Page 15 of The Fae Lord

“Let her go,” he says darkly.

The hands gripping my arms simply tighten. They try to move past him, but he lunges for one of them. His knife slices through the air.

I yell for him to stop.

I beg Kayan to stop him.

I stumble back, and Rosalie is at my side now, grabbing my hand. Not afraid of me.

Tears blur my vision as I watch the guards surround my brother. He has always had a quick temper, and has rarely been able to see sense once it takes hold. But I can tell from the way he’s fighting that he doesn’t intend to hurt anyone. He’s simply trying to stop them taking me.

But he is outnumbered, and the guards escorting me don’t know him the way that I do; they don’t know that he wouldn’t hurt them. That he was the kind of boy who cried if a bumblebee died in our cabin or a snail was accidentally trodden on.

Samuel drops his blade and splays his fingers. Fire magic crackles in them. He raises an arm and throws fire so it surrounds me, and Rosalie, and Kayan. “If you want her, you’ll have to go through me first,” he shouts.

But then he stops shouting.

I scream as Samuel falls to the ground and goes still. He is clutching his chest. An arrow protrudes from the spot just above his heart.

I try to reach him, but the flames hold me in. I beg Kayan to dampen them, but he simply holds onto my waist and tries to keep me still.

Samuel turns and meets my eyes. Already, the light is fading from them. His blood stains the earth. He whispers something I can’t hear, and blinks slowly. The guards are just standing there. No one is doing anything to help him.

“Why aren’t you helping him?” I shout above the crackle of the flames.

As Samuel closes his eyes, the fire withers to nothing more than embers on the ground. I push Kayan away and run to Samuel’s side.

He is not breathing.

My protector, my brother, is gone.

Because of me. Because of what I am.

SIX

Alana

The voice comes again in the middle of the night. Finn’s arm is wrapped tightly around my waist, his body warm and comforting beside me. But when the voice comes, it makes my entire body stiffen.

I uncurl myself from Finn, trying not to wake him, and stand. I reach for my robe and wrap it around myself. Outside, it is freezing cold, but I do not stop to put on more layers. The voice is calling me. It wants me, and suddenly I know I cannot resist it even if I want to.

I walk out into the moonlight completely barefoot. The soil is like a balm for the soles of my feet, the cold nothing but comfort as I let it sink in, drifting up my calves and into my bones.

It quickly becomes a shudder, but I lean into it. I close my eyes and breathe, trying to make the voice come to me again. When it does, it whispers my name and lands like feathers of ice on my skin. I flex my fingers. As I move then, beads of condensation drift up from the grass around me, catching in the moonlight, joined by fireflies that make them glow.

The droplets are beautiful. I breathe out slowly. The voice comes again, and the water drifts up into the air, swirling around my legs and my waist. Then it tightens around me, moving faster, swirling, coiling like a snake snatching its prey.

Something nudges me. But when I try to turn, I can’t.

The voice calls again, and I realise the water is telling me to follow it.

I glance back at the tent, where Finns’s sleeping form is silhouetted on the canvas by the flickering light inside. He would tell me to stay with him. Or perhaps he would think I am losing my mind.

There must be a reason I haven’t told him what’s happening in my head.

Perhaps it’s because I believe Eldrion is doing this to me.

Perhaps it’s because I believe I want Eldrion to be doing this to me.

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