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“Elle. Look. Someone else is coming.”
Are you kidding me? As if seeing Dusk again wasn’t bad enough, someone else is coming?
“Don’t move,” whispers Riley. “Whatever you do, don’t move.”
I freeze. When it comes to the shadows, Riley’s the pro here. If she says ‘don’t move’, call me a Helen-statue. I’m not going anywhere.
“Can they see us?”
More importantly, can Dusk?
“Depends.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve done this a couple of times. Humans can’t see through my shadows, not unless they’re immune to glamour. With a seeing stone, yes. But the fae? Like I said, it depends.”
“Great.”
“Shh.”
Great.
It must work because, a few seconds later, when another Unseelie appears at the mouth of the path, he glides right past where we’re hiding without a second look. I wait until he’s gone far enough away before I let out a tiny sigh of relief.
I don’t know this fae, not really, but I have a sinking suspicion that I really, really hope is wrong. Especially when he heads toward Dusk. He stops next to the guard, starting a conversation.
So that’s what Dusk was waiting for.
Though it’s probably the last thing I want to do, I convince Riley to move us just a little closer. It takes a little bit of risky whispering and some shitty charades before she catches on, but she gives in, shifting us through the shadows until we’re about six or seven feet away from the two fae.
Because the night is so silent, and the fae don’t expect that anyone is eavesdropping on them, as soon as we slip out of the shadows—and, thankfully, the trip was short enough that it doesn’t affect me like before—their voices carry over to us.
“How is the prisoner?”
“I thought you said he only just arrived in Faerie.”
“I did. Those I sent to the Iron to retrieve him failed, but it hasn’t been that long since the human crossed the veil. It took more time than I hoped for him to find his way to our Court, but the mistress of Fate is never wrong, Dusk. Now we have him.”
“We do,” drawls Dusk, “but he’s not acting like an oblivious human. Someone’s trained him. He refused to eat. And when I ordered him to give up his touch, he refused that, too, Nyx.”
Trained him?
Oh my god.
Dusk means me, doesn’t he? I did. I’m the one who warned Jim about the touch, and faerie food, and his true name.
If he’s the prisoner Dusk’s talking about—and he has to be—then he actually listened to me. I just… I’m hoping that he doesn’t get in trouble for not listening to the fae guards in there instead. In Siúcra, the punishments included going hungry and being thrown to the shadows in the oubliette. But that’s a Seelie prison.
What happens inside of an Unseelie jail?
The other fae—Nyx—looks down his nose at Dusk. Whoever he is, based on his attitude and his elaborate black outfit with the silver accents, he’s clearly more important than a prison guard, fae or not.
“When I found him, he was with a Seelie and a human female. They must have prepared him. It doesn’t matter. The prison will break him. It must. We can’t let him get to the Winter Queen.”
What?
Why?
