I miss Nine. I miss the way he calls me Shadow, and how he turns every conversation into a lecture because he’s convinced my ignorance when it comes to Faerie is going to get me killed. My Shadow Man, my first and best teacher… I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it, but he does—and I miss it.
I miss the way his brilliant silver eyes light up when he sees me. How he looks at me like I matter. How, now that I’m coming into my own power as the Shadow, now that I’m older, the power dynamic has shifted enough that—whether he meant to or not—he allowed me to pick up on our mutual attraction.
I made the mistake of telling Carolina about that once. Once. She was quick to remind me that the touch of a fae can do a lot to a human, depending on what the fae was after when they got their taste.
If I’m addicted to the way his touch made me feel, the fae crave it. Touch magic is like a drug. It makes the Faerie races believe they’re invincible—which, considering they only have a couple of weaknesses, that’s saying something. To get me to agree to let him touch me again, any fae could’ve used their magic to make me think that there’s something between us. If I thought Nine might be into me—and I let myself believe I still loved him, and in a totally different way than I did when I was a kid—then I’d be willing to give him permission to touch me as much as he wanted.
And maybe that’s true. Could be. I sure acted like a moron every time Rys came around after he branded me.
But this is different. I know it is. And for one important reason, too.
Rys touched me. He told me he’s in love with me. The Light Fae did whatever he wanted to show me that he wants the two of us to be mated.
I don’t love him, though. Even after he touched me, I never once felt a spark toward him. Sure, I wasn’t as afraid of him as I was right after he charmed Madelaine right to her death. I know that meant he charmed me, too, especially when he kept calling me Zella and compelling me to do things I never would’ve, but I don’t love him.
I love Nine.
I’m too fucked up to know what kind of love it is. We’ve got too much history, and I sure as hell have too much baggage. Romantic love? Platonic love? Brotherly? Something. I can’t put a label on it when I’m not even sure I’m going to see twenty-two at this point.
But, still, I definitely miss my Shadow Man. Carolina’s been a treasure trove of information these last few days, plus a huge help. No denying she has an ulterior motive, though. She’s eager for me to plot how I’m going to rise up against the Fae Queen.
Nine has more answers. I know he does.
He knew my mother. I’m willing to bet, if I confront him with my new pointy ears, that he knew I was also half-fae.
What else is he keeping from me?
I don’t know. I won’t know until I get over my stubbornness and call for him to see me again.
It’s been four days in the human realm. Did enough time pass that I can use Nine’s name without having to eat crow first?
Guess I’m going to find out.
13
In the living room of the Wilkes House, there’s a corner tucked near the stairs that I avoid.
It’s not like the basement. It doesn’t take a genius—or a shrink—to figure out why I won’t go down there. I can go near this corner without feeling like all of the air has been sucked out of the room—I just don’t.
Ever since that first night here, I noticed that the corner was darker than it should be considering the way the moonlight shines through the open window. It’s like there’s a boundary surrounding it. At a certain point, the light stops, like it ran into a brick wall.
The corner of my room at the asylum had a strange shadow just like that. A patch of darkness that seems eerily out of place.
I know instinctively what it is.
I made my bed on the other side. It’s where I sleep, far from the bathroom where Rys’s lantern is kept, and opposite of the dark corner. Carolina thinks it’s because I’m careful to stay tucked out of sight in case someone decides to peek in the front window. She keeps suggesting that I should at least find a bedroom upstairs where no one would ever see me.
I can’t. I don’t tell her why, but I have to stay in this room.
I have to keep an eye on the portal.
Who knows what might come popping out if I’m not watching it?
I’ve given up on arguing that I’m the Shadow. After she pointed out the blankets and explained that I manipulated the shadows into something that I could actually touch, I decided it was kind of ridiculous to keep denying it. Either I have this weirdo skill because of the prophecy, or because it’s something a fae can do—and since I don’t want to focus on the fact that I’m half-fae, the Shadow it is.
And, if I’m the Shadow, that means that the Fae Queen’s not going to just let me go. Rys can’t find me, and Nine obviously won’t come for me unless I ask him to, but this is the freaking queen of Faerie we’re talking about. Eventually, someone’s coming for me.
It’s been twenty years that I’ve had that threat hanging over my head. I know time doesn’t work the same in Faerie, but it’s running out. If she was waiting for me to come of age, that deadline’s already gone.
She could come for me at any time. Right now, there’s nothing I can do except wait, and practice, and hope like hell that I can figure out a plan on the fly.
It’s only been a couple of days since I had to accept that I really am the Shadow and, thanks to Carolina smuggling that scrap of paper out of Faerie, there really is a prophecy. I’ll come up with a plan sooner or later.
For now, I’ve only got one thing on my mind.
Sitting in the dark house has done wonders for my night vision. I’ve always been able to see better than I probably should have—perk of being half-fae, maybe—and now I’m almost like a freaking cat, it’s that good. Propping my back up against the wall, I tuck my shadow blanket around my hips and focus on the portal across from me.
My voice cuts through the dark room. “Ninetroir.”
