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Nox takes a step forward, pushing me back. I struggle and try to swing at him with my free hand, but he only catches that wrist too, wrapping his cold fingers around my skin.
It doesn’t make sense. Nox is fae, but I’ve been raised in the presence of fae all my life. They heal fast, but notthatfast. And the way he appeared in front of me—stopped my path.
I’ve never seen a fae move like that.
“What are you?” I whisper.
His eyes twinkle as he pushes me back into the dungeon, catching the door behind him with his foot and pulling it closed.
Locking me in here with him.
I’ve been alone with Nox before, of course. But not like this. Not after I’ve stabbed him, and with him looking at me like he’s going to…
Like he’s going to…
No, fae don’teatpeople.
“Don’t bother answering,” I say in a desperate attempt to regain my footing. “I know exactly what you are.”
Nox cocks his head, and the slight movement is terrifyingly predatory. “Is that so?”
“Keeping innocent girls down in the dungeon, torturing people who don’t deserve it? All so you can please that wretched queen of yours. You’re a coward.”
I expect him to flinch, but he doesn’t. If anything, he looks relieved that I don’t actually know why he heals so quickly, why he moves like a shadow.
“Coward?” It’s like he’s tasting the word on his tongue as his fingers loosen around my wrists. “An interesting accusation coming from someone who shape-shifts into a lunatic every full moon. Tell me, did you ever think to inform your darling princeling whatyouare?”
The knot that’s been rubbing a callus in my gut since the night I woke soaked in Ellie’s blood starts to swell. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows why I ended up in the dungeons of Othian castle. His queen would have done her research, passed what she knew on to him.
“Guess we’re both cowards then, aren’t we?” he says, his fingers finally releasing their grip on my wrists. He doesn’t move though. Doesn’t widen the space between us. And I realize then that I’m still pressed up against his chest, that he’s backed me all the way to my dais that looks more like a sacrificial altar.
When he goes to leave, he turns his back to me, and it’s like he’s delivered a blow to my gut. Because I realize then that there’s no escaping this place. I don’t know what he is, but whatever dark powers he possesses, he knows there’s nothing I can do to him, even with his back exposed.
“Oh, and Blaise?” he says as he shuts the door to the dungeon behind him.
“Mhm?”
“If I were you, I’d rethink referring to myself as innocent.”
He’s talking about Cinderella, about the harm I did to Ellie by not going directly to Evander when I realized I’d been infected by magic.
Innocent.
But as Nox disappears up the dank stone staircase, it’s not Ellie’s blood on my shirt I smell. It’s not the sounds of her groans that I hear.
It’s a little girl in a dark closet, biting her lip to keep from crying out in pain. It’s the smell of innocence lost and the stinging of tears in the eyes of a child who did not understand, but now does.
And because I can’t stand to think of that foolish little girl, I keep her in that pantry, and I don’t let her out.
CHAPTER7
NOX
Three bones float in my tomato stew. One is from the leg of a rather scrawny chicken. One is the finger-bone of some sort of marsupial.
The other hails from the wing of a bat.
Abra claims that it’s Simeon’s idea to decorate the stew with bones. That the marrow seeps into the broth, enhancing the flavor.
