Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
BEE
Bloodshot eyes meet mine. Pale shavings of diamonds, reddened by the steady stream of tears.
I can’t look away from the terror in her gaze.
And I have no answer for that silent question.
How the fuck this fae knows my name, my blood, and her name—it scrambles my mind, a whisk battering my brains in a flurry.
The dark male looks down at Tess.
The barrel stays aimed at her, the length of the gun perched on just one muscular arm, as he considers her.
Still, I have no instruction for her.
Her lips quiver, slick with tears, as she lifts her hand—and points right at the net.
Emily is quick to thrash, a string of curses shrieking from the net. “You fucking bitch! She’s lying, she’s a lair!”
I have nothing.
No answers, no schemes, only dread running cold through me.
The male turns his ice gaze on Emily, and that look alone halts her.
The net stills.
Tesni’s finger remains stiff, pointed like a loaded canon at Em, but the rest of her body trembles, a frail twig in a blizzard.
I don’t know if she did the right thing. I don’t know if it’s better to be Tesni right now, or to be Emily.
I don’t know what my fate is with this dark one.
All I know is, distantly in my throbbing head, I need a way out of this. But I can hardly hold my head up from the ground, no more than an inch or so.
The dark one slides his gaze smoothly between them.
My heartbeats thump in my brain, pulsing it against the constraints of my skull. Every pulse strikes my vision, blurs it for a beat, then again and again—and I might be sick all over the ice.
Emily’s whimper comes soft, “She’s lying.”
If I had much awareness in the moment, if I had more fear to spare outside of my own selfishness, then I might cry for her.
“I would expect nothing less from a human,” comes a polished, smooth voice that prickles the hairs up the nape of my neck.
Dare.
The icy male turns at the sound of his voice. His pale eyes are blizzards in the dusky light, and he aims them at the darkness behind me.
A sluggish frown warps my face as I twist until I am flat on my back. The blur of my vision lingers as I turn my gaze to the wisps of darkness untouched by the torchlight.
Dare prowls out from that thick blackness.
The gleam of his eyes, one pale, one gold, are what I notice first. Then comes the smooth marble of his complexion.
He comes to my side—and stops.
Without a glance down at me, he looks between Emily in the net and Tesni shivering on the road. Then he settles his small smirk on the icy male.
Dare’s smirk is born of darkness and curses, and his upper lip curls, as though itching to turn into a snarl and take bites out of us all. “Tesni is indeed a liar.”
“Dare, please—” I’m cut off, harsh, as a snarl rips free from him. It is swift, curt, and aimed down at me, not unlike the serrated edge of a knife.
I flinch into the ice, my toes curled in my boots.
The icy fae speaks as though I have not been silenced, as though danger doesn’t flare in Dare’s conflicting eyes, “You missed your favourite part.”
“The general needed convincing,” Dare answers. “You may assist me—for the price of your steed.”
The ice male tenses.
I cringe back at the sensation of it, like frost creeping over him, ice forming in the air around him.
His grip tightens on the shotgun.
“You are now a foot warrior,” Dare adds, and his slight grin looks more of a grimace. “If you choose to aid me, that is.”
The steady glare of the ice fae prickles through the air. He holds that stare, fingers tight on the shotgun.
I flick my attention to Tesni.
Her gaze is on me already, face wet—and her hand resting, gentle, on the holstered handgun.
My face drains of colour.
Eyes wide, I shake my head, sharp.
Her lashes flutter.
Again, I shake my head, a firm, clear no fucking way.
It’s not that the gun mightn’t be loaded, since she obviously forgot to load her shotgun, and that almost killed us. It’s not that I don’t trust her aim or her. It’s that those measly bullets don’t stand a chance against the fae.
And dark fae are all about revenge. At least Dare is, so much that’s he’s hunted me for it.
The frosty moment between them splinters when Dare lifts his chin in Tesni’s direction. “That one is Tesni.”
The flash of pale eyes turns on her, and she shrinks back into the grill of the car. But the look is only a warning before the male turns the shotgun on Emily—
There’s a cry, a shout, but I don’t know who it comes from before the ice fae fires both shells right into the net.
Silence sweeps the road.
I don’t scream.
Tesni’s shouts are buried in the arms she has crossed over her face, muffling her.
Then comes the blood. Out of the net, a dozen streams of crimson fall to the icy road.
Emily makes no move, no sound at all—and I fleetingly wonder if the first shot killed her or the second.
I blink on my tears.
The icy male tosses the gun aside.
Behind me, Dare drops to a crouch and tugs a rope from his arm. It unravels easily, softly, and thuds to the road before he grabs my wrists.
