Shadow (Touched by the Fae 2)

The words seem like they’re pulled from him. Moving quickly, moving quietly, he steps between me and the queen. “Not Riley.”

“Riley,” she scoffs. She meets my gaze over Nine’s shoulder and all I can see is how furious she is—and how she’s going to keep pretending she’s not. I guess the time for pretending that we’re not prophesied to be enemies is gone now. “A human name, too. If she’s so proud of her fae side, she should at least use her true name.”

Does she think she’s being tricky? Maybe. Or maybe she just doesn’t care about being subtle ‘cause, well, she’s not. Of course she wants my true name. She could command me to do anything, even command me to slit my own damn throat, if she had that name.

It takes everything I have not to flicker my gaze over in Rys’s direction. He has it. He’s used it countless times before. Wearing the mark from the shovel on his face, he could offer it to his queen and get revenge for the way I lashed out against him. And that’s if he hasn’t already—he’s proven that he’s not shy in calling me Zella when it suits him.

I brace myself, waiting for it.

Rys stays silent. I’m not sure why—I can’t chance looking at him in case Melisandre picks up on it—and I’m irrationally grateful that the Light Fae who’s made my life hell for so long is actually doing something to protect me for real.

I can’t worry about that right now, though. Not when I have another fae standing in front of me, separating me from the Fae Queen, essentially doing the same exact thing.

“I won’t let you face her yet. She’s not ready.”

“And you think you can stop me?”

Nine juts his chin out in an act of defiance. “If I have to.”

I hope he’s got a sword under his coat because, even now that there’s the two of us, without a weapon, we’re still super outnumbered.

To my surprise, Melisandre doesn’t seem offended by his answer. “I was told your debt to the human mother was fulfilled. You don’t have to protect her.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Nine counters. “I choose to.”

“The Dark Fae,” murmurs the queen. “I wondered which of my people would turn against me. You were always too close to the prophecy, Ninetroir. I should’ve known it would be you. That changes things.”

It does? How?

And why does the way she say that have me just about to piss myself?

With one searching look past Nine, Melisandre actually moves away from us. That’s a total surprise. I was expecting her to lash out at Nine, to command one of her guards to remove the new threat in the room.

She doesn’t.

Instead, gliding to the side of the room where Nine’s portal lingers, Melisandre moves like she could care less that me and Nine are still there. She keeps her back to us—which she can do without worry because of, you know, the six guards watching it—as she approaches a structure tucked near the furthest wall.

I don’t know how I didn’t notice it until now. Probably because the cloth covering it is white, just like the walls, and I’ve been a little preoccupied with the queen threatening to have her guard chop off my head.

Melisandre waves her hand. The cover slips away.

She turns, her stare immediately looking for me just as I realize what it is that she revealed to the rest of us.

It’s two statues, just like the Jason one I found in her gardens.

One’s fae. A male fae, definitely Seelie due to his coloring. He’s a paler version of Rys, like he’s been hidden in the darkness after a lifetime of living out in the sun. His eyes are closed, though I’m willing to bet they’d be the same golden shade, and his lips are pressed together.

He appears resigned, but at peace.

The other statue is his total opposite.

First off, it’s a woman, and she seems to be cowering.

The poor chick looks to be a couple of years older than me. Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. She’s a little shorter than I am, just as petite, with a sheet of white-blonde hair that falls past her shoulders. She’s pretty—or she would be if she wasn’t wearing a frightened expression, her mouth contorted in a silent scream, her big blue eyes wide and afraid.

She’s not fae. The blue eyes are one clue, the perfect imperfections of her pretty face another. Laugh lines. Even as terrified as she was before she was frozen this way, I can make out laugh lines.

Humans have laugh lines. They have wrinkles and birthmarks and blemishes. Unlike a fae’s airbrushed smooth features and eerily beautiful faces, a human’s shows each year lived.