It’s instant. One second, I’m alone. The next?
I’m not.
I knew it was a portal. I freaking knew it. The patch of impossibly black space is suddenly full. He blinked into existence within a heartbeat, the pale, slender figure coming closer and closer as he strides forward.
Just in case I opened the portal and some other Dark Fae has crossed over, I take a deep breath, reach inside of me, and tug. The shadows at my waist thicken, then start to waft higher and higher, providing me with a thin shield—and some cover—as the fae moves into my sight.
The air shifts. It grows heavy, with an electrical charge that seems to carry on the currents. The little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention as I grit my teeth, fighting against a shiver.
He’s so beautiful, I want to shake loose my shadowy cocoon and throw myself right into his arms.
Whoa.
Down, girl.
Between the way his skin has an unearthly pale glow and his bright silver eyes shimmer and shine, I see everything through the thin gauze of my shadows. The impatience, the flash of fear, the worry.
He can’t see me, can he?
“Shadow,” he calls out. His voice has that harsh edge to it that was a major clue when I was younger that I pushed my emotionless Shadow Man way too far. “Where are you?”
I drop the shadows, letting them pool around my waist. “Here.”
His eyebrows rise sky-high. Relief dances across his face before his lips curve just enough to cause my heart to pound in my chest.
Is it just me or does he actually look impressed?
“You learned how to pull the shadows toward you.”
I’ve been working on it for three nights now. Every hour I spent cursing and thinking I was even more nuts for continuing to try is worth it just to see that look on his face.
I don’t want him to know that, though. I shrug. No big deal, right? “Once I realized I could do it all, it was actually kind of easy.”
“And shadow travel? How’s that coming along?”
I want to smile and just manage to hang on to the urge. Same old Nine. He’s slipped right into his role as my teacher, just like usual.
I don’t want to disappoint him so, instead, I lie. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
There’s something about shade-walking that doesn’t sit right with me. It made me nauseous the only time I shade-walked while conscious, like motion sickness on steroids, and that doesn’t even count how I landed in the Fae Queen’s garden. If there’s a risk of that happening again, I’m good. I’ll stick to playing with the shadows instead of walking through them.
I nod up at Nine. “So. You came.”
“You called.”
“I thought you said the name wasn’t enough. That I needed to add a command.”
“For any other human, yes. For you? A command… it isn’t necessary. I just needed for you to say my name, to know that you were ready to face me again.”
Any other human… only I’m not a human. Not entirely.
With his answer, Nine’s just given me the perfect opening to ask him about my half-fae status. Except, now that I have the opportunity, my tongue feels like it’s glued to the roof of my mouth. I can’t get the words out.
I… I don’t want to know.
Doesn’t matter. Before I can find the balls to spit it out, Nine moves toward me. Something flashes in his eyes. Something I can’t describe or explain. I just know I don’t like it.
“You’re hazy.” His lips thin. “Riley, what have you done?”
I lift my hand up so that it’s resting on the bulge in the front of my hoodie. Carolina’s gift. I fold my gloved hand around the lump, covering the nail.
“Me? Nothing,” I lie. “Maybe it’s the fence outside. I think it’s iron. You guys don’t like that, right?”
Nine narrows his brilliant stare on me, focusing on the way I’m basically feeling up one of my boobs.
I drop my hand.
“Perhaps,” he agrees. Stepping away from the portal, Nine crosses the room in a few powerful steps. I stay where I am on the floor, mainly because I just don’t have the energy to get up. He pulls something out of his pocket when he’s in front of me, crouching down to hold it out. “Here. You forgot this.”
I recognize it immediately. The silky fabric piece that Nine gave me, but that I left behind in the sewer after I tossed it at a rat.
“I didn’t mean to,” I tell him honestly. I reach out with grasping fingers, closing my leather glove around the tail end of it as Nine offers it to me. “When I went back for it, it was gone.”
Once I have it, I rub it against my cheek. It’s even softer than I remember and, to my delight, it still smells like Nine.
It reminds me of my shadows, too, only way stronger and way thicker. This has definitely gotta be silk or some other real material.
I glance over at him. “You know, I haven’t figured out what it’s supposed to be yet.”
“Yours.” And that’s all he says about that before he glances around the room. I know he can pick up every detail. The Shadow Man from my childhood had always amazed me with how well he could see in the dark. “Is this where you ran off to after you sent me away?”
I shrug, tucking Nine’s scarf thing against my side so it’s next to me. “Yes.”
“Alone?”
I might have fudged my promise to Lina that I would stay away from Nine, but she had to have known that the lure of the fae is almost impossible to resist. That doesn’t mean I’m going to break another promise. Because she probably did know that Nine’s my weakness, she got me to swear not to tell the Dark Fae about her.
“Yeah. Who else would have come with me?”
He doesn’t have an answer.
“You shouldn’t be here. I can sense traces of Rys’s power inside. There’s not enough iron to shield you if he comes looking for you.”
“I thought you told me he couldn’t. Wasn’t that the whole reason why you had to touch me? To get rid of Rys and his awful peach?”
