Valiant (Modern Faerie Tales 2)

"You're observably pale. Your parries are dismal…" He let the sentence remain unfinished.

"I guess I'm a little tired."

"Even your lips are pallid," he said, outlining them in the air with the wooden blade. His gaze was intense, unflinching. She wanted to open her mouth and tell him everything, tell him about stealing the drug, about the glamour it gave them, about all the confused feelings that seemed to be canceling themselves out inside of her, but what she found herself doing was taking a step closer so that he had to stop gesturing and move the stick aside to keep from injuring her with it.

"I'm just cold," she said softly. She was always cold these days, but it was winter, so maybe that wasn't so strange.

"Cold?" Ravus echoed. He took her arm and rubbed it between his hands, watching them as though they were betraying him. "Better?" he asked warily.

His skin felt hot, even through the cloth of her shirt, and his touch was both soothing and electric. She leaned into him without thinking. His thighs parted, rough black cloth scratching against her jeans as she moved between his long legs.

His eyes were half-lidded as he pushed himself off the desk, their bodies sliding together, his hands still holding hers. Then, suddenly, he froze.

"Is something—," she started, but he pushed away from her abruptly.

"You should go," he said, walking to the window and then just standing there. She knew he dared not part the blinds while it was still day outside. "Come back when you are feeling improved. It does neither of us any good to practice when you're sickly. If you need something, I could—"

"I said I was fine," Val repeated, her voice pitched louder than she'd intended. She thought of her mother. Had she thrown herself at Tom like that? Had he turned away from her at first?

Ravus was still turned toward the window when she lifted an entire bottle of Never and put it in her backpack.

That night Lolli and Dave congratulated her on her score, shouting her name so loudly that people stopped on the grate above. Luis sat in shadows, chewing on his tongue ring and remaining silent. That morning she collapsed onto her filthy mattress, like she did most mornings, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, as though she had never had any other life but this one.

Chapter 9

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak

enough to be restrained.

—William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Val woke up with someone pulling at the fastenings of her jeans. She could feel fingers at her waist, the twist and pinch of a button as it came undone.

"Get off me," she said, even before she realized it was Dave hunched over her. She twisted away from him and sat up, still flushed with the dregs of Never. Her skin was sweaty, even though cold air blew down from the grate above, and her mouth felt dry as sand.

"Come on," he whispered. "Please." She looked down at her fingers and saw Lolli's chipped blue nail polish. Lolli's white boots were on her feet and she could see long faded blue locks of hair falling past her shoulders.

"I'm not her," she said, her voice thick with sleep and confusion.

"You could pretend," Sketchy Dave said. "And I could be anyone you wanted. Change me into anyone."

Val shook her head, realizing he'd glamoured her to be Lolli, wondering if he'd done it before with others, wondering if Lolli knew. The idea of playing at being other people was appalling, but with the remnants of Never still swarming inside of her, she was intrigued by the sheer wickedness of it. She felt the same thrill that had propelled her into the tunnels, the giddy pleasure of making a choice that is clearly, obviously wrong.

Anyone. She looked over at Lolli and Luis, sleeping close together but not touching. Val allowed herself to imagine Luis's face on Dave. It was easy; their faces weren't so different. Dave's expression shifted, taking on a bored and annoyed look that was all Luis.

"I knew you'd pick him," Dave said.

Val tilted her head forward and was surprised when hair fell to cover her face. She'd forgotten how shielded hair made her feel. "I didn't pick anyone."

"But you'll do it. You want to do it."

"Maybe." Val's mind made the figure above her more familiar. Tom's stiff mohawk shone with hair-spray and when he smiled, his cheeks dimpled. She could even smell the familiar scent of his patchouli aftershave. She leaned into it, flooded with a sense that she was back home and that none of this had ever happened.

The Tom above her sighed with what she thought might be relief and his hands moved under her shirt. "I knew you were lonely."

"I wasn't lonely," Val said automatically, pulling back. She didn't know if she was lying or not. Had she been lonely? She thought of faeries and their inability to lie and wondered what they did when they didn't know what the truth was.

At her thought of faeries, Tom's skin turned green, his hair blackened and fell around his shoulders until it was Ravus she saw, Ravus's long fingers that touched her skin and his hot eyes staring down at her.