My gaze traveled higher. From this close, I made out a worn leather belt over his hips that held up his floor-length skirt. Like all shadow fae, he wore no shirt. But unlike many of them, he didn’t even have any mesh or chain armor to cover his torso. His chest and stomach remained completely bare.
Splinters of moonlight filtered through the cracks in the door and blended with the glow of Timur’s skin. The star-like shimmer highlighted the hard ridges of his muscles, painting a beautiful picture. I slid my gaze up the perfect landscape of his abdomen, to the hard planes of his chest rising and falling with his even breathing.
As far as I could see, there was nothing wrong with Timur. But when everyone was so perfect, even the slightest imperfection could be considered repulsive.
I remembered the initial shock that Prince Rha had experienced at the sight of Dawn’s mismatched eyes.Apparently, the fact that she had one blue and one brown eye was enough to unsettle Prince Rha, who, like most fae, appreciated symmetry and loved order.
Did Timur mean something trivial as that when he commented on his appearance? Or was he so distraught about having that creepy skeletal hand? That would freak me out too, provided I didn’t imagine it all last morning, exhausted by everything that had happened to me in the past few days.
His cloak draped over his right shoulder, concealing his right arm, right hand, and a part of his chest from my view. His hood was also on, obscuring most of his face.
With his head tilted toward his shoulder, I could only see the left side of his chin and a corner of his mouth. But they were perfect, as was his strong, sharply cut jawline.
What did he think was wrong with his appearance? Just how beautiful did this man want to be? Was he really that vain?
His breathing hitched suddenly. He tossed his head to his other shoulder, muttering, “No, no, no…” under his breath.
I sat back on my heels, afraid to move or even to draw a breath.
Did I wake him up? Did he know I’d been inspecting him while he slept?
“No…” he exhaled in a voice filled with plea. “Not again…”
A whole body shudder ran through him, jerking his legs. He tensed, gripped the armrests of his chair, and roared.
It was a deafening, desperate roar of agony.
He bent over, his hood sliding back. His face lowered to mine, and horror choked me.
There was no skin on the right side of his face. His forehead, the bridge of his nose, and the right cheekbone were an exposed white bleached skull that didn’t look either human or fae. His long black hair was streaked with snow white. Instead of the long pointy ear that all shadow fae had, a hard cluster of spikes wason that side. A frill of bones and white membrane opened below it like some morbid fan. A round red eye with a black vertical pupil bulged out wildly from the skull’s lidless eye socket.
He bared his fangs in another roar, so close to my face, his breath blew my hair back.
Terror slammed into me like a physical blow. I scrambled back to the opposite wall, but there was nowhere to run from here. The only exit from this hut remained behind the howling, thrashing beast in the chair across from me.
I was trapped, caged like an animal once again. But I couldn’t stay here. Panic shook me, urging me to flee this horror. Gathering my legs under me, I sprinted for the door, past the chair and the roaring monster in it.
The bone spine whipped across my way, then caught me around my waist. It hauled me onto his lap.
“No!” I yelled, racked with terror. “Let me go!”
His arm went around me, just under my neck, pressing my back to his chest. The bare white bone of his right forearm pressed under my breasts, the claws of his hand digging into my side.
“Stay…stay…stay…” he chanted in a strained growl between shallow labored breaths.
I kicked my feet, hitting his left leg, and he howled in pain again. The spine whip shifted from my waist to my ankles. It wound around my legs, lifting them up and away from his feet.
“Stay…” he rasped hoarsely, then finally managed to wedge two words instead of one between his feral gasps for air. “Stay still.”
I had no choice now, trapped and immobilized by him. His hard embrace pressed my arms to my body. His bone whip trapped my legs. It wasn’t a whip, though. He didn’t use his hands to lash it. The white spinal column with the spiked tip moved independently like an extension of him. It was a part ofhim. An appendage. A tail? The realization made my blood run cold with horror.
I screamed. A wordless, terrified sound so deep and loud, it tore from my dry throat with scraping pain.
“Hush…” he croaked. “It’ll pass.”
Whatwill pass?
My fear?
