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“I don’t get it. Why would he work for her?”
“Not just that human,” Nine admits. “As soon as I discovered that they knew where to find you, I took the first portal to the asylum. It wasn’t just the male. I could sense more than a few touched humans inside that place. It’s why I knew I had to get you out of there before any of your enemies got to you first.”
I immediately think of Diana, the blonde tech whose eyes flashed golden the other night. Of how uncomfortable she made me. What about Dr. Gillespie? He was always way too interested in Nine. How many times did I think it was super weird how my psychologist was humoring me by acting like my hallucinations were real?
Too many, but it made sense if he knew that they weren’t hallucinations at all.
He’s telling the truth. As painful as it is—as incredibly unbelievable as it is—Nine is telling the truth.
“Why?” I forget in the heat of the moment that Nine wanted me to be quiet. The word bursts out of me with all the subtlety of a bomb going off. I’m an almost twenty-one-year-old orphan. I’m not supposed to have enemies. “What the hell does she want with me?”
“It’s because you’re the Shadow.”
I’m not a statue, but I go still like one.
I know that voice. Lilting and lyric, it’s deep enough to belong to a man, and rich enough to make me want to turn around and see him—even though I know better.
When I manage to break my sudden spell of paralysis, I search for him.
There he is. Rys. The golden fae—the Light Fae—who killed my sister has joined us in the gardens.
In this strange place, he is absolutely brilliant. His lovely, bronze-colored skin is nearly a match for the swirls in the sky, his golden eyes flashing and reflecting the silver trees. He moves purposefully but easily, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Long, tawny hair drifts behind his lean body as he glides toward me.
His lips part. A whisper on the still breeze.
I have an irresistible urge to go to him—
“Riley,” snaps Nine. “Stay strong. Fight it.”
But I don’t want to—
“Shadow,” Nine says, more feeling in his harsh voice. “Stop moving!”
I jam the heels of my slipper into the fluffy, wispy, flossy grass. My shins strain as I fight the pull toward Rys. And it’s not just because Nine told me to stop.
I want to stop.
I do. When about ten feet still separate me from him, I finally manage to put on the brakes. I’m panting at how much of my strength it took to fight the compulsion to go to him, but I stop.
“You’ve taken too many liberties, Rys.” Nine moves so that he’s standing beside me. He points at the Light fae. “I could sense your brand on her skin the second I returned to her. You touched her.”
“And you’ve told her about the Shadow Prophecy before she came of age,” Rys counters. “Seems we both did a little trickery.”
“I did no such thing. I kept to the terms of my bargain.”
“You called her Shadow.”
“It’s just another name for her. That’s all.”
“Ah, that’s right. Because you don’t know her true name.” Rys turns to me, his eyes sparkling in delight. “We’ve shared more than a touch, you and I. Isn’t that right?”
Whether I’m doing it to myself or he is, suddenly the song from the night I danced with him in my dreams is filtering in through my ears, beating against the back of my skull. I grit my teeth, desperate to ignore it.
I can’t. Not only that, but my hands grow even hotter inside of my gloves. I can’t forget how I let him touch me, the sizzle I felt when our bare skin connected, or how weak and drained I was as he sapped me of all my energy.
He touched me. And I let him.
I wrap my arms around me, hugging myself. Nine moves forward, shielding me with his body as he steps between Rys and me.
