Page 94 of What Fools These Immortals Be
I do not understand why I am not locked up like they are. I grimace when my rib knits back together and then again when I realise I will have to fix my shoulder myself before it can truly heal.
It takes no little effort to sit up, to adjust my arm with my clumsy left hand and then shove it back into the socket. These last hundred years have been comfortable, I realise, when I almost cry out at the shock of pain. This would not have fazed me a century before that.
“Why haven’t they locked me up?” I ask. I don’t know that Reijo will know, but talking is better than letting my mind spin out of control.
“You know why,” he replies.
I get to my feet, and some of the other fae shrink back, but he doesn’t. There’s some anger in him that wasn’t there before.
“They want me to feed from you.”
“Hewants you to drain us,” Reijo corrects. “And then he’ll kill you.”
Their blood will make me strong, though, and there’s a chance I could escape.
Except that would mean leaving them behind. And I don’t know that itwillmake me stronger, either. Tamesis had fae blood, but from what kind of fae? Will a selkie’s blood help me in the way a high fae’s blood would?
“You’re thinking about it,” Reijo says, accusation colouring his voice.
“I’m thinking about the fact that it wouldn’t help anyway.” I move my arm and my shoulder aches. I can take a lot more damage than that before I’m too hungry to function and fall to bloodlust, but if they’re really intent on it… “If they keep injuring me, there might be nothing I can do.”
“But right now?”
I sigh and settle on the floor a few feet away from him. The fae next to him lets out a whimper, but I ignore her. I’m not going to hurt her. “Right now, I’m not hungry. We need to find a way out of here.”
Reijo scoffs. “We can’t. There’s no way out.”
There has to be a way out. I can’t risk Maurice ending up here. He’s not prepared to deal with this fae.
“We have to,” I say and shake my head when he starts to speak again, cutting him off. “No. Listen. I need to know everything you saw, heard, or felt since you got here. Before that, even. How did they get you in the first place?”
Reijo sighs, limbs going lax in their bindings. “Fine,” he mutters. “It was yesterday. I was at Beyond the Veil.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maurice
GrantwaylaysmebeforeI can leave the next night. The sun went down half an hour ago, so I think I’m pushing it, but he’s already in the hallway when I drag myself out of the living room, planted firmly between me and the door.
I’d shove past him, but there are dark shadows under his eyes, and I have the distinct feeling he didn’t sleep at all today.
“Go shower,” he says, no room in his tone for argument. Not that I want to. I make my way slowly up the stairs and am dismayed to realise what a good idea this is once the warm spray is raining down on me.
Everything still aches, but now it’s more annoying than painful. Except for my centre. My magic. It pulses with pain, with loss, and I wonder if things were this intense the first go around.
I can hardly remember. I remember the bloodlust, the desperate need to hunt, and yes,realisingmy magic was gone, but the true grief of it came after all that. Too distracted by all the new things my body was going through, I hardly noticed at first, in truth.
Things are different now. I can focus on nothing but the fact that my magic is gone—except then I remember that Njáll is missing, too, and I scrub my hair quickly, scowling at nobody.
How could I forget, even for a moment? I need to find him, and it is going to be so much more difficult now that I am just a regular vampire again.
I need help.
And I cannot ask the Hunt for it. I should not even be here.
I dress quickly when I am finished in the shower, then snatch up the bag I left here weeks ago. Grant is still waiting by the door when I come down the stairs, and I sigh when my feet hit the floor.
“I need to go.”