He pins them to my front, not gently, and manoeuvres me with the rope he’s coiling around my body.
“I am indebted to you,” Dare says and lifts his gaze to the other male.
“Yes,” he answers, coolly.
I drag my gaze to Tesni and find her stare on me.
I mouth, ‘Run.’
Because I cannot.
I am too dazed, too wounded, I won’t make it onto my knees before I crumble.
But she can.
She has a shot.
Tesni’s face twists with a fresh surge of tears. She shakes her head, the denial rooting deep in her.
‘Run.’ My lips curl over the silent order, vicious. ‘Go!’
She drops her head, her grimaced face wobbling with her rising sobs.
But I see it sinking in.
She must go now, or not at all.
She can run, hide, and maybe finish what I started with her—track from a distance, follow in the shadows, and find a way back.
It’s a longshot.
Maybe not a life worth living if she can’t make it to the end, but it must be better than the fate that awaits us with the dark fae.
I dragged her into my slight.
I dragged her to Canada when the threat of the darkness lingered, and I ignored it, let arrogance guide me.
It’s my fault she’s here, trapped on another continent, trapped with these barbaric warriors.
So I give her a chance.
She shifts her weight onto her boots, her cheek turned to me because I know she can’t bring herself to look at me for this.
I twist around in my restraints. “Dare.”
If all I can do is distract them for a moment, distract them enough that Tess can attempt to run, then that is what I will do.
Dare’s face hardens.
The ice male considers me with a distance in him.
“Please, don’t hurt her. Just take me. I’ll come willingly if you let her go—”
Panic strikes me as the ice male rips away from my side.
My voice lifts into a feral scream and I roll onto my side.
The glare of my panicked eyes follows him, the way he moves, like he’s shuddering through the cold air, and before Tesni has even taken a step away from the car, he’s on her.
“Let her go! Let her go!”
My screams go ignored.
The male has Tesni by the neck—and she lifts the handgun, as if to aim it at him, but with a strike of his hand, he smacks it out of her grip.
I thrash against the rope, coiled around me too tight, pinning my arms to my middle.
Dare stays crouched beside me, one hand fisted on the rope as though to let go means to risk my escape, but he watches the other warrior and warns, “Gentle.”
If it gives the ice fae pause, I don’t see it in the way he lifts Tesni off the ground, hand fisted around her throat—and he fucking flips her overhead before bringing her down on the car.
The choke of her landing on the hood is instant.
Her mouth parts around a hacked sound—then silence.
Winded, the heels of her boots kick up the windshield, her arms sprawled over the hood, and her lashes a dazed fluttering.
Dare sighs something soft, something disappointed. “They are a fragile kind, Samick.”
Samick.
His name.
The sound of it has my teeth baring, a silent snarl that morphs into a grimace—and I jolt with the tears rising through me.
Tesni is limp.
I can only stare across the road at her, on her back, arms splayed, mouth parted against air she can’t draw in.
Samick prowls at the nose of the car, his eyes blizzards, hands fisting for a beat. Pure, unfiltered rage pulses through him, a glacier rush in his veins.
He pauses at the handgun on the road, then swipes at it. As he lifts his gaze to Dare, I see the difference in his eyes—no longer frozen blades of grass, but now wholly white, like glacier sheets.
He grips the gun with both hands, then bends.
It snaps in the middle, pieces of metal splintering all over.
Dare hums a curt sound, then tugs the rope coiled around me. “She really shouldn’t have done that.”
I don’t know if he means she shouldn’t have tried to run or shouldn’t have raised the gun to Samick.
The strain of my voice is slick with tears, “What are you going to do to her?”
Dare arches a brow. “Me? Nothing at all.”
My grimace twists. “What’s he going to do to her?”
Dare considers me, a small smile on his rosy mouth. “Samick,” he says, “is going to keep her alive.”
My sob hitches—and I wait for the punchline, the torment, the gory details to come.
But Dare says, “Eamon told me how important your human friend is to you. He was also very eager to strike a bargain with me.”
Tears slick my wavering voice, “What’s the bargain?”
“I bring you back home. Alive. And to do that,” he lifts his gaze to Tesni, “I need her.”
Tesni is insurance.
In Samick’s control, I can’t guarantee her safety. If I run, he’ll kill her.
And if my old friend Eamon really did tell Dare that about me, that my bond with Tesni is of soul love, then he did it for a reason.
I trust Eamon.
He wouldn’t wrong me, not like that.
He did what he thought was right—to protect me.
But it means to be separated from her.
It means to leave her in the clutches of a dark one I do not trust. I don’t trust any of them, but this one…
I shudder at the sight of him.
