I’m too sapped to fight the matter. “I hate to break this to you, but I’ve got no clue why I foiled your ruler’s glamour. I don’t even know how I’m still alive. I just am.”
“You have an oversimplified view of your plight.”
“Nothing wrong with simple.”
Yeah, I’m equally stumped that Cerulean’s flute serenade hadn’t wooed me, but I’m not gonna analyze the reason with this clucker.
However, I will tell her a story. I’m good at that, so I rehash each episode when I heard the instrument, laying it on thickly and dramatizing the details. The tale yields no misplaced answers or theories about Cerulean, but it entertains Moth, buttering her up to the point where her wings retract.
Funny how shallow Faeries are, even when on a mission for the truth. I wager…the same could be said for my people.
“Very well. Are you healed yet?” Moth complains with impatience. “What’s taking so long?”
“I’m a human?” I suggest.
She grunts. “Verbena tea will speed things up. I enjoyed watching time slip away from you, but that’s no longer diverting. The faster you recover, the swifter I can kick you out, the quicker you’ll be on your way, the nearer you’ll get to failing in this expedition, the better off my kin will be.”
“Says who?” I interrogate. “How will your kin be better off?”
“Merely in terms of amusement,” she deflects.
There’s another reason, but the whippersnapper’s keeping that cliffhanger to herself. If she knows a tidbit about my trek up this mountain, it’s possible all the Solitaries know. Until I concoct a plan to find out, I’ll keep my trap shut.
Moth rises, the assortment of baubles jingling. She trots to the curtain entrance and fixes me with a glare. “I’ll have to forage for that tea. Touch anything, take anything, and I will know. If that happens, I’ll pick out your intestines, yard by yard.”
“You have my word, I’d rather take my chances against Cerulean,” I remark, which isn’t true, but it’ll tame Moth.
She beams. “Oh, do not worry. After the tricks you’ve pulled thus far—”
“How do you know what tricks I’ve pulled? You saying you weren’t here by accident?”
“I can visit my family’s cottage whenever I wish! It has nothing to do with you!” she carps. “This may be a Solitary wild, but we Fae watch, and we talk, and news travels swiftly. As I was saying, you’ve done enough to incur Cerulean’s wrath, between escaping The Black Nest and fooling the hornet swarm. At this point, you’ve given our ruler an invitation. He doesn’t need a second one. The next time he snatches you—”
I totter from the floor. “I’ll be out of here before he catches my scent.”
She regards me with a humorless smile. “Silly girl.” Then she sweeps out of the cottage, letting a blast of blue-green light pour inside.
I stand there, processing what Moth meant. Silly girl. Of course.
What makes me think he doesn’t already know I’m here?
***
Wind chimes plink from a distance, the tease of music tapping through my ears. If there were ever a noise that sounded like foreplay, it’s those mobiles, the jingles consistently withholding something just out of reach.
My eyes have been cemented shut, and I don’t know how, or by whom. I wrestle with my thoughts. I’d been in a cottage, chatting it up with a surly, runty Fae named Moth. After she left, the room had tilted, bringing me down with it.
I hadn’t made it to the cot. Someone had put me there.
I’m on the mattress, prone on my back, a thicket of down draped over me. Another noise eclipses the wind chimes. It’s much closer, logs crackling and spitting, heat brimming. Someone has set the fireplace ablaze.
It wasn’t Moth. She wouldn’t stay quiet. She wouldn’t start a fire for my benefit.
And she doesn’t smell of musk and tempests.
That deviant scent wafts from beside me, as intoxicating as a poisoned apple—ripe and fatal. The mattress slants, and a blanket rustles, swooning across the cot.
I’m wide awake now. And I’m not alone.
