I still, since while I’m not sure what I expected, it certainly hadn’t been something as raw and real asthat.
“Really?” I ask, wanting him to say it again. Wanting him to tell me he still cares.
Wanting to know I’m not alone in this cold, dark, endless wilderness.
“I’m fae. I can’t lie,” he says, brushing it off so easily that all the hope leaves my heart at once. “But you have an entire other arsenal of magic at your disposal. If I knew you were part vampire, I could have done a better job at teaching you how to use both your water magicandyour air magic. Not to mention your projection magic, which we still know next to nothing about.”
“I didn’t know I was part vampire until I got to the Wandering Wilds and killed that night fae,” I say, rushing to clarify.
He takes a moment to study me, and I have no idea if he likes what he sees. All I know is that I feel like I’m under a microscope, with every flaw—down to the absolute smallest of them—laid bare beneath his penetrative gaze.
“What, exactly, happened with that night fae at the ravine?” he finally asks.
I flash back to that moment—when the night fae pinned me down, pierced my neck with his fangs, and started drinking from me. He was going to drain me dry. He was likely only a few minutes away from it, at the most.
So, I projected and killed him from behind.
And then, I drained every drop of blood from his already dead body.
