Page 28 of Faerie Hunted

I couldn't look away from him. He was the single source of air in this desolate place.

The fae light behind him turned his hair into glinting gold but none of the warmth extended to his eyes. They were as frigid as glaciers as he stared at me.

“I really thought after everything we've been through we were finally at a point where we could be honest with each other. Didn’t you promise me, Tavi? Did you say you wouldn’t lie to me anymore?”

“Mike, I’m so sorry?—”

He cut me off with a sweep of his hand. “I don’t understand why you stole theImperiumand teamed up with a witch. At this point, that’s not even the real issue for me. You kept it from me. You put me at a disadvantage not only with us but with the premier and the Elder Council. I needed leverage and you knocked my legs out from under me.”

“Give me the chance to explain,” I urged, then reeled backward from the woozy feeling in my skull. “I-I met Barbara before I entered the Fae Academy, because I needed a potion to suppress my shifter side. I had to steal theImperiumfor her as payment.”

He shook his head. “At this point…I’m not sure what to think or how to feel about you. It seems like every time I think we’ve turned a corner, there’s another secret, another lie. You’re not the woman I thought you were.”

The kicker of the matter was that he spoke the truth. “If I tell you this is the last one?” I asked meekly.

“Then I’d tell you I’m at a point where I can’t believe you about anything.” He abruptly turned on his heel and left.

I stared after him long after the lights went out again, and Barbara, in the nicest thing she’d ever done for me, kept her mouth shut.

8

The lights the guards used were extinguished, Barbara and I the only two prisoners this deep in the dungeons, and everyone was content to let us rot.

In the oppressive cells, time became impossible to track. It might have been two hours or it might have been two days.

There were no meals to mark the passage of time and no sunlight to indicate day or night.

Nothing, no one.

Only guilt and terror, which had to be the point. My swimmy-headedness increased, and more often than not I fell asleep and woke up sicker than when I’d dropped off.

Without Baldric to give me transfusions, I’d get worse. And worse.Not like it matters. At this point, the clock only counted down toward an inevitable end.

They were not letting us out of here, and by lying to Mike, I’d alienated the only person who might save me.

“That handsome blond boy is my daughter’s son, is he not? Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing with my grandson?” Barbara asked with an incredulous whisper. “The two of you seem mighty cozy.”

“It’s none of your business,” I snapped, sucking air in through my nostrils. Nothing helped the queasiness.

“Seems as though it’s absolutely my business. He’s my flesh and blood. I’m well within my rights to worry about him.”

“I’m not willing to talk about it, then. Mike and I are friends.” We were more than friends but like hell I’d tell Barbara.

“Friends, absolutely. That’s a fine word for it. I might not know about your life but I understand people, and that boy is my kin. He’s got the same kind of blood I do, hiding behind a thin veil of nobility. Makes sense you’d find each other. Given whoyouare.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She laughed at me. “You’ll find out eventually, girl. They always do.”

I tried to answer her, to assure her of Mike’s genuinely good heart, and found my throat had closed again. I gasped, desperately trying to suck in enough oxygen.

“You’re not feeling well. What’s wrong?”

I slammed my palm into my chest, hard enough to dislodge whatever had congested my throat, and coughed until tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

The coughing only exacerbated the nausea until I found myself curled on the floor, dry heaving. There was nothing to puke up. Nothing in my system to come out.

My head spun around in endless circles.

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