Soulbound (Darkest London 6)

“No.” He grasped her wrist, staying her progress. When she stared at him, mutiny in her eyes, he sighed. “Lass, if you help me anymore than you have, they’ll know. And we’ll both suffer for it.”

“Surely my aunt —” She bit her bottom lip, a little wrinkle forming between the wings of her brows. “She knows about this, doesn’t she?”

A dry laugh escaped him. “Dove, she’s the one who does this to me.” Repeatedly.

Eliza’s perplexed expression deepened. “She must have a good reason.”

“Oh, aye,” Adam drawled. “She’s a demented bitch.”

The fine bones of her wrist shifted against his firm grip. He wanted to loosen it, but his hand wouldn’t obey. He liked touching her. Too well. How could he not? He felt her. He hadn’t been privy to pleasurable feelings for centuries until she entered his life.

“Tell me why she does this. Why are you chained down here? Why were you a dog, for heaven’s sake?”

“Do you know this is the most you’ve spoken to me in all of our acquaintance?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. He’d waited for months to hear her speak to him. Now that she finally was, he both reveled in the sound of her blunt, flat American voice and resented her for making him wait so long to hear it.

She made a scoffing sound. “Because we are conversing now. Before, you talked at me, as though I were a dog.”

“Untrue and unfair,” he protested weakly.

Something close to a smile hovered at her lips. “Stop trying to deflect and answer me.”

Warmth and a small bit of numbness worked through his body. Adam let his head rest on the floor. “I’m turned into a dog because she believes that causes me humiliation.” It didn’t, but he wasn’t about to let Mab know that. When he was the dog, his pain was somehow more bearable. Unfortunately, the animal had no qualms about voicing its pain, which had brought Eliza to him. “Only the touch of a fae will turn me back, usually for torture.”

“I am not fae.”

Adam made a crude noise. “Oh, aye? Not of Mab’s blood, are you? Forgive me if I spoke in error, and yet, here I am, a dog no longer.”

“That is debatable,” she grumbled.

“As to why she does this,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “she is fae, ye ken?” Christ, his Scots hadn’t emerged in a good five hundred years, but weakness and days without food or water had his tongue slipping. Adam swallowed hard and tried to focus. “You do understand what she is?”

Beneath his fingertips, her pulse beat faster. “Yes, but she saved me… from you.”

He snorted. “Do not start that up again.” He’d go mad if he had to justify himself once more. When she gave a stiff nod, he went on. “Fae are friends to no one but themselves.”

“She’s my aunt. Why should I believe you over all the kindness she’s shown me?” Oddly, her voice lacked heat. If he didn’t know better, Adam would suspect she was merely trying to get a rise out of him. Bollox, her tactic worked. He wanted to shake some sense into her.

“I’m the one lying here broken.” He let out a sharp breath. “She isn’t your aunt; she’s your grandmother and the fae queen.” Eliza started to protest, and he spoke over her. “I have never lied to you, and I won’t start now. It’s true, and what’s worse, if you stay here in her sphere, you’ll soon be sorry for it.”

“Why would I?”

“Because she’ll find a way to use you for her own gain.” With an odd twinge of regret, he let her go and then rubbed a tired hand over his face. “More than she already has.”

“I don’t understand how you came to be her prisoner. You are known – widely, I might add – as a great and powerful demon.”

He took a bracing breath. “I’m not a demon.” Adam caught her gaze and held it. “I’m a man, lass. I don’t drink blood, nor use it to take on another’s identity. All that’s been said about me is a lie. Thought up and circulated by me as a means of protection. I’m cursed, ye ken? Cursed by Mab to remain immortal, heal when I am injured. I had uncommon strength, the power to create life, to take a soul unto me, or to destroy the life I create. Aside from that, the only skill I had was the fighting abilities I learned as a mortal man and my wits. What little there was left of them,” he added with a wry smile.

His smile faded as he watched her. “I’m giving you this truth as a sign of goodwill, dove. No one on earth, save a few key fae, knows. Should the supernatural world gain this knowledge, this hell I’m in now would be what you Yanks call a cakewalk.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Demons are said to be tricksters. How do I know if anything you say is true?”

He snorted. “First, I don’t know where you’ve picked up this hate and distrust of demons, but you’ve been misinformed. They aren’t all bad. Will Thorne, the man who helped set you free, was a demon.”

She had the good grace to flush at that, though her chin remained set.

“Second,” he added. “Had I these great powers anymore, were I a demon capable of taking on another’s form through blood, do you honestly believe that I’d be here?”

Eliza’s stubborn frown grew, as if she didn’t believe him. “That is my point exactly. So then, how —”