“He won’t need his brand to track you down here,” Nine says pointedly. “I know what this place is. Once he realizes that you were foolish enough to return, he’ll find you without any help.”
Was it foolish to come here? Oh, yeah. I’ve thought the same thing a hundred times since I first snuck inside of the abandoned house. Didn’t stop me, though.
I never figured Rys would care enough to track me down at this place. Foolish? Nah. That was just stupid.
I should’ve known better. Rys is fae. Seelie. He might’ve left me alone all those years between the first time he asked me to dance, and then when I actually fell for it when I thought I was dreaming, but something’s changed since then.
He wants me to be his ffrindau. I don’t honestly think he’s going to give me up as easily as that, even if I’d deluded myself into thinking he would.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper into the dark room, hugging myself. It feels so good to be able to admit that to anyone, even if it’s to Nine. Carolina has this idea that the Shadow is fearless—but Riley definitely isn’t. “Of Rys. For years, just thinking about him made me want to puke, I was so scared. But now… I’m afraid because, when he’s there, I’m not scared anymore. It probably doesn’t even make sense. I’m so damn tired and… I don’t know—”
“It’s the glamour,” Nine murmurs softly.
I glance up at him. He’s moved away from me, going just beyond the open window. The moonlight streaming in bathes him in an otherworldly glow that makes him even more beautiful.
Damn it.
This was a bad idea. A really fucking awful one.
He’s a distraction I don’t need. So gorgeous it hurts, and a temptation that makes me want to do all the wrong things.
It would be worth it, too.
Wait. He said something. I confessed how conflicted I’ve been over Rys these last few days, and then—
“I’m sorry.” My hand creeps up to my head. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear, I ask, “What was that?”
“The glamour,” Nine says again. “Some humans are immune to it. Your mother was. It’s one of the reasons she caught your father’s attention in the first place.”
Callie. My mother. The woman who, for reasons I still don’t know, met with Nine at an abandoned gas station, begged him to watch over me, then left me behind while she just… disappeared.
The human woman who created a child with a fae, only to leave her at the mercy of the Fae Queen.
Me.
“So it’s true then. My father… he was like you.”
Nine doesn’t react. If he’s surprised that I came to that conclusion based on his comment, he doesn’t show it.
Or maybe he saw my pointed ear when I tucked my hair out of my face.
I hope so. I did it on purpose.
The only thing he does is shake his head. “Not like me, Riley. He was Seelie. A Light Fae. Like—”
“Like Rys,” I supply. Why am I not surprised? “So that makes me…”
“Half-Seelie, half-human. It’s not common, but it’s not unheard of, either. Their mating should have created a halfling. Someone who could resist iron and tell a lie, but who was particularly vulnerable to being touched by a fae.”
I think of the iron nail nestled in between my boobs. Except for the weight, it doesn’t bother me at all. Then there’s the way I’m lying to Nine right now. He believes that I’ve been bunking here alone because Carolina’s always gone before night falls. He’s got a point. No fae can do that.
But I’ve also got these weirdo gifts.
I run his solemn words through my head again.
...should have created a halfling...
“I’m not just a halfling, am I?”
Nine shakes his head. “A Light Fae, whether full-blooded or half, will always shy away from the shadows. Even as an infant, you were drawn to the darkness. The first time you shade-walked, Aislinn knew tha
t you were different. And he knew, should Melisandre discover your secrets, she’d destroy you.”
“Ash-lynn,” I murmur. “I remember… you mentioned him before.”
“Aislinn,” Nine repeats, correcting the way I said the name. “Your father.”
A fae who fell in love with a human. Who married a human, and had a child with a human. Who gave up Faerie for a human—
If he could, and it’s possible, then that means—
I push that thought far, far away. I can’t. I just… I can’t.
14
“What about you?” I say hurriedly, forging on with the conversation because the alternative is getting stuck in my own thoughts—and my own fantasies. “I’ve never been afraid of you.” A horrible thought pops in my head. “Are you charming me right now?”
“No.”
Doesn’t matter that he can’t lie. Once the suspicion hits me, it’s not so easy to shake it. It would make sense. How could I go from wanting nothing to do with him while I was still in Black Pine to, well, confessing my feelings for him in such a short period of time?
Carolina says it’s the touch. Maybe she’s right—or maybe it’s something else entirely.
Please let it be something else.
“How do you know?” I demand. “You’re fae. Maybe you’re doing it and it’s not on purpose. It’s just who you are.”
“Riley. No.”
“But—”
“My glamour has never worked on you. I tried when you were a child. You were too young to understand my kind. I wanted to appear as a friendly creature, knowing a mortal child would never accept one of the Unseelie. Imagine my surprise when you saw me for exactly who I am.” He lets out a huff. Like always with Nine, I can’t tell if he’s pleased with me or annoyed. “You called me the Shadow Man. It was as good a name as any, as well as an apt choice. But, trust me, the form I tried to present looks nothing like the darkness that I am.”
Shadow (Touched by the Fae Book 2) Page 13