6. Chapter 6 #2
“I know. That’s why they wanted it.” Did he think I was stupid?
“But why do you want it? Really.” I knew it had been used in the war.
How, I wasn’t sure. But it was clearly valuable.
It occurred to me that I had gotten incredibly lucky with the merchants I had dealt with over the years, that I hadn’t been attacked before this.
I had also never waved the shards in a tavern before either.
But in my attempts to get free of the place I’d grown up in, to finally find my family, I’d gotten more desperate, more brash.
I had dug up more crystals, bigger, higher in the Banes, than ever before. And now I was here.
Something strange settled in me. Like the fear was something I was accepting. My heart was still pounding in my chest. But my body had somehow accepted its fate, and my terror had slowed to a simmer in my blood. I was steadier, bolder, as I tried to understand him.
“It’s valuable in more ways than one. It, as I’m sure you know, can render a fae magically bound. Or dead, in the right quantities.”
My body went cold in his shadow grip. He did want to use it as a weapon. The war was over, it had been for over twenty years. So what could he need stores of faebane for?
“I should have known. Of course, you want to use it to kill something,” I spat out.
He chuffed. “Not quite.” He paused for a moment. “Are you worried I’ll use it on you? Is that it?” He folded his arms, but the shadows kept flowing. I swayed a little in his noncorporeal bands of magic as he moved. “Trust me, I don’t need faebane to overpower you.”
I wouldn’t mind some adamyte right now. Faebane. Whatever.
It didn’t matter what I called it I suppose, he’d taken it from me.
I felt so exposed on the grassy hillock he’d landed us on. There was a cracked and barren tree in my periphery, a few standing stones, but nothing else. Just open plains and nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
“Is there anyone else like you that I should know about? I don’t care about the human,” he finished in a rush before I could declare it was just Bray I had been with. “Does anyone else know where you found the faebane?” His voice sounded like the first rumble of a storm on the horizon.
“Does that matter?”
“Just answer me.” His jaw flexed.
Would he go after anyone who did? Would he let me go if he thought there was another source?
“It’s just me. I’m the only one—”
“Good.”
Without missing a beat, he scooped me up and had me pressed to his chest with one impossibly strong arm.
“Let go of me!” I clawed at him the instant I was freed from the shadows, my legs scrambling to find the earth again.
“You.” He paused, wrestling with my flailing arms. “Have just secured your somewhat permanent place beside me. As you’re the only one who knows where the faebane can be found, I can’t let you out of my sight until you give up the location to me.”
“You can’t do this!” I thumped his body hard enough to hurt my hands.
He gripped my hands in one of his. “Actually, I can.” His eyes darkened.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What are you?” I was disgusted as I looked at the male who held me. Distraught.
Terrified of what he would do to get what he wanted from me.
“Trust me, peach. You’ve never met anyone like me before.” He fastened my wrists together with a loop of shadow and lifted my arms over his head to sit around his neck.
“Stop calling me tha—” The rushing air swallowed my words as he took to the skies.
Wings of shadow formed, crepuscular veils streaming from his back.
Like smoke moving through a storm, they were hardly visible.
I couldn’t tell if I was seeing them at all.
How had I not noticed them before? They flashed and were there and invisible the next.
As my eyes fixed on them, I could make out that they were the full length of his body.
He flew as though they were an extension of him.
Like any other muscle he’d crafted and honed so it would do as it was bidden.
Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t seen how high we were.
A scream escaped my lungs, and I wriggled, still entirely unused to the sensation of soaring above the earth. My wrists slipped from their perch on his neck as I squirmed in his grip.
And then both of his arms were wrapped around me, forcing me to still. He had moved to cradle me, my arms still looped around his neck.
Heat bloomed under my skin from the press of him into me, the firm feel of him beneath my body. I twisted my wrists in the bonds, but the shadows moved with me, holding me securely but not biting into the skin.
I wanted to push him off. To find space. But there was nowhere for me to go.
“I will get the faebane from you. Trust me when I say, you could not comprehend the value of what you have.” His eyes were unreadable as they held mine. “I hope you will give it up, but until then, I will protect my investment. I will protect what is mine.”
My muscles shook with the effort of trying not to touch him as he gripped me. Fury and terror choked my throat, and a strangled sob cracked through me.
With how tightly he held me, I looked away from him as best I could.
I felt helpless as he flew farther and farther from everything I’d known. And I wished, desperately, that I had magic in my veins.
Maybe I didn’t belong in a world of magic. But I was tied to it now.
As he soared through the darkening skies, I was utterly powerless to stop him. I couldn’t even wipe the tears that began to silently rain down to the ground below.
Fine.
Let them fall. I let the tears spill away into the night below. I would find a way out of this. I would make a plan to free myself. I just needed him to let his guard down.