25. Chapter Twenty-Five
~Evalina~
My mother’s eyes stayed closed while Felix let me into her room, but as soon as he disappeared out the door, her eyelids sprang open and she assessed me with a vigour I hadn’t seen in her expression in months.
“You’ve been keeping things from me, Lina! Who is that man?”
Where did I even begin? I decided to start with the basics as I sat next to her on the bed, reaching out to place my palm on her forehead. Rather than being cool to the touch as it had been, a healthy warmth greeted my hand. “His name is Felix.”
“He told me that much when he introduced himself to me last night. Where on earth did he come from? How did you meet him? Where are we now? I’ve never seen anything like this place. Your father would have loved this.”
He really would have, but I could barely focus on that as I took in my mother. A rosier pallor brightened her skin and she seemed to have much more energy. She hadn’t put so many words together in a long time and my heart quickened with hope. “You seem to be feeling better.”
“Don’t ignore my questions!” She fixed me with a pointed glare before her expression softened into a smile. “But, yes, I feel much better.”
Why would that be the case? Had something in Etta been making her sick in the first place? Did simply taking her away from it make such a difference?
“He’s a werewolf,” I explained, not sure if she would even know the word. I hadn’t until I saw it in Tarron’s box, but my father clearly knew about them, and nothing in my mother’s expression suggested confusion. Surprise, certainly, but not confusion. “He’s from… well, here, apparently. This is his home. And I met him…”
I trailed off, not knowing how much information to share. If I told her I’d gone through the portal on my own to find a cure for her, she’d be furious, and I didn’t need to upset her when she was making such good progress. I decided to stick to a half-truth instead.
“He came to Etta looking for a thief and Tarron captured him. I was sent to take him food in the pens.”
I looked down as I picked up her wrist to check her pulse but really, I just didn’t want her to figure out how much I’d left out.
It didn’t work, since she immediately had suspicions. “How come he’s not in the pens anymore?”
Thankfully, a knock at the door saved me from having to answer that question, and I called out, “Come in,” expecting it to be Felix.
Nothing happened, and a moment later, the knock repeated.
Maybe he didn’t hear me, so I got up and opened the door, finding not Felix at all but a young woman around my age with a tray on wheels full of delicious-smelling food. I stepped back out of the way as she pushed it through the door. Although not nearly as tall as Felix, she still towered over me, probably at least a foot taller than I was.
Once inside, she glanced around, her brow knit and her lips pursed. “Hello?”
“Hello.” I came out from beside the door to stand right in front of her. “I’m Evalina. Did Felix send you?”
She continued to look around, looking straight through me and past my mother on the bed before shrugging and walking back out, leaving the tray with us.
“She can’t see us,” my mother reminded me, figuring it out before I did. “Only people who have been to our realm can see us in the terrestrial world.”
“I totally forgot about that,” I admitted. My father used to tell me stories of the mischief fae got up to in the terrestrial world, just for fun, since they couldn’t be seen.
How I wished he could have been there to come with us on this adventure.
“Back to Felix,” my mother prompted. “Why did he bring us here?”
I turned to the tray that had been left for us. The smell of the food was like nothing I’d ever experienced: savory, warm, and rich, and my stomach growled in appreciation. My last meal had been an awfully long time ago, and I couldn’t even remember the last time someone else had cooked for me. “Maybe we should eat some of this food, it looks amazing.”
“Evalina.”
Sugarlumps. When my mother used my full name, she meant business.
Turning back to face her, I offered her a sheepish shrug. “Felix escaped from the pens. When Tarron found out, he blamed me and Jermyn and imprisoned us both. Felix came back with his friends and broke me out.”
She absorbed all of that information remarkably calmly. “Prince Tarron won’t be pleased that you were taken.”
The thought sent an unpleasant pang of anxiety through me. If Tarron managed to track me down, what would he do? Would Felix and his pack be in danger because of me? Felix didn’t seem worried but he didn’t know Tarron as well as I did.
“No, he won’t be, but I’m hoping that…”
“Good,” she interrupted before I could finish. “He needs to learn that he can’t always get his way.”
Her words stunned me into silence, mostly because I’d never heard my mother whisper a word against any of the royal family. Not even after my father’s punishment.
One side of her mouth crooked up in a wry smile. “We aren’t in Etta anymore, are we? We can finally speak freely.”
I offered my tentative agreement, still a little shocked. “I suppose so.”
“I don’t like the way he looks at you,” she added bluntly.
“Felix?”
“No,” she chided, shaking her head with a smile. “Tarron. The way Felix looks at you… well, that’s something altogether different.”
What did that mean? Before I could ask, the man himself reappeared, knocking softly on the door before letting himself in.
“Am I interrupting?” His eyes darted back and forth between my mother and me curiously. “Have you eaten? What can I do to help?”
“We haven’t eaten yet,” my mother answered smoothly, as if we hadn’t just been talking about him behind his back. “The food isn’t like anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“Right.” He shook his head, as if he were disappointed with himself for not anticipating that. “Let me show you what we’ve got.”
He pushed the tray closer to the bed, explaining each of the dishes and sharing his favourites. His attention remained mostly on my mother, but every now and then, his eyes slid over to meet mine, a smile brightening his face and showing off a sweet dimple in his cheek. My stomach fluttered at the sight.
I felt something when he looked at me, that couldn’t be denied, but I assumed it stemmed from his raw masculinity and how different he was to anyone else I’d ever met. Although, once I thought about it further, I realized I didn’t feel the same thing when Vaughan or Darius looked at me and they were just as masculine and exotic as Felix.
Did this fluttering deep in my belly actually mean something? Had my mother seen something I missed?
Would I be crazy for hoping she might be right?