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The Nine I used to know would never have let me see that look in his eye. Just like how I can pick up on Rys’s overt lust, I know what I saw when Nine thought I was too sick to notice.
He’s into me.
And, the two of us alone in this sewer, he’s trying to hide it.
Sure, a dirty, smelly sewer isn’t my first choice of a romantic setting, either, but now that I’m feeling even better than before—Nine’s bread a huge help—I want to talk to him about how he seems even more irresistible than he ever did before.
I don’t get the chance, though. Before I can say a word, my expression gives me away.
“Riley. Please. Don’t look at me like that.”
I decide to play dumb. Because this conversation? It’s gonna happen whether Nine wants it to or not. He owes me that much at least.
“Like what?”
He shakes his head. “If I pursue this, then that means that I accept the Shadow Prophecy. All of it. Don’t ask me to do that. Not now. Not when you’re in so much danger.”
I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I didn’t bring up the prophecy. Hell, I’d be happy to never mention it again—especially the way he tacks the word danger on at the end like that.
“But you feel this, too, right?” I blurt out. “I mean… I’m not crazy. Nine, I need you to tell me that I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not crazy. You never were. The asylum… you were there too long. It affected you too much. But you’re perfectly sane.”
“Don’t sidestep my question. You know that’s not what I meant.”
He keeps quiet.
He does.
I can’t.
“I thought it was crazy, just how drawn to you I am. Then I thought it was because you were the only stable thing in my life since I was a kid. But these feelings I’ve been having… shit, ever since you first appeared to me back at the asylum… they’re not the sort of feelings a kid has. I… I—”
I think I might get what he meant when he said the touch might have some other effects. This is bad. It’s like his touch was some kind of truth serum or something like that.
I can’t lie. I want to. Spilling my guts like this a problem. A huge one. I want to lie.
I can’t do that, either.
“—I think I love you. And not in the way I should love a guardian-type figure. Love you like in the way that, if you asked me to be your ffrindau-thing right now, I’d probably say yes.”
Is it possible to die of embarrassment? The peach didn’t do the job, but the pained expression that flashes across Nine’s features followed by the almost sad look he wears now might just be the nail in my coffin.
Shit, that’s pity, isn’t it? I spilled my guts, said things I never should’ve said in a million years, and the Dark Fae pities me.
“It’s the touch making you feel this way,” he says after an awkward silence, his voice harsh and low but still achingly beautiful—just like Nine. “It’s part of the magic. If it didn’t make the human have good feelings toward the fae giving the touch, it would make it harder to compel them into doing it again. Give it a few days. It’ll go away.”
Part of me wants to believe that. But the part of me that used
to doodle Riley + Nine 4ever when I was like twelve… she’s not so sure.
I decide it’s time to change the subject before I embarrass myself any further. If the effects of his touch mean that I’ve got a wicked case of verbal diarrhea, it’ll be better if I switch the conversation around so that Nine’s doing most of the talking.
Besides, I still need a shit ton of freaking answers.
“Um, okay. But, in the meantime, can you do something for me?”
He bows his head. A quick, decisive jerk upward. A nod.
