Chapter 42
I ’m halfway across the cove, energy pulsating through me, when Malia wails.
“No,” she cries out. “No, please!”
Nolan stands over her, a bundle held tightly against his chest, Charlie still wrestling with Malia on the ground. Triumph accelerates through my veins. He did it. My husband did it. He got our son back.
Tears of joy stream down my face, and I can almost feel him—my son, cradled in my arms, pressed against my chest, his tiny hand wrapped around my little finger.
But then Nolan’s head tilts upward, and his gaze meets mine. There’s no triumph written on my husband’s face. Only the slight furrow of his brow and the tensing of his lips into a hard line, a mouth that cannot bring itself to utter even a silent goodbye.
Pain ripples across my husband’s face.
And then he turns, our child in his arms, and runs.
Something primal overtakes my bones, my muscles.
Faintly, as I pass Maddox and Charlie, still pinning Malia to the ground, I hear her wails. Her pleas for her son.
On the ground is a shiny black object. Charlie must have dropped it in the struggle. Thanks to the agility afforded me by Malia’s potion, I hardly have to slow my run to crouch and pluck it from the ground, tucking it into Malia’s satchel.
I don’t dare to look at my friends, my vision homed in on my husband’s back, threatening to disappear into the distance.
Soon, Malia’s wails fade, the wind coming off over the cove whipping past my ears, through my hair.
I am a gazelle. No, a lioness, and my husband has taken my cub.
Though he starts out a shadow at the far reaches of my vision, his form grows larger as I close the distance between us. Whatever potion is pumping through my veins has not only closed the gap of speed between me and my fae husband, but overcome it.
It’s not long before I overtake him. With a shove of my foot against a tilted boulder, I launch myself into the air and onto his shoulders, my arms wrapping around his neck.
Nolan grunts, grasping at my wrist with his hook, his hand occupied with holding our son to his chest. He tugs, but I maneuver around it. Nolan shouts, but where he could dig his hook into the flesh of my wrist and rip my grip from his throat, he hesitates, unwilling to truly hurt me.
“Darling—” he gasps, my grip tightening around his throat.
“ Just give me my baby! ” I scream.
“Darling, this isn’t you. This is the bargain.”
It hits me then. He’s right. This instinct—it isn’t my motherly instinct at all, but an instinct of the Sister’s. It’s wound itself up within the agony of losing my son, and I can’t distinguish the two.
My husband gasps between breaths. “Darling, trust me.”
“I do!” I cry, but I don’t know how to stop. My grip only pulls tighter around his neck. As if my limbs are no longer my own, but carried along on the string’s end by the Sister.
Please, please, just get me off of you , I want to say, but I can’t make myself form the words.
Nolan stumbles backward, but he doesn’t fall. Not yet.
After a moment, I wonder if this is it. I wonder if, after he blacks out, I’ll kill him first—before taking our child. If the draw the bargain holds over me is so all-consuming, I’ll do anything to keep him from getting in the way of handing my child over to the Sister.
But then Nolan shocks me.
He drops our baby.
My heart stops in my chest.
Nolan’s hand, the one that had only moments ago held our baby safe, reaches up and grabs both of my wrists. The strength of Malia’s potion temporarily fails me, my entire body shaking, going limp.
Nolan dropped our baby.
I snarl, and it’s as if a bear rears up within me. I let out an angry roar, ripping myself from Nolan’s grasp and pushing myself off his back. He stumbles forward, and I lunge for our child.
The night is quiet. Panicked, I thirst for the sound of my child’s screams.
My child isn’t crying. Why isn’t he crying?
Again, something is wrong. Again, I’m being tricked.
I glance down at the bundle on the ground, then at Nolan. Time stops as instead of lunging for our child, he lunges for me.
I’m faster. I turn on my heel and run, expecting the distance I’m placing between the bundle and myself to be agonizing.
It isn’t.
My confidence grows with every step as I race toward the opposite end of the cove, and Nolan’s footsteps follow me.
Because that bundle on the ground is not my child.
Wasn’t it strange, that Maddox had been the one to stay behind with me? It would have made more sense, tactically, for him and Nolan to go after Malia, and leave Charlie to tend to me. She is human, after all.
My mind races back to Charlie’s reaction to finding out I was pregnant. She was so distraught, but resolved at the same time, committed to making sure nothing happened to my child.
And then there was the moment when Kendra had told me to leave the room, so they could discuss the location of the safe house. I had assumed that was all they were doing, keeping their plans from me. But there was more to the plan. There had always been more to the plan.
Had Nolan and Charlie discussed this before we ever went to meet Kendra?
Halfway between where I left the others and where I attacked Nolan, a figure comes into focus in the distance.
It hits me then. The Sister had probably already planned this. The potion in Malia’s satchel—it had made me her failsafe, in case Malia failed.
After all, I’m the one compelled under the bargain. Just like Malia said.
I will my legs to stop, to turn around, to at least slow down so that Nolan can catch up to me. But my body is not my own anymore.
It never has been.
Charlie is at the edge of the water. There’s an inlet that journeys into the ocean, and a boat waiting for her. She’s throwing her satchel into it, holding another bundle in her arms as she pushes the boat from the shore.
“Charlie,” I say, my voice sounding much too innocent for what the Sister has planned for me.
She turns, snapping her neck toward me. “You’re not supposed to be here. Where’s Nolan?” she says, her eyes darting around us, scanning the area.
“He’ll catch up soon enough,” I say, breath heaving as I stumble forward.
Charlie takes a step back, her legs hitting the edge of the boat. It sways in the water.
“You need to turn around,” she says.
“This was what you were planning the entire time, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Nolan was never going to leave me. He never could have gone through with what we had planned.”
“You have to understand,” says Charlie. “We trust you. But?—”
“But you can’t trust me. Because I’m under the Sister’s bargain.”
“Yes,” says Charlie. “I meant what I said. I won’t let anything happen to him. While I can’t ever promise to give him the life you would have, I will do my absolute best. He will always be loved. And protected.”
“You were going to leave without saying goodbye,” I say.
Charlie offers me a pained smile.
“Goodbye, Winds,” she says, and then steps into the boat.
Charlie sets my son—sleeping soundly—into a bassinet woven of straw, already secured in the boat.
She pushes it off and into the water.
Vaguely, I feel my fingers twist at the ties of my satchel.
“Charlie.” I mean it as a warning. As a plea. Look back here. See what I’m doing.
But still, even knowing the bargain I’m under, when Charlie looks up at me, all she hears is a friend saying goodbye.
“I’ll miss you too, Win?—”
A shot fires, cracking through the night.
Charlie falls, the back of her head hitting the side of the boat, and slumps into the water.
Agony rips through me. But as I stumble forward, the smoke of the pistol swaying up from my hand through the wind, I find myself stepping over her, barely sparing her a glance.
Faintly, I hear the water lap against the side of the boat.
My child calls out to me, and I draw my little boy into my arms at last.