Shadow (Touched by the Fae 2)

My pulse picks up at those three words. Can’t help it. It seems to happen every time I hear them.

Shadow Prophecy.

Freak out.

Shadow Prophecy.

Panic.

I try to shove it aside, focusing on what’s in Carolina’s outstretched hand. I glance at the paper, but I don’t take it. Instead, I jerk my chin over at it. “What’s that?”

“You said you don’t know what it is. Here. It’s not much, but it’s something.” As if she’s just remembered that I don’t like getting too close to others, she sets the folded piece of paper onto the counter. “It’s handwritten. You might need to use the moonlight to read what it says.”

“My eyes are good in the dark,” I mumble, already reaching for the paper. I need to know what this paper says.

I recognize the handwriting. It’s the same as the scribble on the greasy napkin Carolina slipped to me that last dinner at Black Pine. It must be hers.

The kitchen is gloomy, the only light streaming in from the window overhanging the sink. I don’t need it, though. Like I told Carolina, my eyes have adjusted to the darkness and it only takes a small amount of squinting to read what’s scrawled on the page:

…with the Iron she’s destined to stay

more than an adviser,

a confidante, a friend

when Dark me

ets Shadow

the Reign of the Damned

shall end...

Even though it’s only a couple of lines, I read them again and again, trying to make sense of them, then turn the paper around to see if I’m missing anything. “Is this all?”

“It’s all I have,” Carolina answers. “There’s supposed to be more to the prophecy, but you don’t want to know what I went through just to get this part. Since I was supposed to find out if you were the Shadow, my mistress gave me just enough to know what was at stake.” Her brown eyes light up. “She wants to see you end the Fae Queen’s reign. If you do, I’m free.”

The Reign of the Damned. That’s what Nine said they called Melisandre’s reign—right before he added that part about the queen cutting out the tongues of the poor creatures who called it that.

I gulp. The action is reflexive.

So is my lie.

“I don’t know what any of this means.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope.” I hold the note back out to her. “Sorry.”

She’s looking at me as if she’s hung all of her hope on me. I’m thrown back to my last night at Black Pine. When Carolina nervously approached me at the empty dinner table, offering up her biscuit while wearing an expression eerily like the one crossing her too-thin face right now.

She presses her lips together, shuddering on an inhale through her nose, then a rough exhale. For a second, I have this sinking suspicion that she’s gonna start sobbing—like I saw her do a couple of times inside the asylum—before she turns so that the paper is facing me again.

She points to the top line. “This part? Iron? That means here. The human world. Iron is harmful to fae and you won’t find barely any in Faerie. Then this.” Her finger moves down the page. “The adviser and confidante part? It’s talking about the Dark Fae who’s supposed to partner with the Shadow and help her face the Fae Queen.”

You know what? I remember Rys saying something like that to me when we were in the sewer. That the prophecy mentioned a Dark Fae who was supposed to help me end the Fae Queen’s reign somehow. He seemed to think it meant Nine and, not gonna lie, I’m kind of thinking the same thing, too.

I’m still stuck on the whole end the Reign of the Damned line, though. Nine’s convinced that means I’m supposed to freaking kill the Fae Queen. Me. Riley Thorne, who can’t even get close to another person without wanting to scream out a warning.