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Dance with me.
Stay with me.
I’ll always come for you.
He said those words to me when I was fifteen. He said them again last night, and so much more. The way he pressed his body against mine, the way his lips brushed my ears, how he moved like he was trying to claim me while I was too enchanted to pull away from him.
Suddenly, I’m not laughing any longer.
Because it wasn’t a dream. It was a seduction, and I don’t know how far I let him take it.
From the look on Nine’s face, I’m thinking way, way too far.
“No. You’ve got that all wrong. He… he’s sorry about Madelaine. That’s all it is. He just wants to be my friend.”
The air whistles as Nine draws in a short breath. His cheekbones are so sharp, they could slice through paper. Eyes flashing, he demands, “Rys said that to you?”
Didn’t he? “Well, yeah.”
“Friend. He said friend?”
“Something like that.”
Nine looms over me, his expression darker than it has been. “This is important. What did the Light Fae tell you?”
“I don’t know. Hang on. It was—” Come on. What was that weird word he used again? It sounded so much like ‘friend’, but foreign. Too bad Allison is down the hall. She’d be able to help me figure it out. It was almost German… I shrug. “Friend-ow. Maybe.”
Nine pales. Seriously. I mean, the guy’s already super white. Now, though? He loses any color he has left.
“Ffrindau?”
That’s it. “Yeah. Why? I get that it’s bad—no way I want to be friends with a psycho fae killer, but at least he’s not chasing after me like all you other monsters.”
His scowl returns with a vengeance. I’m not sure if it’s because I made a point to lump him in with the other fae—he’s fae, I still can’t believe that my Shadow Man is one of them—or because I’m not letting the golden fae bother me as much as I used to. In my dream, he promised me he’d never hurt me and, one thing I know for sure, it’s that the fae can’t lie.
Which is why I’m stunned at what Nine says next. Because, as much as I wish it wasn’t the truth, I know it must be.
“Ffrindau doesn
’t mean friend. It’s an ancient term from a dead Faerie language that still lives on today. If Rys thinks of you as his ffrindau, you’re in even more trouble than if he was hoping to capture you on behalf of the Fae Queen.”
My heart just about stops beating. “Really? Why? What does… what does that word mean?”
“It means mate. Soul mate, to be precise.”
“Soul what?”
Nine clenches his jaw so tightly, I can see a muscle tic. “Mate. He doesn’t want to be your friend. He wants you to be his bonded mate for all eternity, whether you’re meant to be his or not.”
There’s something in the way he says that. When I was a kid, I always understood that Nine knew tons more than the little bit he told me. He had all the power then—if he wanted to guard his secrets, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
It’s different now. I’m older, tougher, and I’m teetering on the edge of a massive breakdown. I spent six years convincing myself that the fae weren’t real. Now, when I’m so close to being free, to putting my nightmares behind me—as if I really could—now I have to deal with this?
The fae can’t lie. Nine’s finally confessed that he’s one of the Faerie folk, so he can’t lie, either. He can twist the truth any which way he wants to. In the end, no matter what, it’ll be the truth.
I’m at my breaking point. He knows more than he’s telling. Good chance he’ll ignore my next question, though he promised to answer me before. Still, I have to try.
“Am I?”
