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“But—”
“I didn’t tell you that because I want you to feel sorry for me. Honest. I’ve almost gotten used to the hunger and she’s fair enough that, so long as I do what she says, she doesn’t let me starve. You, though… I’m kinda worried about you. A fae fixed you, right? How? How did he do that?”
I don’t want to admit what I let Nine do to me. “He just did. He felt bad for me. He was being kind. That’s all.”
Carolina shifts. She goes from sitting on her ass to rising up on her knees, almost hovering. “No. Oh, no, no, no… you have to listen to me, Riley. The fae who fixed you… however he did it, whatever ulterior motives he had, he wasn’t doing it to be kind. The fae don’t know how to be kind.”
“Nine’s different,” I argue. “He’s not like the Light Fae I know, the one who killed my sister—”
“Light or Dark, they’re all terrible. If you let your Dark Fae get too close, even if he’s the one in the prophecy, he’ll take everything you have and leave you for dead.” She sounds so certain. So bitter. “Like my mistress. She uses faerie food to get me to do what she wants. I behave, I get to eat. If I don’t, she punishes me with hunger. I’ll do anything to break free from her control before...”
Carolina doesn’t finish h
er sentence. She doesn’t have to.
...before she gets left for dead.
That’s it. I’ve lost the last of my appetite. Shoving the pile of half-eaten fast food away from me, I say, “That’s why you want me to be the Shadow so bad.”
“It’s part of the bargain. I help you end Melisandre, I don’t have to rely on the mercy of my mistress to eat.” Her lips thin, her cheeks even more noticeably sunken in than before. “I won’t beg like a dog looking for scraps. I won’t.”
Rys is a Light Fae. A Blessed One. The first time we met, he killed my sister because he thought she was a nothing human who was an obstacle to get to me.
Carolina said the fae female who touched her was a Dark Fae like Nine. A Cursed One. If tricking the human girl into eating faerie food to turn her into her trained pet was considered a treat, I’d hate to find out what she did when Carolina pissed her off.
Or what she would do if she ever discovered that Carolina was plotting against her.
“The fae are big on their bargains, aren’t they?” I muse, more to myself than to Carolina.
“That’s something else I learned too late. They’re tied to their contracts, but don’t ever forget that it’s about following the letter of the law, not the spirit. If they can cheat you, they absolutely will, and they’ll do it as they’re forced to only tell the truth.”
Carolina picks up the wrapped burger that’s still sitting untouched between the two of us. She squeezes it, then rears her hand back and lets it fly. The burger hits the wall on the far side of the kitchen with a wet slap, then lands in a pile of mangled patty, scattered lettuce, and splattered ketchup that, in the dancing light of Rys’s lantern, looks way too much like blood.
“You can’t ever trust them,” she says in a voice so soft that you’d never guess she just chucked a burger across the kitchen. “You can’t trust anyone.”
Whoa. And I thought I had trust issues.
Carolina hates the fae for her own reasons. I respect that.
Don’t blame her, either. And, sure, she definitely wants to use me so that she can break free of the Dark Fae who controls her.
I’m surprisingly okay with that.
Way I see it, it would’ve been worse if she tried to sell me that she wanted to “help” me because she felt bad for me. Knowing she has her own motives—hearing her put them out there like that—actually makes me trust her more.
We both want to escape the fae. Carolina wants to be free of her tie to the Dark Fae female who controls her food. Me? If I keep my head down, keep myself hidden from the Fae Queen, I’m good.
I decide to keep that to myself. I’m not a moron. Carolina’s offer of help is very much conditional. She believes wholeheartedly that the Shadow will give her her freedom. And, since she also believes that I’m the Shadow, she’s going all in on me.
If I tell her that I have no intention of going to Faerie or meeting the Fae Queen—let alone killing her—I know that Carolina’s generosity will shrivel up. For now, I’m gonna take what I can get for as long as I can.
Whether I’m way tired or just relieved to finally have someone on my side, I let down my guard enough to invite Carolina to stay that first night. She can’t, though. As late as it is, she has to drive home so that her parents can make sure that she’s okay. Since I haven’t had an adult care about me since the Everetts when I was fifteen, I don’t really get it, but she insists.
Then she promises that she’ll come back in the morning if she can get away.
Honestly, I don’t hold my breath. As soon as Carolina leaves and I lock the back door behind her, I try to find a soft patch of floor in the depths of the dark shadows inside the empty living room.
It doesn’t seem right to go upstairs. For a few seconds, I wonder if I should hide in the basement—but I can’t even bring myself to step onto the landing.
