“You used a lot of my power,” she says. “Either you give it back, which I doubt you can, considering the amount it took to control thousands of birds at once, or…” She tilts her head. “…you do as I say.”
Hold up.
Wait.
I controlled her crows?
My pulse slams against my throat. Heat crawls up the back of my neck, crawling, crawling—
I didn’t want them to attack me, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing. I was trying to survive. I was trying not to die.
This is so unfair it makes my vision sharpen at the edges.
It doesn’t even matter what else she’s going to say. I can feel it in my bones: this is already a sour deal, and I’m on the losing side.
“Or what?” I ask, voice low. “What are you going to do to me?”
Rhea lifts two fingers.
That’s all.
Air punches out of my lungs.
My vision tunnels. My knees go watery. A cold, oily pressure blooms behind my ribs, like something is curling around my heart from the inside, tightening, tightening—
I grab the edge of the nearest surface purely on instinct, fingers scrabbling for purchase.
“Ugh…” I choke.
Talon moves fast. He’s suddenly there, an arm braced behind my back, his hand clamped on my shoulder like he can physically keep me anchored to the floor.
“Stop,” he bites out.
Rhea’s gaze slides to him and her eyes soften once again.
“She needs to understand the extent of her debt,” she says.
My throat burns. My heartbeat is a battering ram.
I suck in air in ugly, panicked pulls, and every breath tastes like metal.
Rhea lowers her hand.
Instantly, the pressure eases.
“What the… What the hell?” I gasp.
Wow. I hate her for that more than I can articulate.
“That,” she says, nodding once, “is what happens when I tug on what you borrowed.”
I force my spine to straighten even though my legs are shaking under me, even though humiliation and fury are mixing into something volatile.
“You are a bitch, you know that?” I spit.
Rhea’s mouth tightens.
“I wasn’t always one,” she says quietly. Then, with a little shrug of inevitability: “But yes. I know that.”
