Page 122 of Stealing Tink

“I never said it was someone else,” I say, suddenly frightened.

“I know,” he says, but the words are more comforting than condescending.

“Why do you keep calling me Zora?”

The fae’s light eyes go mournful. “I’ll explain. I promise I will. But it will be easier if I know exactly what happened before you woke up.”

I don’t know why I trust this man. I don’t know him, and even men I’ve trusted because I thought I knew them had betrayed me. But there’s something about the way he looks at me, like he wants nothing from me except for me to be here with him, that has me answering. “Yes, someone else had stabbed me. A young guard. I think he thought I was going to attack him.”

“Was it a fatal wound?”

I blink, my hand finding my abdomen. “It should have been.”

“And it was only after that that Fa—I mean, the Nomad—held a dagger to your throat?”

I nod.

“What did he say?”

I consider holding this back. It feels too vulnerable to share with a stranger. But for some reason, I keep talking. “He mocked me for…well, for trusting him.” I squeeze my eyes shut, my cheeks flushing. “For loving him, when I should have known he’d betray me in the end.”

“And that’s why you killed him,” he says. “Because he taunted you.”

“It was self-defense,” I say, my voice hurried. My voice sounds hurried.

“But you said you were already as good as dead.”

“Clearly not,” I say, beckoning to my very-alive body. I’ve decided this is too strange to be death.

“And what was he doing before you were stabbed?”

“He had this tapestry, and he’d stolen a flute from…well, from someone. The flute had some sort of magical powers. It was changing what was woven into the tapestry.”

“And did you see what he changed?”

“There was a woman. A sleeping woman, and when he played, she—” I stop, my eyes going wide. I swallow. “She woke up.”

Thankfully, the fae male knows better than to explain this part to me. Tears well in my eyes.

It’s then that I notice something else. I’d been so overcome with regaining my voice, with waking up alive and unwounded, that I hadn’t noticed that something was missing.

The weight tethered to my spine.

I run my hands behind me, searching my back frantically.

My wings are gone.

“Who is Zora?” I whisper.

The fae gives me a pitying smile. “Why don’t we get some food in you? Then I promise to tell you the whole story.”

CHAPTER 54

The fae has a wife who is scarier than I am, even on my worst days, and a little girl who talks to herself.

She’s the most terrifying of us all, but I can’t find the energy to be afraid of this little family. Not when I don’t know where I am, who I am. And besides, the wife made me tea, and so far I’ve drained a mug and a half and haven’t shown any signs of being poisoned.

We sit by the fire, the husband and wife on a couch across from where I’m curled up on a loveseat, wrapped in a shawl their girl provided. She’s sitting on the floor, talking to herself as she draws, which would be less creepy were she younger or if she seemed less mature.