“What? What?” Frelsi chirps.
I swallow. Hard. “You are not old enough.”
Iam not old enough.
Thisis the kind of source material he has used as “research”? I’m not sure what’s worse—reading to prepare myself for an inevitable I have no power to spare myself from…
Or letting the horrors be a surprise.
Chapter 3
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bar is much lower than it should be, I think.
What is going on?
What—inboththe realms I know about—is going on?
“Her name is Whimsy,” my faerie kidnapper says, leaning back against my cage bars.
He has been talking non-stop for approximately an hour.
Roughly fifty minutes ago, immediately after he returned with a platter of sweets, Frelsi decimated them and fell asleep upon the hanging bed behind me.
I hate her, I think.
She’s condemned me to fifty minutes of insanity alone.
And now? Now, I’m holding a phone and staring at a chubby bird on a self-care app called Finch.
There is absolutely no signal.
But that figures.
Wherever this part ofFaerieis, it is not within T-Mobile’s service range.
My lunatic of a kidnapper proceeds, “My friend Xios introduced me to the app, and just yesterday I gotfriendrequests from everyone else in the group who has it!”
I drag my gaze off the phone.
This man isecstatic.
Because…he has bird friends on a self-care app?
“You’ll meetthe grouplater. But there’s—” He begins listing names and descriptions with such swiftness I’m not even catching real words anymore. Up until he says, “And Zahra. But you already know Zahra.”
“Zahra?” I whisper.
“She’s Xios’s mate, for context on how she fits into all of this. She asked me to find you. Stuff…happened. And now we’re here!”
He…actually knows Zahra? And she’smatedto a faerie?Andsheaskedhim to find me?
Breathless, I lower his phone. “I don’t…understand.”
“Which part, love?” He turns his face toward me, smiling so gently I can almost pretend he isn’t surrounded by the R-rated books he’s used as guidelines for imprisoning me.
“You’re actually friends with Zahra?” I ask.
