Page 119 of I Summon the Sea

But I don’t stop, don’t slow down. Not even when the darakin flows low over me, letting out keening cries. Not when the fae curse me when I jostle them.

My feet feel as if they are on fire. As if I’m walking on crushed glass. As if sharp blades are slicing into them. Limping, I keep moving, refusing to let the pain hold me up. It’s as if something is pulling on the spell, and instead of releasing it, it wraps its net more tightly around me.

Still, I need to get away from this travesty of a festivity—and Jai.

The grand staircase leading down is within reach, I’m almost there, but my legs falter. I make it to the first step and grip the banister as my knees buckle. I stop, panting, my eyes blurring.

Damn.

“Rae, by the Eosphor, I swear…Fuck.” He’s right behind me, and now he goes down three steps, so we are roughly eye-to-eye. “Let me help. Don’t run away.”

Despair bleeds into anger. I gesture at him, not knowing what he can understand from my disjointed, frantic signs, and I have to hope he doesn’t understand anything, because his loyalties aren’t with me.

I have to win, I have to make this work, and I don’t know how! Everything I thought I knew is wrong, and I have no magic, and?—

He catches my hands. “Rae, do you believe in fated mates?”

I yank my hands away and shake my head. The fae are said to have fated bond mates, or so I’ve heard, but as for humans, even humans who have gone through death and returned… I don’t know. Why would he ask me that now? And why does the expression on his face, that mixture of grim determination and longing, remind me so much of my lost love?

“Come to my room,” he says.

What?I shake my head emphatically.No, bad idea, the worst idea, that’s the opposite of what I need?—

“Now.”

But—

“I just saw the king’s page. He’s looking for you. Come with me.”

This time, I don’t object to rushing away from here. I also don’t object when he sweeps me up into his arms, sighing in relief as my weight is lifted off the excruciating pain in my feet.

Accept help where you find it, I tell myself.That doesn’t mean you trust him or feel anything for him.

It doesn’t mean anything at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The moment we’re clear of the staircase and walking down a narrow corridor, I struggle against his hold. He growls at me to settle, but I wiggle until he puts me down.

He sighs. “Rae… Why won’t you accept my help?”

I shake my head.

“You’re light as a feather,” he says, his voice still rough with that growl. “You’re exhausted, and your feet ache, fuck knows why. Did you hurt them after the trial? I thought those healers fixed them up.”

I hadn’t been supposed to stay in this form for so long, but that’s not something I can explain to him, so I just start walking down the corridor, doing my best not to limp. I took the help. It was a moment of weakness, and now the pain is not as bad. I can’t learn to rely on him.

“You’re so fucking stubborn,” he mutters, matching my steps.

Am I? I try to be. I take it as a compliment.

“Too stubborn,” he goes on, and okay, maybe not meant as a compliment. “Would it kill you to let me carry you to my room?”

I whirl on him and glare.I’m not going to your room, I mouth.

He ignores that. “How did you hurt your feet? You got wounded and won’t tell me? Did you step on something sharp? Or is it the Pillar and the magic of the longest night?”

That gives me pause. Could that be the reason why the spell wasn’t undone the moment I fell into the sea, as it was supposed to?

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