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The first thing I see when I focus is that I’m inside… somewhere. It’s not familiar, but I don’t see anyone waiting with a sword—or a scared shitless expression that a bunch of people just popped up out of nowhere.
On the plus side, I didn’t bring us back to the sewer or the death house.
That’s something, at least.
Now that I’ve assured myself that there’s no immediate threat waiting to toss me back at the Fae Queen, I start to move. I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now. It’s not even something I realize as I’m doing it. I crawl out from under the others, then wheel around on my knees, reaching immediately for Nine. I touch his cheek.
I touch his cheek.
I can feel the chill through the leather glove that both shields and hides my reconstructed hands. His cheek is hard, too, and I don’t mean his sculpted cheekbones. Even his flesh is hard as a rock.
No.
A statue.
It takes all of my energy—and I don’t have much after that last bit of shadow travel—to heft Nine up by his arm. It’s easier than I expect to pull him away from the rest of the pile of fallen bodies. He might be hard as stone to the touch. Surprisingly, he doesn’t weigh as much as he should have if he really was a marble statue.
I get him up on his feet, making sure he’s sturdy before I check him all over.
His body is frozen in the same position as it was a heartbeat before the Fae Queen turned him into a gorgeous Nine statue: his long dark hair raining down his back, his shoulders hunched forward, his arm thrown out protectively. He’d been trying to keep me behind him, sacrificing himself for me.
He made a mistake, though. A huge honking mistake. So desperate to protect me like he’s done my entire life, Nine entered into a bargain before making sure that there wasn’t a way that the Fae Queen could twist the terms. He didn’t and she did and now Nine’s frozen while Melisandre is probably losing her damn mind that I escaped her clutches before she could force me to suffer the same fate.
I would’ve, too. To save my parents.
That was the bargain—the deal—that Melisandre offered me. Give up my freedom, stand as a statue in her gardens where she could keep an eye on me, and she would let the parents I’ve never known go free.
For twenty years, they were frozen just like Nine, all because they’d had the bad luck to create a halfling that was the star of the Shadow Prophecy.
Just like Nine, they’d sacrificed themselves for me back when I was barely an infant. Trading my life for theirs… it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, it wasn’t like I thought I had any other way out of her palace in Faerie.
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Until the golden fae who haunted my thoughts and my dreams for more than six years helped me escape…
No. Don’t think about Rys, I tell myself. My last glimpse of the Light Fae was as he fell beneath the weight of Melisandre’s personal guard.
I couldn’t save him. I have to focus on the ones that I can.
Once I’ve proved to myself that Nine is completely still and unmoving but otherwise okay, I turn to my other two passengers and get a huge surprise.
My mother is awake.
My father… isn’t.
He looks bad. Like, really bad. In the Fae Queen’s Court, I compared my father to Rys. His skin wasn’t as bronze as the other Light Fae. It was still a few shades darker than my pale tone.
Now, he’s lost any color that he had.
What’s going on?
When I stole them away from Melisandre’s throne room, they were statues just like Nine. The spell on them seems to have failed now that we’re back in the human world. Though Ash looks like hell on the floor, his body is relaxed into a totally different position than it had been.
He’s not frozen. Neither is Callie.
What’s going on?
My mother has a dazed expression on her face as she slowly pulls herself into a sitting position. Her long white-blonde hair falls forward, a curtain that covers her shocky face. She shoves it over one shoulder, glancing around, her brow furrowing as she looks at our dingy surroundings. It’s dark in here, the only light coming in through the shuttered windows, and she’s obviously confused.
