“Who’s out there? The cemetery’s closed. Don’t make me call the cops!”
My pulse thuds. Huddled in the grass, I shove my sleeve up, rubbing his aggressive touch from my skin. I can still feel it lingering there. I wipe at the patch, trying to erase it. Not because it’s Nine or because he’s a fae, but because that wasn’t my choice.
The caretaker stands on the porch for a few seconds that seem like a lifetime. I can’t tell if Nine slipped into the shadows and disappeared or not. I don’t see him, but I’m also super focused on the open door. I shouldn’t have screamed. I didn’t want to involve the old man. And, sure, the cops might be able to help me—but not if I get busted for trespassing.
As soon as the caretaker decides he scared some no-good screamer off his property and heads back inside, Nine is suddenly there again.
He’s cradling his right hand. Unless I’m seeing things—and my night vision is actually kinda amazing—there are these faint wisps of pale grey smoke coming from his palm. He flexes his fingers, careful to keep his hand turned toward his chest.
I’m immediately distracted from my anger. What’s up with that?
I jerk my chin at him. “Aren’t you going to give me a hand up?”
Nine holds out his left hand to me.
Yeah, that didn’t work the way I wanted it to.
I shake my head. I definitely don’t take his hand. “Forge
t it. What’s up with the other hand, Nine?” An eerily familiar scent drifts on the breeze. My stomach turns. I know it too well—it took months before I got it out of my nose after the fire. “Why does it smell like burning flesh?”
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, his lips pulled into a thin line, Nine shows me his hand. Each finger is burned raw, red blisters on every inch of his palm.
I stare in horror.
His pale skin is utterly destroyed.
14
“What the hell—”
Nine blinks, stretching his fingers as if he’s trying to slough off the ruined skin. I want to tell him to stop. His face is completely stoic. Except for the constant stretch, he doesn’t give any indication that his hand’s gotta be killing him.
“And now you see why I must have your permission.”
Because he touched me. Without my permission, he can’t leech any power from a touch. I didn’t know that it burned the shit out of him, though.
I think back to the recently healed skin I saw on his hand earlier. It was when we landed in Faerie, right after he grabbed me without permission in my room. I know fae have crazy fast healing abilities—it’s part of their magic—but I never put two and two together before. He must’ve been burned then, too.
So why did he do it? Why was it so important to him that I leave the asylum? Or listen to him try to explain? He had to have known what would happen if he grabbed me when I wouldn’t let him.
I’m grateful when he tucks his burnt palm back into his chest. It reminds me too much of what my hands looked like after I reached through the enchanted flames to get to Madelaine. I didn’t know she was dead. I had hope, and I would’ve walked through fire to save my sister. She was my best friend—except for Nine—and she was normal. Even better, she treated me like I was normal. She didn’t deserve to die.
Rys dared me to save her. I tried. I really did. I managed to push my hands through the fire that circled Madelaine’s body. It was so hot. So fucking hot. It burned the skin right off my hands, the white-hot agony making it impossible for me to go any further.
I blocked out a lot of what happened next. Dealing with my grief following Madelaine’s death was almost as difficult as what I went through to save my hands. The burns were so bad that I needed multiple surgeries just to get to the point where I could finally have an autograft done. Seeing Nine’s injury now, my fingers start to throb in sympathy pain.
I drop my face into my hands. The leather against my skin is familiar and reassuring. I breathe in deep. It helps.
Until Nine starts to speak again.
“Listen to me.” I peek at him through the slivers of space between my fingers. “You must—”
Okay. That’s it.
I drop my hands.
“I’m done.”