“I want to go home,” I said, though I couldn’t rightly say where home was anymore.
“I know,” Ethan said. “But the purpose of the moat is to keep people out of Avalon, so there isn’t exactly an easy exit. There’s a trapdoor in the bridge above us, but my father’s going to have to get someone to undo the locking spells on it, and then they’re going to have to haul us up somehow. We’ll be stuck here for a while.”
I was so cold I felt like I’d never be warm again in a million years, and the contrast of Ethan’s warmth only made me feel colder. He scooted backward until his back was against the concrete piling. He had to let go of me to do it, but then he patted his lap.
“Come sit on my lap,” he said. “I’ll keep you as warm as I can.”
I thought briefly about what had happened the last time I’d found myself on Ethan’s lap, but I shoved that thought to the side. Even Ethan wasn’t enough of a player to make a move on me now, of all times.
So I crawled onto his lap, and he wrapped himself around me. His arms surrounded me, and my face was pressed up against his bare chest while his body heat seeped through my sodden clothes.
“Aren’t you cold at all?” I asked him.
I felt him shrug. “Not really. We only feel the cold when it’s extreme. And as you can probably tell, our body temperatures run higher than humans’ anyway.”
Yes, I could tell. Every inch of me that was in contact with his body was toasty warm. Unfortunately, there were a lot of inches left, and I shivered nonstop.
“You saved my life,” I whispered into his chest.
His chin rubbed across the top of my head. “It was the least I could do.”
I thought about the Water Witch, with her milky eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and sticky cobweb hair. Ethan had jumped into the moat after me, knowing there were dozens of those creatures in there. And while they were supposedly both members of the Unseelie Court, they obviously weren’t kissing cousins.
He’d lied to me. He’d tried to use his magic against me. And he’d set me up for an attack that could have gotten me killed. But in the end, he’d risked his own life to save mine, so how could I not forgive him for the bad things he’d done?
“Let’s just call it even now and leave it at that,” I said. Ethan kissed the top of my head but didn’t respond.
“How did you know Grace was about to cast a spell at my father?” he asked me. “You saved his life with your warning.”
That thought made me feel a tiny bit less wretched. At least I’d done something right. And I was glad to have saved a life, even if I’d needed rescuing myself.
“I could feel the magic building up,” I explained, and I felt Ethan go still. I tried to lift my head from his chest to see his face, but he wouldn’t let me.
“What?” I asked. “What did I say?”
“You felt the magic,” he repeated, and he sounded like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yeah. At least, that’s what I think it is. The cameo my dad gave me heats up, and then my skin starts to feel all prickly. I’m pretty sure that only happens when there’s magic around.”
Now Ethan pushed me away, allowing me to see his face. Not that I could see much in the darkness under the bridge. But I could see the intensity of his expression.
“I’m going to forget I asked you that question,” he said. “And I’m very certainly going to forget your answer. If your father or mine ever asks you, say you heard her muttering something and made an educated guess as to what it meant.”
“Why?”
“Because traditionally, the magic has always treated Faeriewalkers like humans, even though they are truly half Fae. But if you could feel it building, that means you have an affinity for it, which means you might be able to train and use it yourself. You are a powerful and frightening enough weapon as it is. If anyone thought you could do magic as well…” He shook his head. “Too dangerous. It wouldn’t be just the Queens who wanted to eliminate you then.”
“But it’s only because of the cameo,” I protested. “If I take it off—” I reached for the clasp behind my neck, but Ethan’s hands closed around my wrists.
“Keep it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what it does, but if it reacts to magic, then it’s an object of power of some sort and could come in handy someday. You wouldn’t have felt the effects if you didn’t have a natural affinity for magic. A human wearing it would feel nothing. So we never had this conversation. Got it?”
My eyes no doubt wide as saucers, I nodded. Why would my father have given me an “object of power” if he thought I couldn’t access the magic? Had he somehow guessed that I would be unusual even for a Faeriewalker? Or had he just figured that since I couldn’t sense magic, the cameo was harmless, just a symbol of my Seelie affiliations? If I couldn’t ask him about it, then it seemed likely I’d never know the answer. “And you’re not going to tell anyone?” I prompted Ethan. “Not even your father?”
“Tell them what?” he asked, and though he was trying to sound dry and witty, he just ended up sounding nervous.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The moat had killed my watch and Ethan wasn’t wearing his, so I had no real concept of how long we huddled there beneath the bridge, except that it was far, far longer than I would have liked. During that time, I discovered a new pain. My skin apparently didn’t react well to Water Witch hair, so there were raised red welts all along the lower part of my legs where she’d grabbed me.
They burned and stung, and by the time Alistair arranged for someone to open the trapdoor that led under the bridge, I was starting to feel the warm flush of fever in my cheeks. They had to haul me up with some kind of harness. I’d have been scared, except I felt too awful to bother with fear. Maybe everyone—including me—would be better off if I fell and splatted on the concrete below. But I didn’t fall.
Alistair and my father were both waiting for me on the bridge, and they helped the emergency folks extract me from the harness. I locked eyes with my dad as they went to work on the buckles that held me safe. He looked pale and worried, impatient to get me out of the harness.
“Mom?” I asked in a terrified whisper, trying to keep myself from bursting into tears yet again.
Dad gave me a reassuring nod. “She’s safe.”
I didn’t try to hold back the tears anymore. I wasn’t up to standing, so when all the buckles and straps were loose, my dad picked me up and started carrying me toward his car, which was hard to miss, sitting in the parking lot in its bright red glory.
“Wait!” I cried, looking over his shoulder at Alistair.
He was watching the rescue workers lower the harness again, but he seemed to sense my gaze on him, since he turned toward me.
“Aunt Grace,” I said. “What happened to her?”
Alistair’s already thin lips practically disappeared as he pressed them together hard and shook his head. “She got past me.” He forced his expression into one of wry amusement, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was somewhat distracted when she tossed you into the moat, I’m afraid.”
My eyes fixed on the door to Faerie, and Alistair’s slight nod told me that’s where Grace had gone. Why did I expect she wouldn’t stay there forever?
I lost consciousness before my dad got me to his car. When I woke up, it was to find myself in a hospital bed. The aches and pains I remembered from before were all gone, but my head throbbed fiercely, and I was sweating like it was a hundred degrees in the room. I moaned and turned to my side.
Finn was sitting on a visitor’s chair beside my bed—between me and the door, naturally. I supposed he was back on bodyguard duty, but it felt good not to be alone when I woke up. He was reading a magazine, but he closed it and put it away when he saw I was awake.
My stomach wasn’t much happier than my head, and for a moment, I was afraid I was going to puke over the side of the bed. But the urge passed.