Page 100 of The Spider Queen
“Thisisme, Hunter.” Fury bubbled inside my body threatening to erupt.
“You’re feelingThane’srage Poppy, not yours. Look at me.”
I forced myself to stare into his eyes.
Blue again, like the sky. Not black, and no longer rippling with hidden depths.
“Come back,” he coaxed. He wrapped one hand around the side of my neck and pressed his forehead to mine while his other hand enclosed my wrist in supplication.
But the wrath wasn’t my own, and neither was the strength that came with it. It flowed out of my fingertips, making me grip Hunter’s throat tighter.
It wasn’t until he was gasping for air and turning red that I released him. The anger drained out of me, leaving me appalled at my actions.
“Hunter, God, I—”
“It’s okay, Poppy,” he wheezed, taking a sip from his bottle of water. He cleared his throat, drawing my attention to the blotchy column of skin, bruises already forming.
“It’s not okay,” I breathed, defeat heavy in my tone. “This isn’t okay at all.”
“What were you dreaming about?” he asked.
“It wasn’t a dream,” I said. “I was with Thane. In his prison.”
“Oh.”
I shook my head. “He’s the one I’ve been drawing. You didn’t know?”
“No. I mean, I suspected—”
“Of course you did.”
“Poppy, you don’t understand. There haven’t been any visuals of Thane…until your drawings.”
I frowned. “How is that possible? Didn’t the other flower women dream of him? Draw him?”
“I don’t know if they did or not,” he admitted.
“I find it really hard to believe that I’m the first—”
“Did you find your stay in the psych ward fun?”
I blinked, momentarily thrown by his question. “Fun? Are you kidding? It was hell.”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay. It was hell, but I was able to get you out. Do you know what it was like for the mentally ill only a hundred years ago?”
My shoulders sagged. “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” he repeated. “We’re still not at a time in history where people know what todowith people who have schizophrenia or other personality disorders. I suspect no one documented what Thane looked like because if they had, they would’ve been committed. Not to mention that over the past few hundred years many of the flower women didn’t even have access to paper or pencils.”
“I didn’t even think what this could’ve been like for them, in their time.” I paused in thought. “Thane told me he’d been in his prison for hundreds of years.”
“Yes.”
“He must be a very old being.”
“Fishing for information?”
“Definitely.”
