His laughter fueled my rage, and I snarled like a wounded animal, working my broken jaw, despite the hurt it caused me, to toss out a string of curses. Holy shit, I was in some serious pain. My body could start with the healing…anytime now… Come on, damn it. Heal. “Faolán!” I shrieked. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die!”
“Quiet.” The command stalled my mind, numbed my pain, and stilled my body. Our surroundings blurred in my vision, leaving only the two of us alone in a sea of gray nothing. Faolán towered above me, looking too far away to be so close. “I’m going to kill her!” he shouted again. “Just like the others! Do you think your father will weep for her? Will he relive the pain of losing his child? Would you be the one to deliver that agony upon him for the second time? I. Will. Kill. Her!” His words rent the still air, ragged and strained with his rage. He looked down, his eyebrow cocked, and he whispered the last words for me alone. “Believe it.”
Something in the distance stole his focus from the business of sending me to my death. Lucidity returned, and with it an excruciating pain that made me want to retreat back into my mind, anywhere but the present moment. My breath came in shallow pants-all I could manage with Faolán’s hand squeezing my throat. Above me the dagger hovered in his fist, dripping my own blood onto my body. He leaned back, his grip slackened, and I resisted the urge to turn my head and look. But when I noticed the half-crazed expression creep onto his face, my heart sank into my stomach. Stupid girl. She’d done just what I would’ve done in her situation.
Brakae had surrendered.
Chapter 24
Faolán eased himself up from the ground, dismissing me like an insect beneath his boot. I could have just closed my eyes and drifted away right there in the fragrant grass for all the attention he paid. He stumbled backward, his eyes glued to the figure standing barely beyond my line of sight. Hate, jealousy, and-could it be?-love twisted his features into something even more otherworldly than he already was.
The longer we’d been in this strange place, the more his Fae glamour slid away, as if he couldn’t spare the concentration to keep the guise intact. And I focused on those things: his face, the way his body trembled in Brakae’s presence, the slight shifting of his eyes, how they’d become rounder and brighter. Because if I didn’t, I’d succumb to my fear and pain, and I’d be damned if Faolán saw me weakened by anything he’d done.
Grass rustled in the distance, and with it came a stirring breeze and the fragrant scent of Shaede, though there was something foreign about it that my senses could not identify. I closed my eyes, the hairs standing on my arms as I felt her presence beside me. She knelt and gathered my head in her hands, cradling it on her lap. Don’t open your eyes, I thought as she combed her fingers through my hair, sweeping it away from my temple. Just lie here and sleep.
“Faolán, my love.” Brakae’s words jump-started my heart as if I’d been struck by lightning. “What have you done?”
I’d heard her wrong. Of course, she’d said, “Faolán, you low-life piece of shit, what have you done?”
But, no, just like all of the lovely surprises in my life, I’d heard her plain as day. “My hand has been forced.” The longing in his voice was unmistakable. “You helped them imprison me. And why? For the pestilence known as humanity? I loved you. I love you still; yet you would rather see me dead than a race so disgustingly fragile their lives are nothing more than a flash of lightning against a black sky.”
Here I was, sliced open and bleeding to death in a realm where time flew by at a blurring pace, with Brakae and Faolán positioned on either side of my battered body having a bittersweet lovers’ reunion. Wasn’t this just fan-fucking-tastic? Brakae continued to stroke my hair-did the whole of the supernatural community have an affinity for petting?-as Faolán paced back and forth, as agitated as I’d ever seen him.
“This is an old argument,” Brakae said. “Too old for us to revisit. Life, all life, is precious, and there is not one of us who deserves a higher place above another. I will not reopen healed wounds by entertaining your madness again.”
Hello? Anyone remember the bleeding girl here? And why the hell was I still not healing? God, I wanted to pass out from the pain. Yet the little Days of Our Lives moment unfolding at my head and feet kept me nice and conscious. “I hate to interrupt,” I said, struggling to lean up at least on one elbow. “But, Brakae, this should be the part where you stand up and run the fuck away!”
“Shhh.” She cupped the side of my face Faolán hadn’t managed to break. “Don’t worry. I trust you.”
You trust me? What the hell kind of thing was that to say at a moment like this? Good Lord, I was beginning to wish Faolán would hurry up and kill me, just to give me a reprieve from all of their cryptic talk and strange behavior.
“Get up,” Faolán commanded, and I felt my world go fuzzy and gray. “I don’t have time for idle discussions. Brakae, take us to the glass.”
I looked up at Raif’s daughter, the deadly smile on her face an exact replica of his. How had I not recognized it the moment I’d met her? A light of calculation gleamed in her sapphire eyes. Maybe she wasn’t as harmless as I’d thought. “Yes,” she said as she placed her hands under my arms, easing me to a sitting position. “It’s time to go.”
“Why is my body not healing?” I asked close to her ear. Confusion swirled in my mind from Faolán’s influence, countered by the cleansing effects of Brakae’s close proximity. A war was being waged within my mind, and I didn’t like it one damned bit. “I’m not going to be much use to you beat up and bleeding. Not to mention weaponless.”
“A Fae dagger,” Brakae murmured. “It has been forged with magic,” she said. “You’ll heal, but not quickly. If he’d wanted you dead, he would have driven the blade through your heart.”
Son of a bitch. For once Azriel hadn’t been a complete liar. He’d told me once only a magic blade could kill me. The asshole knew about the blade, and about what I would eventually become. Who would have thought his lies had been woven with the truth? “He’s controlling me,” I said. “I may not be able to fight him.”
“Darian, you’re talking too much again.” Faolán pulled me away from Brakae, tucking me safely behind him. “Now be quiet and move along.”
Brakae remained stoic but pleasant as she led us from the circle of stones down a winding path as if we had nothing better to do than take a leisurely stroll in an enchanted forest. Blood trickled down my chest, soaking my shirt. If I ever got out of this mess, I’d ceremoniously burn this particular outfit. I ignored the lush green forest, the brilliant blue sky peppered with dragonflies and other buzzing creatures too strange to be mere insects. I felt the presence of magic all around me and other creatures watching from their hiding places. But none of this mattered or held me rapt. My mind dwelled on one thing and one thing only: Tyler, and the fact that I would more than likely never see him again.
“You’re not really thinking of handing your half of the hourglass over to Faolán, are you?” At least I could use impending death and disaster to get my mind off Tyler. “I mean, you do realize he’s not planning to bring peace to the world or anything like that.”
“No,” Brakae said. “I plan on handing it over to you.”
Was everyone out of their fucking minds? I was the last person on the face of the earth who should have that glass. “I don’t know how well you’ve thought this through, Brakae, but I would advise against that.”