Freed (Imprisoned by the Fae 3)

Choose.

I start to stutter. Can’t help it. The suffocating feeling of déjà vu is crashing over me, the experience that this exact scene has played out in the same way before, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. How can Jim expect me to choose? No matter how I try to deny it, I’m still drawn to Rys. The idea of walking away from him has me ready to hyperventilate.

But Jim… if it wasn’t for me, he’d still be safe in the city. He wouldn’t know anything about Faerie or the fae, and he’d be down at the garage, happy and content and… and Jim. He came after me, though, following Saxon into a whole other world based only on the Seelie’s promise that I needed him.

And now he needs me.

I can’t let him go. I barely managed to survive my time in Faerie. Especially now that it’s open season on humans, he could be a sitting duck for the first faerie folk that stumble upon him. Only the protection provided by Nine, Rys, and Riley’s shadowy cloak will keep him untouchable.

I have to make him understand.

Before I gather my thoughts together and can make enough sense of them to explain, Rys calls out to me.

“Leannán.”

And, oh boy, Jim does not like that.

“That’s not her name,” he snaps. “It’s—”

No!

“Jim.”

He clenches his jaw, his da

rk eyes locked on me as he goes silent, cutting off my name.

Exhaling roughly, I look past him. Sudden fear that he was going to reveal my true name has cut through the swirl of worries and concerns in my thoughts. Now? I can’t even look at him. I’ve seen that expression before. The hurt, the confusion, and the mild defeat that flares up on the rare times that I raised my voice with him. It wasn’t often. A born people-pleaser who hates confrontation, I’d rather walk away from a fight than push for one. Sure, it’s not healthy, but it’s my defense mechanism. I can’t skip out on Jim—not like I did the morning I disappeared into Faerie—but I can’t face him.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m a coward.

I know that both Rys and Jim are watching me closely. I look for any excuse to avoid their stares—and, to my surprise, I find one.

The shadows surrounding us have thickened while we’ve been standing out in the open. You’d think that wasn’t possible, considering how dark it is in these woods, but there’s a difference between “dark” and “black”. The shadows are dark, but there’s a pitch-black patch swooping in toward us, rolling over the ground like a dirty oil slick.

What the—

Caw!

My head bobs up at the screeching caw that splits the air. A black spot against the deep purple sky, starting out small and getting bigger as the raven comes soaring toward us.

No. Not us.

The shadows.

At the sound of the raven’s cry, the strange shadows react. They rear up, twisting and stretching as they turn into a… a cyclone. Tornado?

Something like that.

Whatever it is, it goes from deadly silent to almost deafening in a heartbeat, the whistling of the air being drawn into the darkness almost as piercing as the caw.

Over it, I hear Rys saying something in the lilting language of the fae. Though he’s been careful to ration his Seelie magic since we’ve been in the Shadow Realm, I guess facing off against a shadow storm counts as an emergency. A flicker of faerie fire peeks out from beneath his cloak.

Before he can unleash any more of it, the raven suddenly dive-bombs the whipping shadows. A gust of too-powerful wind hits the bird, catching it by its open wings, throwing it back into the midnight sky an instant before the shadows suddenly change direction. I have a split second to realize who the tornado is heading toward before I scream out a warning.

“Jim, no!”

He’s frozen. I don’t know if he ever noticed the shadows coming—but the rolling black clouds aren’t just shadows. They split, almost as if pushed apart by the powerful wind. There’s a cloaked figure looming right behind Jim, reaching toward him with hands bathed in a silvery glow.