I glance over at him. “You know, I haven’t figured out what it’s supposed to be yet.”
“Yours.” And that’s all he says about that before he glances around the room. I know he can pick up every detail. The Shadow Man from my childhood had always amazed me with how well he could see in the dark. “Is this where you ran off to after you sent me away?”
I shrug, tucking Nine’s scarf thing against my side so it’s next to me. “Yes.”
“Alone?”
I might have fudged my promise to Lina that I would stay away from Nine, but she had to have known that the lure of the fae is almost impossible to resist. That doesn’t mean I’m going to break another promise. Because she probably did know that Nine’s my weakness, she got me to swear not to tell the Dark Fae about her.
“Yeah. Who else would have come with me?”
He doesn’t have an answer.
“You shouldn’t be here. I can sense traces of Rys’s power inside. There’s not enough iron to shield you if he comes looking for you.”
“I thought you told me he couldn’t. Wasn’t that the whole reason why you had to touch me? To get rid of Rys and his awful peach?”
“He won’t need his brand to track you down here,” Nine says pointedly. “I know what this place is. Once he realizes that you were foolish enough to return, he’ll find you without any help.”
Was it foolish to come here? Oh, yeah. I’ve thought the same thing a hundred times since I first snuck inside of the abandoned house. Didn’t stop me, though.
I never figured Rys would care enough to track me down at this place. Foolish? Nah. That was just stupid.
I should’ve known better. Rys is fae. Seelie. He might’ve left me alone all those years between the first time he asked me to dance, and then when I actually fell for it when I thought I was dreaming, but something’s changed since then.
He wants me to be his ffrindau. I don’t honestly think he’s going to give me up as easily as that, even if I’d deluded myself into thinking he would.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper into the dark room, hugging myself. It feels so good to be able to admit that to anyone, even if it’s to Nine. Carolina has this idea that the Shadow is fearless—but Riley definitely isn’t. “Of Rys. For years, just thinking about him made me want to puke, I was so scared. But now… I’m afraid because, when he’s there, I’m not scared anymore. It probably doesn’t even make sense. I’m so damn tired and… I don’t know—”
“It’s the glamour,” Nine murmurs softly.
I glance up at him. He’s moved away from me, going just beyond the open window. The moonlight streaming in bathes him in an otherworldly glow that makes him even more beautiful.
Damn it.
This was a bad idea. A really fucking awful one.
He’s a distraction I don’t need. So gorgeous it hurts, and a temptation that makes me want to do all the wrong things.
It would be worth it, too.
Wait. He said something. I confessed how conflicted I’ve been over Rys these last few days, and then—
“I’m sorry.” My hand creeps up to my head. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear, I ask, “What was that?”
“The glamour,” Nine says again. “Some humans are immune to it. Your mother was. It’s one of the reasons she caught your father’s attention in the first place.”
Callie. My mother. The woman who, for reasons I still don’t know, met with Nine at an abandoned gas station, begged him to watch over me, then left me behind while she just… disappeared.
The human woman who created a child with a fae, only to leave her at the mercy of the Fae Queen.
Me.
“So it’s true then. My father… he was like you.”
Nine doesn’t react. If he’s surprised that I came to that conclusion based on his comment, he doesn’t show it.
Or maybe he saw my pointed ear when I tucked my hair out of my face.