“Stay here. While I go to see the Summer King, I want you to stay in your room. In my home, you’re safe. No one can touch you here. You have my protection.”
“And hopefully that will be enough when she goes to meet his majesty. He’s requested her presence along with yours.”
Rys lets go of my shoulders, slowly spinning toward Helix. “Elle? What for?”
“You didn’t think that the Summer King was unaware that the human female broke free from the prison when you did? He insists on meeting with her.”
“No.”
“You refuse the king?”
“To save her from having to face Oberon? Yes.”
“You seem overly concerned with the human.” Helix cocks his head, eyeing Rys. I hate how he does that. The few times I met him before today, he did that same dissecting action, like he’s looking right through you. It’s creepy and annoying, and it’s even worse when he hits the target dead-on like he does when he says, “You’re acting like she’s your mate. Are you sure she’s not your ffrindau?”
“I told you before when you asked me, Captain. I have no ffrindau.”
Ouch. That one stings a bit. I don’t know what’s worse: that he flat out denies that he has a mate, or that they were talking about it before I stumbled on their meeting down here.
Even though that’s as definite a statement as Rys can make—so I know damn well he means it or he’d never be able to say it—Helix doesn’t seem to believe him.
“Is that so?” he counters. “I’ve heard from some of my guards that what was once foretold might’ve finally come to pass. That only your mate would entice you to take on Siúcra. And now this human will keep you from obeying your king? Is the lure of the touch that powerful?”
The touch. I didn’t even realize it, but Rys is still stroking my skin even as he denies that I’m his mate.
I move away from him. It seems like the thing to do.
His hand drops to his side, fingers flexing. He lets me go.
Helix purses his lips. “She has to come.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“You leave me with no choice.” Helix steps into me, angling his hip so that there’s no way I can miss the sword hanging there. And then he drops the last name I expect him to—or ever wanted to hear. “Dusk.”
Dusk. The Unseelie guard who thought he had a claim to me after I was first brought to Siúcra. The monster who warned all the other guards off, who treated me as if I belonged to him, and who tried to force me to touch him.
The Dark Fae who I set on fire.
I finally find my voice. “What… what about him?”
“He’d like to see you again.”
A body covered in flames, with face like putty and singed black hair, flashes before my eyes.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.
I swallow roughly, hoping I’m wrong. “He’s alive?”
“Very,” Helix says.
Ah, hell. I was afraid of that.
Ever since Grimly followed after me and Saxon, chasing me into the Shadow Realm and using Faerie lore and contracts to force me into his stupid tasks, I worried that he wouldn’t be the only one. He obviously wasn’t. I had Vale on my ass, the redcap who captured, not to mention the threat of Veron’s vassal. I managed to escape them all.
But, deep down, I always wondered when Dusk would come after me. Considering the way we ended things—me, holding the strange metal lantern, Dusk burning beneath the faerie fire I sicced on him—I was dreaming if I thought he’d let that go.
“He has no claim on her,” cuts in Rys. “She’s not his mate.”