from the moment you met me.” Anger ground through my voice, and I spit the words at him. “Oh, but wait. Actually, you started betraying me long before you met me, from the moment you mounted Glim and flew to the fortress, intending to send me to the Claiming where you could wrap thorny vines around my throat and then gift me to your delightful father.”
“He’s not my father.”
“Bastard.”
“That, I am, but I’ve never claimed him as a parent. Don’t you see?”
“How can I?” I snarled. “You’ve shared nothing with me.” Damn my eyes for stinging and my voice for cracking. “Nothing!”
“I told you all I could.”
“You’ve only told me what you had to in order use me,” I bellowed. I paced in front of him, testing the boundaries of histhreads. When I got close, they hummed against my skin in a manner unpleasant enough to make me back away but not enough to cause pain. A gentle trap was a trap nonetheless. “Let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t, you mean.” I whirled back to face him. “That evil prick stole everything from me. My parents. My friends. My life.” The love I thought I had for this man. “Soon, he’ll take whatever floundering magic I’ve found since you awakened it.”
“If we let him.”
“We don’t have a choice!”
“There are always choices,” he said. “I’ll make sure there are.”
“I doubt your wishes matter to your father.”
He blinked. “I’m here to stand judgment.”
“And collect on your favor. Don’t forget you threw out that tidbit back at the aerie.” It didn’t matter if he’d manipulated me into granting the favor. I gave my word to one of the fae; I still owed him something.
“Don’t do this, Vexxion,” I whispered, struggling to hold on to the grief that kept raging over me, dragging me down below a furious sea.
His spine stiffened. “I have to. If I don’t . . .”
“What?” Did I really want to know?
“All will be lost.”
“I believe it already is.” For me, anyway. Within a short time, I’d be hanging visitors’ belongings in their closets, my milky gaze trained on nothing, my soul wandering through the etherforever. Would I find Reyla and Brodine wandering there? Maybe I wouldn’t even recognize them if I saw them. “What do you want for your favor?”
He stepped right up to me. “So much.” Lifting a wedge of my hair, he glided it across his lips.
