No!
“But—I’m a healer!” I tried to argue, pulling my forearm up to my nostrils and inhaling the skin there.
My gift of scenting magic was gone. I smelled like sweat and salt. Nothing more.
“What are you saying, Grim?” I asked the fae as I took two giant steps backward.
Two male fae popped into view then, assembling their bodies from black smoke and shadows as they loomed over the Grim and stared down at me. One of them had a black mohawk and the other, a red man-bun with a matching beard and snake tattoo on his neck.
Nightlings.Fallen fae of the House of Ash and Shadow—just like I was now.
The Grim gave me a sad smile and stepped to the side as the two fae lunged forward, golden gleaming cuffs in their hands.
It hit me in that moment that I was in the same place as my parents. They died before I had any memory of them—only pictures and stories that my aunt told us—and I wanted to see them,meetthem, really.
“Grim, let me meet my parents first. Please,” I begged.
He looked sad, and I was surprised by the compassion I saw in his eyes. When I’d last seen him, we had fought to the death over Fallon’s father, and he hadn’t seemed quite so understanding then.
“I cannot allow that. You are no longer dead and therefore cannot exist where they are,” he said.
It was like a knife to the heart, to be so close to them and yet denied even a moment together. As heartbroken as I was not to meet my parents, I had to push it aside and survive whatever this was, as the mohawked fae spun me around and the cold bite of metal pinched my wrists as the cuffs clamped in place.
“Where are you taking me?” I yanked against their hold.
One of them balled his knobby hand into a fist and punched me in the jaw, causing black dots to dance at the edges of my vision.
“Don’t resist. Or we’ll just kill ya,” the fae with the snake tattoo on his neck snarled.
The Grim stepped forward and blocked their path. “I would like to take this moment to remind you that youmustfollow the rules set forth by the Accords, lest your realm be shut down and the souls theredisposed of.”
The fae holding me frowned, and I kicked myself for not paying more attention in class. What were the Accords?
“The Accords will be honored,” the fae growled.
“Ariyon!” an unfamiliar voice called out behind me.
I spun and blanched when I saw Yanric. Fallon’s familiar was lying on the grass, heaving in deep heavy breaths with his wings spread out limp beside him.
He spoke. I heard him speak.
Then he blipped out of existence before I could answer.
“Interesting,” the Grim mused.
Before I could open my mouth to ask the Grim how in the fae that was possible and if it meant Fallon was hurt, the fae holding my cuffs yanked me backward, and everything went black.
I spun in the darkness as if I was rolling down an invisible hill, and then my feet slammed into solid ground, the room around me came into focus, and I was greeted by the damp smell of a basement or dungeon. The fae still held my cuffed wrists firmly as he marched me forward without a word. We hadlanded in a large stone room with various openings into hallways and what looked like a network of tunnels. Along the walls of the large room were shelves with skulls and crystals and other dark artifacts. A desk stood against the farthest wall with two chairs. It was like some morbid office break room.
“Are the cuffs necessary?” I asked. “I won’t resist.”
The truth was, other than trying to physically grapple with the fae, which was a stupid idea, I couldn’t have resisted. I had no idea how to use Fallon’s magic yet. Of course, my own magic was more powerful than most knew. I wasn’t sure if even my aunt was fully aware of the deadly side of my power. I’d shown my abilities to her a few times, told her what I could do, but I’d hidden some of it. I didn’t want to admit that I could make a grown fae’s blood boil or that I could force someone’s heart to stop or make their brain melt. I didn’t want her to know that, although I was one of the greatest healers to have ever lived, I could also kill a man with a single thought. It was my own dark secret to bear, and one that I feared Fallon now carried. Regardless, I couldn’t control the undead even if I had my own magic, so I was at the mercy of these fae until I figured out another way to get out of here.
The redheaded fae with the tatted neck flicked me a glare. The pointed tip of his left ear had been shorn off, leaving a nubbly scarred lobe in its wake.
“Hey, Hawk, pretty boy wants the cuffs off,” he told his friend, seemingly aptly named after his hairdo—or he got his hairdo because of his name, which was equally stupid.
Hawk sneered at me, and his nostrils flared. “He smells like House of Ash and Shadow, but he looks familiar.” He cocked his head to the side, and my stomach knotted.
