“I don’t think anyone is here,” I whispered into hisear.
“There’s at least one,” he whispered back, reaching up to place his fingers above my eyes. Lightly, he slid the tips of them over my eyelids. Following his lead, I shut them tight. “Here is a test for you, Norah. Block out your other senses. Don’t think about them. Use your ears and only your ears. And then tell me, what do youhear?”
With a slow exhale through my nostrils, I cocked my head and listened. At first, I couldn’t pick out whatever had caught Finn’s attention. The rush of the river drowned out everything else. But slowly, I began to notice the lighter noises. A bird chirped somewhere in the branches of the tree overhead. The wind brushed against the huts, catching a piece of fabric in its clutches, one that flapped a steady beat. And there, just beyond it, I heard somethingelse.
A whimper, and a moan. And then three little whisperedwords.
“I killedthem.”
Chapter Six
Finnand I found the girl huddled in the nearest hut. Her hands and face were covered in blood, and several crumpled bodies littered the ground around her. She looked as though she was maybe sixteen years old.So young, I couldn’t help but think,to have seen so much violence. She was clearly traumatized, no matter what she might havedone.
“Hello.” Finn kelt by her side and gave her a kind smile. “My name is Finn, and this is Norah. Are youhurt?”
Her chin jerked up, as if she’d just now realized that we were here. Fear filled her sunken eyes. Her pupils were pure black, shot through with speckles of silver and red. “Get away fromme.”
“It’s okay.” Finn’s voice was gentle and soothing, like a babbling brook. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re here to helpyou.”
She didn’t respond. She merely blinked at Finn as if he were some sort ofghost.
He pressed his lips together in a tight line. “Can you tell me who you are? Why you’re here? What happened to thesefemales?”
He gestured to the four bodies aroundher.
“My name is Shai,” she said, her voice growing more and more high-pitched with each word. “This is my home. These are my friends. I...I killedthem.”
And then her eyes rolled back into her head as she tumbled to theground.
* * *
Inside the hut,Liam was treating Shai’s wounds. I stood outside with Bree, doing my best to calm her down, though nothing I said made much of a difference. She paced back and forth in front of me, her hands curled into tight little fists. Her eyes were wild and full of fear. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it, too. Shai was in some deepshit.
“I’m sorry, Bree,” I said for the hundredth time. “She confessed to killing those four fae in that hut. She looked…wild and frantic. We need to take her back to the Academy, not just to keep her from hurting others but for her own safety. There’s no telling what could happen to her out here when she’s in that kind ofstate.”
“You promised me,” she said, cheeksflaming.
“And I’m going to keep that promise. Nothing bad will happen toher.”
“Even though she admitted to killing those fae in there?” She gestured to the door of the hut. “And even though she may have killed those twoHunters?”
“I’ll do whatever I can to helpher.”
The door of the hut creaked open, and Liam strode outside with Shai’s limp form in his arms. Bree rushed to them immediately, her eyes wild with confusion, pain, and fear. Shai looked terrible. Liam had somehow managed to clean all the blood from her skin, but her clothes were still clogged with a deep crimson that would never wash out. Her face was pale. Her cheeks were hollow. She looked like a member of the walkingdead.
“I don’t understand,” Bree said as a tear slid down her cheek. “She was fine the last time I saw her. She was still in control of the beast, and she wasn’t so pale and skinny. What happened toher?”
“The venom can take hold quickly at times,” Kael said quietly. “She was likely fighting as hard as she could against it. And then when she finally gave up, it flooded into hermind.”
“But why would she give up?” Bree whispered, though it wasn’t a question meant for anyone to answer. None of us could possibly know what had been the final nail in Shai’s coffin. Only she could answer that, if she ever came back into herself long enough to understand the question. So, Bree merely sighed and glanced back at the hut. “What about the bodies you found inside? Are they Spring faeHunters?”
A strange expression flickered across Liam’s face. “No. They were Redcaps. All females. They looked a bit older than Shai. And I’m fairly sure they were human, not fae. Infected ones who found their way into Otherworld nodoubt.”
Shock and horror flickered across Bree’s face and she stormed into the hut before I could put out a hand to stop her. Sighing, I closed my eyes and moved after her, but Liam held me back. He shook hishead.
“Give her a minute. I have a feeling she knew them. They’re all wearing the same kind of clothes.” He picked at the matching dark ensemble that Shai was wearing. “I noticed there was a stack of this material inside. They’ve likely all been living here for awhile. Bree may have encountered them when she first arrived inOtherworld.”
My heart clenched. Poor Bree. “So, Shai killed everyone inside, most likely when the beast took over her mind. That’s different to the other deaths. As far as I can see, there’s no connection between this and what happened to the Hunters.” A pause. “We don’t need to take her back to Alwyn, do we? There’s no telling what she’ll to doShai.”
