“I want to go with Sebastian, Terra.”
“He will be well taken care of while we talk.”
Talk. Right. I don’t think that’s what she really means. The thought of being away from Sebastian while he is barely clinging to life scares me.
“No. That’s not going to work for me at all.” I shake my head.
“You don’t have a say.”
I reach for my magic, and a thin thread of fire wavers across my fingers. It’s nothing. My well is so close to empty. My shadows are gone entirely. I couldn’t throw a fireball right now if my life depended on it.
But she doesn’t know that.
The fire dances across my knuckles. I hold my hands up, letting the light play across the cave walls.
“If you try to take him without me, I’ll fight you. I refuse to talk. Now, for the last time, let me go with him.” My voice echoes off the walls.
“You really do have it bad for the Shadowfae King.” She looks down at him. “I can’t say I blame you.”
Then the leader’s gaze drops to the flames on my hands, before moving back to my face.
“You do know that if you strike at me, you will be dead before you draw your next breath. My den warden will see to it.” She looks at the male who just had his hand on me.
“But you’ll be dead too.” My voice doesn’t waver. “That’s a gamble you’ll have to decide if you’re willing to take.”
Something shifts in her expression. Then she smiles. “I really like you.” She rolls her eyes. “Go then, if it means so much,” she says, her tone slower now, more deliberate. “But understand that he has lost much of his life force. As it stands, it could go either way.”
“I will only talk to you and cooperate if he survives.” I keep my voice steady, even though I want to fall apart.
“He might never wake up.”
I swallow around the tightness in my throat. “Then your healer had better be good.”
She exhales through her nose. A single, sharp breath. Then she nods once.
“Take him,” she instructs the males, who lift Sebastian.
Dread fills me, cold and absolute.
I follow them out, my eyes fixed on Sebastian’s face, willing him to move, to breathe deeper, to give me something.
He gives me nothing at all.
30
Isla
We pass through a low archway into a wider space. The air changes here. It smells of dried herbs and something sharp and bitter, like crushed root bark. Animal pelts are layered thick across the floor. Clay pots and bowls line rough-cut shelves along the walls. Dried bundles of plants hang from wooden pegs driven into the rock.
A fire burns in a pit at the center, low and steady, giving off warmth and a thin curl of smoke that rises to a narrow gap in the stone above.
An older female sits on the far side of the fire. She’s smaller than the other shifterfae I’ve seen. Wiry, with deep lines etched into her face. Her gray hair is cropped close to her skull, and her eyes are a milky amber. She doesn’t look up as we enter.
“Put him down,” she says. Her voice is a low rasp. She gestures to the pelts in front of her without lifting her gaze from whatever she’s grinding in a stone bowl on her lap.
The males lay Sebastian on the furs.
“We have many wounded incoming,” one of them says.
