Chapter Thirty-Eight
I was shivering violently before I’d even fully regained consciousness.
Cold. It’s cold. It’s so cold it’s so cold.
I couldn’t catch my breath. The air felt like sharp icicles stabbing into my throat with every shallow inhale. My arms were stuck, up and out like I was waving in the air, and when I tried to move the freezing metal of thick manacles burned my raw skin.
“Oh, he’s awake!”
The Carlin’s raspy voice made me tense as I blinked open my eyes. They felt stuck together with ice. I blinked rapidly to try and clear my blurry vision, my teeth chattering from the icy chill hitting my bare chest.
I… I’d been wearing a shirt. I knew I had. And socks, but now my feet were bare and felt frozen solid.
I stared at the Carlin in front of me, her bronze teeth gleaming and her cobalt eye shining brightly, before taking in the room behind her as my breaths shuddered out of me.
I was in her throne room. The huge, cavernous room that had felt cold the last time I’d been here, but now it was like it was made entirely from ice.
Why had she stripped me half naked? I was still wearing trousers, but the leather was stiff and freezing against my skin.
Why had she chained me up?
My breath hitched when I noticed the four figures standing at the back of the vast room, close to the doors. The Carlin’s sons stood in a line, Balor’s blue eyes fixed on me intently, Bres’s bronze teeth gleaming in a vicious smile, Cethlen’s filmy white eyes vacant as he stroked the head of the hellhound in his arms.
And Lonan’s face was a blank mask, but his black eyes burned as they stared at me.
Why wasn’t he helping me?
“Hello, sweet boy.”
The Carlin’s crooning voice jerked my gaze away from him, and I stared at her as she filled my vision, blocking him and everything else out.
“Now, I’m hoping you’ve takensomethingin while you’ve been living on my land like a lazy, greedy little mortal.” She smiled widely, resting an icy cold hand that burned on my bare chest. “Do you know why you’re here? Did you figure it out?”
I didn’t want to answer her. My heart was pounding, and I was shivering so hard that the chains rattled constantly around my wrists. I wanted to look at Lonan again, but I couldn’t see past the Carlin’s pale, cruel face.
“No?” She tutted. “I suppose we were asking a bit much of you. But I was hoping you’dat leastshed your mortal skin on your own. That would have made things much easier.
“Did you at leastsuspect that you were here for a reason? That I hadn’t just been giving you a lovely life among the Folk because your seelie bitch of a mother abandoned you?” She laughed. “No, sweet boy. If I didn’t need you, I would have sent my son to gut you when you were just a boy. But now that we’re finally here, I suppose I can tell you what is in store for you.”
She stepped back, and my eyes immediately flew to Lonan. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore, his face a blank mask of cold indifference. Like seeing me chained up half naked and being taunted by his mother didn’t affect him in the slightest. I couldn’t see the chain of the acorn necklace I’d given him round his pale throat. He wasn’t even wearing it.
“Really, Ash, you’ve made this much harder on yourself. If you’d just shed your mortal skin months ago, my Lonan could have told me and this would have been far less painful.”
My breath caught, like ice stabbing at my throat. I knew Lonan had been watching me for his mother, and part of that would have been watching to see if I shed my mortal skin. But did that mean… did that mean he’d only gotten closer to me so he might have been there when it happened? So he could have immediately told his mother, for her to carry out whatever she had planned for me?
I still didn’t know what that was, but I knew I was about to find out, because it was happening. I’d run out of time to do it on my own—I’d missed my chance to escape, if shedding my mortal skin would have let me do it.
“Now I have to slough it off you and hope you come out the other end intact, so I can suck up all that seelie power lurking in your veins,” the Carlin said. “We’re not entirely sure if you will survive it, which is why we were hoping you would shed it on your own.”
What? My eyes darted as I frantically tried to understand. Seelie power? I wasn’t unseelie?
Why hadn’t Lonan told me any of this? Why had he let this happen? He had to have known it would come to this when I still hadn’t shed my mortal skin. He had to have known his mother’s plan. Why hadn’t he warned me? I would’ve tried harder.
“I d-don’t understand,” I stuttered. “I t-tried—”
“Not even Lonan fucking him helped.” Balor’s voice was cold and flat, but his eyes gleamed with spiteful glee when I jerked my head up to look at him. “You’d think getting fucked like a dog every night for months by High Fae would have triggeredsomething, but maybe he really is just too dense. All the little trinkets. All those sweet, whispered words.”
Balor grinned at me, sharp and vicious. “Ididwarn you, little boy. Soft feelings and tender words are just tools for us to get what we want. A silly game. And Lonan won.”