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I know the second her gaze falls on the Light Fae lying on his side, his eyes closed, his chest still. Is he breathing? I… I can’t tell and, hovering near the frozen Nine, I can’t find the balls to check.
“Ash?”
She crawls over to him, reaching for him but not quite touching him. Her fingers are shaking, her eyes big and wild in her pretty face. Even as she rears back, her expression accusing, she’s still so very lovely.
“He’s… what did you do to him? Who are you?”
Isn’t that a loaded question?
I can’t bring myself to answer her. Not yet. A lump lodges in my throat as I gape like a fish. Finally, because I can’t help but quail under the fierce yet frightened look on her face, I say, “I didn’t have any choice. I had to bring him through the portal.”
“Portal?” she echoes. “What kind? You don’t look like one of his people.”
No. I don’t. Face to face with the mother I lost when I was one-year-old—looking at the woman I was convinced up until recently had abandoned me—there’s no denying that I look like her.
Same delicate features. Same pale hair that falls in a straight sheet, though hers just about hits her elbows so it’s longer than mine. Same blue eyes that are in abject disbelief of what we’re seeing.
Shit, give or take a couple of years, we’re the same age.
I gulp. “I’m half,” I tell her, not ready to admit that I’m only half because of her. “But that’s not the way we came here. I shade-walked with you guys to save you.”
Her eyes are drawn back to her mate, to my dad, as she shudders out a breath.
“Why would you do that? Iron always made him sick, but Ash got used to it. Shadow travel, though? He’s a Light Fae. Part of the Seelie. And no Seelie can survive walking through an Unseelie portal.”
My stomach stinks.
Oh, no. Did I just kill my dad?
“I didn’t know,” I blurt out, dropping to my knees at her side. “I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know what she would’ve done to you guys if I left you behind.”
“She?” My mother doesn’t stop running her hands over him as if, some way, that’ll help revive him. Except for the tiniest flutters of his eyelashes, he’s as still as Nine. “The last thing I remember is being dragged in front of the Fae Queen. Who are you?” she asks again. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”
Somehow, telling this young-looking woman that I’m her twenty-one-year-old daughter doesn’t seem like it would go over so well.
First, Ash.
First, we have to save my dad.
“Here. Let me. I did this to him… maybe I can help.”
The shadows answer to me. If they’re hurting him because he’s a Light Fae like Rys, maybe I can do something to fix him. Mimicking the other woman, I place my hands over his middle, letting out a sharp curse when his body just… it bucks. A quick jerk, his body bowing as he rises a few inches off of the floor before slamming down on his back.
His eyelids flutter again, then he goes motionless.
Right over his belly, there’s a ray of golden light that expands to a softball-sized circle.
My mother gasps. Reaching down, she grabs one of his limp hands in hers, squeezing it tight. “Ash! Ash, sweetheart! It’s me, Callie!”
He doesn’t answer.
“Do it again,” she pleads. “Whatever you did, please do it again.”
“I’ll try.”
When I lay my hands over him again, he doesn’t react, though the golden glow seems to spread a little further. Frustrated, afraid, and panicking, it hits me that the leather might be holding me back. It’s a cover, an added layer of protection, but could it be affecting me pulling on the shadows?
Only one way to find out.
