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Of course he’s gorgeous. Their astonishing good looks make the fae the most dangerous of predators to their chosen prey: humans.
I can’t let myself forget that for even a second. He’s a murderer who killed one of the only people I cared about when I told him no six years ago. Rys might seem like he’s enjoying himself right now—but what happens when I say no again and he catches on that I actually mean it?
He followed me to Black Pine. He followed me to Faerie after Nine helped me escape the asylum. He followed me to the cemetery, then used a sliver of sunlight to join me in a freaking sewer.
And now I have to look forward to him chasing me down tomorrow? When will it stop?
“Why? Why do you insist on coming after me? Why won’t you leave me alone?” He’s not like Nine, he has no reason to answer me, but I can’t stop the demands for answers from slipping out. “Look, if the queen sent you, and you really give a shit about me, just tell her I’m missing. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
Rys runs his tongue along his bottom lip, tucking the tip in the corner for a moment as he regards me. I’m wearing filthy jeans, a dusty hoodie, leather gloves that cover my hands, yet that one look makes me feel like he’s stripping me on the spot.
He smiles. “So it seems my rival has finally told you about the prophecy.”
Rival? Oh, jeez. I think I liked it better when he was the bogeyman in my nightmares, the golden fae killer who threatened and mocked and scared the absolute crap out of me. This lovesick male who’s convinced himself that we’re meant to be together is terrifying in a whole other way because he just won’t let this go.
I ignore him. As angry as I am with Nine for intentionally hiding the truth about my mom from me all these years… as confused and lost and just plain defeated as I am, I know who I’m siding with all the way—and it’s not the Light Fae watching me like he’d like to gobble me up.
He’s gorgeous, but he’s not Nine.
Rys wants to own me. He told me that once, back when I was fifteen and he was trying to lure me away from my foster family. After he followed Madelaine and me to an empty house at the end of the Everetts’ street, he appeared suddenly in the basement, popping into existence near a window that let in a stream of early afternoon light.
I had never seen anything as glorious as he was. In my mind, I called him the golden angel because, after all of the stories Nine told me that painted the fae out to be monsters, I never thought anyone who looked so beautiful could be so terrible.
I was wrong.
Dead wrong.
For an entire year after I watched Rys kill my sister before burning the house down around us, I re-lived her death constantly.
From the moment the golden fae with the angel’s face appeared in the basement where my sister and I hanging out after cutting school, to his pronouncement that he came to take me away with him, to how he turned his golden gaze on Madelaine
The music. The dance. The snapping of her neck, and the fire that circled her after she fell. How I reached for her, how I screamed my voice hoarse, how Rys laughed and laughed and laughed before he vanished and I had no choice but to flee the hungry flames.
Therapy helped me process it, and my psychologists helped me understand that it wasn’t my fault. With the right meds and a little distance—plus my nighttime visits to the cemetery where I poured my heart out to the stone angel that marked her grave—I was able to go days, then weeks, and finally months at a time without watching her die.
With Rys looming in front of me, the depths of the sewer trapping me like a rat in a cage, there’s nothing left for me to do but remember.
“You belong to me.”
“Come to me.”
“You’re mine.”
I said no.
I tried to walk away.
And he charmed Madelaine to come to him, compelled her with his fae magic to offer her han
d for a dance, then snapped her neck as punishment for my defying him.
With the image of Madelaine’s broken body seared into my mind, the pain of seeing her dead mingling with the agony of being burned by Rys’s conjured fire, I start to tremble.
The doctors were full of it. And I might just be insane for not screaming the sewer down around me as I face off against this heartless creature.
Love?
Rys doesn’t know what love is.
