Rough, like snapping the brittle neck of a sixteen-year-old girl like it was a twig.
Rough, like using food to control a twenty-year-old woman, and allowing her to waste away to nothing.
Rough, like sending soldiers after a young mother and her fae mate because a prophecy had your panties in a twist.
Nine might be cold, he might be guarded, but at least he’d never been rough. That caress across my cheek that night in the sewer was as loving a touch as I’ve ever had. And he’s fae.
Is that his nature?
Thinking about how his touch made me feel as he drew the peach’s poison out is so much better than focusing on what happened to Carolina. What if—
I shove up my sleeve and hold my arm out. “Touch me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying—”
Oh, yes. Yes, I do. “I won’t command you, but I’m asking you to. Do it. Touch me. I don’t care how you do it, just take the pain away. Glamour doesn’t work, okay, but what about compelling me? If you’re all I care about, then it won’t matter that someone else I cared about is dead.”
My mom.
Madelaine.
Carolina.
They’re all gone. And I’m still standing here.
Nine’s not. Not anymore. As if he expects me to lunge toward him and grab his hand in mine, he backs away until a couple of feet separate us.
And then he tells me no.
“If I could, I would. I’d do anything for you, but I can’t do that. Don’t ask it of me.”
“Why not?”
He doesn’t say a word. And it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer, either. He can’t lie and, if he replies, he’d have to tell me the truth.
“Seriously? You want me to suffer? I thought you cared about me.”
“More than you know,” he says, then adds in a harsh aside, “and more than I should.”
I don’t believe that. “If you won’t do it, I could try calling for Rys.”
He knows my true name. If I told him he could touch me, glamour me, compel me, the Light Fae would jump at the offer in a heartbeat. Too bad I’m bluffing. I’ll give permission to Nine, or I’ll give it no one.
But my Shadow Man doesn’t know that.
“You don’t have his name.”
“Do you?”
Again, Nine clenches his jaw, keeping his mouth shut.
I’ll take that as a yes.
“Use it. Call him for me. Arrange for him to come in the morning, I don’t care. I just need someone who will make this all go away.”
“So instead of letting me help you in the ways that I can, you’d ask me to give you up to Rys? After all these years of paying my debt, of protecting the Shadow, of waiting for my—” He cuts off his words with a furious shake of his head. His hair whips around a face that is suddenly beautiful and terrible. “I think you want me to suffer.”
“Hey! Don’t throw my words back at me.”