The force around my neck spasms, pinches so tight that I cry out, only for the noise to get cut off.
Alyth draws closer to me. Watching, studying. “You’re Leth—you have fae blood. Do not pretend you don’t know what a Red Cap is. I will find out what you are, and I will deal with you accordingly.”
My lungs scream for air, fingers clawing at my neck, nails ripping through the knife wound she’d left, slipping on blood.
“I’m—not fae—”
“I don’t know what your place in Darnley’s plot is,” she says, calm, “but you’re done.”
The being she called Kitty squeals again. “We kill him?”
Kill me, release me—Kitty seems delighted by both options.
But Alyth stares at me a beat longer. My life is getting weighed in her eyes, and in that, I see the deer that walked close to us when we camped on the moors. How free it seemed, how free I felt, being outside the city for once, breathing.
There’s no rage in me. No push to black out. Just—resignation.
My eyes roll shut, and a tear leaks down my cheek.
“Release him, Kitty.”
Before I can react, I’m plunging down the wall, landing in a heap on the floor. I cough and wheeze, trying to breathe too fast, too much. My vision won’t focus.
Until Alyth bends over me, tucks the knife under my chin, and uses it to draw my face up to hers.
She comes into sharp clarity. Those big, all-seeing eyes, the tight lines of concentration and anger across her face. The smell of wild grasslands.
“I’m giving you one chance to leave Scotland,” she tells me. “Go back to England. If I see you here again, I will kill you.”
Kitty claps her little hands. “And we’ll help!”
Alyth releases me, dragging the point of the dagger up my chin, leaving another slice that stings with pain.
She crosses to the door and leaves.
The little creatures sink into the shadows, scurrying off and vanishing through holes in the walls, like mice.
And I just sit there. Rubbing my sore throat, wincing at the cuts. Coughing and eyes tearing.
I’m proper screwed.
15
Alyth
I wake the next morning tangled in my bedclothes, my hair damp with sweat. A fitful sleep riddled with nightmares has me ready to fight, but—
He’s gone now.
Samson. There’s no way he’s still here. Kitty told me he hadn’t fled in the night, and fine, I won’t grudge him that. But by the time I crank my weary body out of bed, the ropes holding up my mattress groaning almost as much as me, it’s well past sunrise.
Well past time for him to be gone. I’ll check, of course, ensure he’s left as I ordered. I tell myself that firmly as I scrub my face with cold water and tie my hair back. He’ll be gone, and I’ll be glad of it.
I catch my image in the mirror.
My cheeks are red, and my eyes are wild.
He was Leth. He had fae blood inside him the whole time. And I couldn’t tell at all, thanks to that damned amulet that kept me from seeing what he truly was.
