Somehow, I manage to smile. “I reckon he’s a soul mate. I’ve been wondering about your connection.”
“That’s not all you’ve been wondering.”
“How’d you escape? You and your brothers? The Fables don’t say.”
“Ah. The great mystery.” Cerulean lounges, his torso flexing beneath all that ivory flesh. Hot damn. He was sexy when I met him, then ugly when I knew him, and now he’s inching his way back to my first impression.
I’m a traitor. Thinking of my sisters, I scoot away from those toned muscles. “Well? Since you think I won’t make it out of here alive, you might as well spill your secret.”
With wide, innocent eyes, he claims, “Why, I escaped by magic.”
“Fuck you, Fae.”
“Such a filthy mortal tongue.”
“Apparently this tongue scares the shit out of you, if you’re dancing around the truth. Do I need to ask it a different way?”
A single eyebrow leaps into his mussed hair. “How many ways do you have in mind?” Nevertheless, he hesitates. “I have no idea how Puck and Elixir escaped. We languished in separated locations, and they’ve never told me. We crossed paths while fleeing with those whom we’d saved, because it appears we had the same heroic idea and were the only three Fae who managed to escape, the only three left standing. Call it fate.”
“I’ll call that a Fable for sure, each of you freeing himself separately.”
I can tell Cerulean’s about to answer without answering. For some reason, he doesn’t want me to know the details. But a hummingbird flutters to my knee at that moment, tickling my thigh. With a laugh, I pet its emerald wings with my pinky, which delights the creature because it shivers.
Grinning, I watch it flit away. Then I catch Cerulean gazing at me, and whatever enigma he’d planned on spinning dies a quick death. “I did not free myself.”
My mouth grapples to respond. “What?”
“I escaped, but I did not free myself.”
“But the Fables don’t mention anyone helping you.”
“They wouldn’t, would they?” Cerulean counters. “No one else was there that night, other than me and my savior.” He glances at the sky with fondness—a disturbing sight that contracts my ribs with envy, which is right rubbish since I despise him. “Truth be told, I helped rescue the fauna, but I did not save myself. I have her to account for that.”
Her. It’s a her.
His words stir up a terrible hunch, a swirling debris of possibilities that stifles my breathing. Despair and foreboding tangle in my belly. But no, it’s only in my head, a notion concocted by my desperate heart. It’s got to be.
The night has barely begun, but when the sun rises, it’ll sweep this night into the past. With any luck, it’ll take this awful hunch with it.
“The plot thickens,” I draw out, feigning my composure. “Wait, what are you doing?”
Cerulean gets to his feet. “I’m making my grand exit. What do you think I’m doing?”
“You’re not done telling me the story.”
“Most would call it a Fable. A feather grows from my hair, after all.”
“At The Watch of Nightingales, you mentioned that I remind you of somebody.” I lick my lips. “Is it the same female? How old were you two?”
Cerulean pauses to study the tower’s highest window, as though the answers are hiding up there. “You’re a rather inquisitive one tonight. I never knew her age, nor who she was.”
I can’t let him suspect anything, so I play dumb. “Does that mean you never saw this Fae again?”
His back muscles flex. He gazes over the mantle of his shoulder and hitches a brow at me. “I never said she was a Fae.”
20
I sit there, whiplashed by his words. The hairs along my arms prickle, and my joints lock, and I can’t budge. The one who helped him escape was a mortal. He was locked in a cage, in Reverie Hollow, and a mortal girl set him loose.
