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I grip the glove by the tips of the fingers on my left hand, yanking on the thumb then the other four before quickly peeling the leather off. It’s musty in this empty, quiet room, but it’s chilly, too, and I feel it on the mottled, clammy skin.
Quickly, quickly, I pull off the second glove.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I notice that she recoils when she sees my bare hands.
If I wasn’t so desperate to fix my mistake, that might have hurt. Me? I’m used to my ruined hands. And she might be my mother, but we’re as much strangers as we are blood.
I’ll deal with that later. Right now? I have to figure out a way to save my father.
Oh, this is so freaking weird. I have a dad.
I don’t even have to touch him. I feel an answering tug in my gut as I reach for the shadows that I can sense burrowing deep inside of him. It’s hard to explain how it feels. Almost like a prickle against my skin, an itch I can’t scratch. I take a deep breath and grab it.
They come flying toward me, wrapping my hands, hiding them from sight as Ash starts to glow like he’s on fire.
It only lasts for a moment. As the bright, golden light spreads across his long, lean body, it reaches a fever pitch before dimming just as suddenly. He gasps, though his eyes are still closed, and he shudders before his breath levels out. He’s still not as dark of a bronze shade as… as Rys is—was?—but he’s got some color back.
Thank God.
He’s breathing. It’s something. He’s asleep now, and he probably needs it, but he’s alive and I tell Callie as much as I sit back on my heels.
Even though the shadows are covering my hands, almost like they’re make-shift gloves, I grab my discarded ones and hurriedly slip them back on.
Callie places her palm on the top of Ash’s head, running her fingers through the tawny hair that’s fanned out beneath him like a pillow. Her stricken look of fear has faded to one of pure relief as she finally tears her gaze away from him, glancing over at me.
“Thank you. For saving him.”
“I had to.” And not just because his near-death experience is totally my fault. “He’s my… he’s my father.”
Her eyes widen and her mouth opens. Her head tilts just enough to make it clear that she’s taking all of me in. As if, for the first time since she came out from under the Fae Queen’s spell, she’s actually seeing me.
“Zella?” she whispers.
Oof.
“It’s Riley, actually.” And, okay, my quick answer is probably a bit cheeky. I can’t help it. I’ve never been good with my emotions and, well, how am I supposed to react, coming face to face with the mother I thought was long gone? “The first
foster home I went to, they changed my name.”
Her voice breaks a little as she echoes, “Foster home?”
“No mom. No dad.” I shrug. “I had to go somewhere, right?”
Her forehead furrows, faint wrinkles pulling on her brow as she asks me softly, “How old are you, Riley? How long has it been since the soldiers tried to take my baby from us?”
I’d been wondering how long it would take before she asked that question—and hoping against hope that I’d never have to answer it.
So, of course, it’s the first thing she asks.
The lump in my throat seems to grow a little bigger. My baby… that’s right. Because the last time we were together, I was a little butterball baby and she was running for her life, driving a stolen car that eventually ended up abandoned—along with me in the backseat—outside of a rundown gas station when the fae caught up with her.
That was twenty years ago.
“I turned twenty-one last summer,” I tell her. “You were lost in Faerie for twenty years.”
2
My mother—Callie—is staring at me. I can feel it and, now that my heart has stopped racing and I’m sure that my father—Ash—is going to be okay, I purposely avoid her open attention.