The light of the torch is distorted. The red hue of Emily’s blood rains over the gleam and splinters the whitish glow over the road.
That glow glistens over his leathers up to the marble cut of his jaw as he considers the stillness of Tesni on the bonnet.
“She is weak,” he says.
Dare lifts his gaze to him, that single gold iris glaring in the dark. “Samick—”
“Perhaps it is best to end her suffering now.”
Dare’s lip curls around his sharp bite. “Since when have you cared about ending the suffering of others?”
The look Samick turns on Dare is enough to chill my insides, and it isn’t even aimed at me. “This one is already dying.”
The panic spears through me. “She can’t breathe. She needs her inhaler.”
Dare drops a frown to me.
Inhaler.
A foreign word to him.
“Remedy,” I say, my gaze pleading with him. “It’s in her pocket—she needs to breathe it in.”
Dare turns his frown to Samick, and it smoothens into a silent request.
Samick’s jaw rolls once, then he shuts his eyes as if to will patience into himself. He fists his hand on the buttons of Tesni’s jacket.
Her reaction is instant.
Her boot slides down the windshield, a lame attempt to push herself away from him as his other hand rummages through her pockets.
I loosen a breath.
She’s awake.
Alive.
Her dazed blue eyes have been shut too long, I didn’t know—but now I do, and I sink into the road that bit more.
Items fall onto the hood, slip off the metal of the car, clatter to the ice. A packet of cigarettes, a lighter, some more shotgun shells, a lip balm—
He tugs out a blue inhaler.
“That’s it!”
He slides a frosty look at me.
“Bring it to her mouth. She needs to breathe it in.”
The glare he spares me silences the words in my throat.
I shrink into the road.
Dare tightens his fist around the coiled rope, and I don’t know if he means to nudge me deeper into silence, warn me, or pull me out of Samick’s path.
A breath wisps at Samick’s face, a curt sigh or a huff, I don’t know, but he turns to shove the mouth of the inhaler between Tesni’s parted lips.
“Press the top,” I mumble, the fear lowering my voice. “All the way, then again.”
He does that.
Disinterested, he presses it down once, then twice, then a third time before Tesni’s chest rises higher, and I can hear the whimper in her breath.
I sag with the relief rushing through me.
But Dare disturbs the moment, quick.
“Hope you have said your farewell,” he starts with a soft smile. “It will be a long while before you see her again.”
His grip flexes on the coiled rope before he pushes to his feet.
I’m dragged up with him. My boots scuff over the ice as I stagger upright, but my glare burns into Samick.
He stands by the hood of the car, too close to Tesni, and I feel no ease at their bargain keeping her alive under his guard.
“Don’t hurt her.” My command comes out in a wisp. “Don’t hurt her…”
His head tilts at my words.
His long lashes lower over the sharpness of his glare, and he tosses the inhaler onto Tesni’s chest. Then, stares locked, he reaches for the hilt of the knife protruding from her shoulder.
Her breath cuts sharp before he grabs it, then yanks it out roughly.
The tear of flesh comes before the scream that arches her spine off the car bonnet.
“You fuck—”
My shriek is cut off as Dare’s arm loops tight around my middle.
“Tess—the CB, the CB!” I’m shouting in shorthand, hoping, needing her to hear at least one part, to understand what she needs to do. “One, two! One, two!”
Dare hisses an annoyed sound at my ear. His arm tightens around my middle, solid, and he hoists my back into his chest.
The pressure shoves a grunt through me.
“A bargain! There’s a bargain—”
A rag smacks against my mouth.
I clamp my lips shut, tight, and arch my chin away from it.
It follows me. Dare shifts the rag around my face, searching for a gap between my lips, as he hisses curses in my ear.
The light is too faint, the dark too thick, and I am being dragged closer to the blackness—so when I arch my neck and look over the muscle of Dare’s arm, and I see Tesni on the ground, I don’t know how she got there.
Slumped on her knees now, Samick has his grip firm on the nape of her neck, and he pins her down.
All I hear from her is a string of harrowed sounds, sobs and whines threaded together as one.
It stills me—and in that fleeting, distracted moment, the force of the rag presses into my aching teeth.
I cringe against it, lips clamping shut, and I arch my chin. “Don’t run! Trust me!”
I am dragged away down the splintering street, the darkness engulfing me.
Dare drags me away from Tesni, leaving her behind in the wisps of light I can hardly make out anymore.
Her sobs follow me into the dark.
“Just wait for me,” I shout, muffled against the rag forcing its way into my mouth. “The CB! Argh—”