The world hones.
I register the weight, realizing that whoever collided with me is nowatopme.
Blinking away the smear of red, my vision tightens. All the breath blasts from my lungs with a single gobsmacked word.
“Fuck.”
The fae straddling me … she’s the most exquisite being I’ve ever seen. Skin white as snow, freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks, features so fine it’s like they were sung into shape by the Creators themselves. And her hair … it’severywhere.Coiled masses of it that fall around her small frame; such a deep, unusual shade of red to match the flecks in her simmering, tawny eyes alight with—
Rage.
Oh.
I re-register the blade at my throat. Note that she’s snarling, looking at me like I’m one wrong move away from decapitation. And perhaps that’d bother me more if I weren’t so entrapped by her eyes. By her exotic, spicy scent, and the way her face looks like a Moonplume moon perched amongst a flush of red clouds.
“How’d you get in here?”
Her tone is a sturdy, condemning blow that feels a lot like a slap to the face.
“The back entrance,” I rasp. “It made me vomit. A lot.”
Fuck, I’m an idiot. Why say that? Now she’s picturing me vomiting.
Her eyes narrow.
She pushes the blade so deep I’m afraid to swallow lest the motion slit me open. “There’snoway you know about that. Only me and one other knew. And she’s—” The fierceness in her gaze splinters. “She’sdead. And I sure as spangleshitdidn’t tell anyone—”
She goes statue still, eyes widening.
Alight.
She sniffs long and deep, making me wish I’d taken the time to scrub every bit of my body after regurgitating my stomach lining.
“This, ahh … This is very stra—” She stuffs her face into the crook of my neck. “Strange,” I finish, all other thoughts bursting from my brain.
The hairs on my arms lift as she draws another whiff, shiftinglower—her inner thighs warm against my abdomen.
Soft.
My breathing goes short and ragged, my hands flat and awkward at my sides as I do everything in my power tonot move, the blade still poised at my throat. Still pushing deep enough that every bulging pump of my carotid feels like taunting death.
Another whiff, this time atop my sternum, before she uses her whole hand to push my head to the side and sniff my jaw, moving up to my temple, then back down behind my ear.
“Creators,” I grind out. “Please stop doing that.”
She pulls back.
“You smell like—” Her words crack, wide eyes glossed over by a sheen of brewing tears. “You smell likeRaeve.”
She bares her teeth. Pushes the blade into my throat again.
Harder.
So hard, I’m pretty sure she cuts into me, her next words seethed. “Tell me why you smell like Raeve!”
“Because I was just with her,” I say much slower than I should probably speak, given her fierce demeanor. But something instinctual is telling me to be calm. “I fell asleep for a bit after I made it through the vomit hole. The retching really took it out of me.”
“You’relying.” A tear slips down her cheek, leaving a wet trail. I almost reach up and sweep it away with my thumb. “Shedied.She was fed to the dragons.She fucking died!”
