“You’re thinking it now,” Tink announced.
I was thinking a lot of things right now.
He landed on my bent knee, and the only reason why I didn’t throw him off me was because I was sure I’d end up hurting myself more in the process. “You think the only thing you can do is leave, but that won’t help you. You’re forgetting something very important. Actually, you’re forgetting two very important things.” He paused. “Come to think of it, you’re probably forgetting a lot, because you got your head knocked—”
“Tink,” I warned.
He stomped up my leg, which felt like a cat was walking on me. “You have to
consent
.”
I pried my eyes open. The left one was still pretty swollen, so Tink was a blurry form where he stood by my hip.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sex. Consent to sex with the prince. That’s the only way a child can be conceived. No glamour. No magic or compulsion. No tricks. You know, you have to actually want—“
“I know what consent to sex means,” I snapped.
“Apparently, you don’t.” Tink jumped off my hip and landed on the bed next to me. “Because he can’t make you do it. Well, he
could
make you, and that’s just gross and wrong and not completely out of character for the prince, but a child won’t be conceived.”
“Oh, great to know. He could force himself on me, but hey, at least there’s no apocalypse baby. No harm, no foul.”
Tink’s little nose scrunched. “You know that’s not what I meant.” He lifted himself up in the air and flew so he was directly above my head. “But there’s a bigger problem, Ivy.”
I laughed, and it sounded a little crazed. Not even drunken crazed. More like hitting the asylum crazed. “What could be worse than me being a halfling?” Panic lit up my chest. Just saying that out loud made me want to vomit.
“You said the prince tasted your blood, right?” Tink asked. “After you two fought?”
My nose wrinkled. “Yeah. I mean, I’m pretty sure he did after he . . . smelled me.”
“Then there is nowhere you can go that he cannot find you.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “Come again?”
Tink zipped down to the bedspread. “He will be able to sense you anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you went to Zimbabwe, and I’m not even sure where Zimbabwe is, but I just like saying Zimbabwe, but he’d find you eventually, because you’re now a part of him.”
I couldn’t even think for a moment, couldn’t even form a coherent thought that did not involve what in the actual fuck. “Are you for real?”
Tink nodded and plopped down cross-legged beside my arm. He lowered his voice as if he’d be overheard. “When an ancient, like the prince, takes a part of someone into them, he is forever connected to that person. You’re bonded, in a way.”
“Oh my God.” Unable to deal, I placed my hands over my face. A new horror surfaced. “Then he knows where I am right now?”
“Most definitely.”
“And he’ll know everywhere I go.” Holy crap, I couldn’t even process the implications. My mere presence would be putting everyone in danger. But what I didn’t understand was, if the prince could sniff me out like some kind of halfling bloodhound, then why hadn’t he showed yet? It had been a week since we fought. What was he waiting for?
“It’s really creepy, isn’t it?” Tink said.
Creepy wasn’t even the word for it. I couldn’t think of an appropriate word for all of that. “Do you know how to kill him?”
“You kill him like you would kill any ancient. You cut off his head, but that’s not going to be easy.”
No shit. Taking out normal fae wasn’t particularly easy. Stabbing them with an iron stake only sent them back to the Otherworld. Chopping off their heads killed them.
“But that’s not the most important thing.” Tink grabbed my right hand. My wrist had stopped throbbing, another sure sign that the prince had truly patched up some of the damage he’d inflicted upon me. I eyed the brownie. “You cannot let anyone know what you are.”
“Gee. Really? I was thinking about updating my Facebook to halfling status.”
He cocked his blondish-white head to the side. “You don’t have a Facebook, Ivy.”
I sighed.
Tink continued, because of course. “I looked for you. Wanted to add you as my friend so I could poke you, and I know people don’t poke anymore, but I think poking is a great way to express how one—”
“I know I can’t tell anyone, but what’s stopping the fae from outing me?” I asked.
“The fae will know if you’re outed, because the Order would kill you.” He said this like we were talking about Harry Potter, and not about me, you know, being put down like a rabid dog. “The prince won’t want to risk that, even if there are other female halflings out there. He won’t want to risk the time it would take to find another one.”
“Well, I guess that’s one good thing,” I said dryly.
He let go of my hand. “You can’t even tell Ren. Especially not him.”
My gaze shifted to Tink.
“I know what he is. I overheard you two talking the morning you left to guard the gate. He’s an Elite, and while I think that is as lame of a name as the Order, I’ve heard of them.”
“How have you heard of them?”
He buzzed down until he was standing next to my head. He bent over, whispering in my ear, “I’m omnipresent.”
“What?” I frowned at him. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
He straightened. “It makes perfect sense.”
“I think you mean omniscient.”
He glanced up at the ceiling. “Huh.”
“You’re not omniscient,” I told him, and then said, “Are you?”
Tink grinned devilishly. “No.”
Annoyance flared. “I need you to be up front with me. No more lies. No more bullshit, Tink. I’m serious. I need to be able to trust you, and I’m not sure I do right now.”
His eyes widened slightly and then he dropped down to his knees. “I deserve that.”
Yeah, he did, because I took him in and he’d lied to me a lot. It didn’t matter that he had good reasons. He’d still lied.
And then it hit me like a smack in the face. I was going to have to do the same thing. Lie for a good reason to Ren and to . . . to everyone, so I was really no better.
“I know about the ancients, because I lived in the Otherworld. We had to learn everything about them to survive,” he said. “The prince and the princess, and the king and queen, are the most powerful, but there has always been talk of the Elite. Many fae have fallen to them when they used to come and go into this realm as they pleased, before the gateways were closed.”
That sounded believable. I guessed.
Tink screwed up his face. “Though I am surprised to hear that Ren is one. He doesn’t seem smart or cool enough for that level of badassery.”
“Ren is cool and awesome enough,” I corrected Tink. “He’s a total badass.”
“Whatever.” He folded his arms across his chest. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree. Moving on. You cannot tell him. It is his duty to end you.”
My breath caught.
Like it had been his duty to allow his best friend Noah to walk away, knowing that it would be the last time he’d see him. God, Ren had even said he couldn’t go through that again, and I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t put that kind of knowledge on him.
“I won’t,” I whispered.
Tink nudged my arm with his foot. “You have to pull it together, Ivy. Like right now.”
I looked over at him. “I think I’m owed a pity party for the next couple of minutes.”
“Save your tears for the pillow.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “This isn’t an episode of
Dance Moms
.”
But Tink was right. Not like I was going to tell him that, especially when I was still considering doing minor bodily harm to him. I needed to pull it together. I had no other choice. Leaving wasn’t an option. I controlled the whole baby-making aspect and there was no way I was willingly going to knock boots with that freak. I needed to get it together, because the only choice I had now was to stop the prince.
Stop the prince and make sure no that one, including Ren, found out what I was. I shivered. A question floated through my crowded thoughts, pushing everything out of my mind.
“I don’t get it.”
“What?” Tink asked.
“How . . . how am I a halfling?” I stared at the ceiling. “I don’t remember my parents, but Ren said he checked into them. He said they were in love. How could this have happened?”
Tink didn’t answer.
He didn’t know. Probably no one would ever know the truth. Anything was possible. My mother might’ve slept with a fae. Or maybe it was like Noah’s father. He’d met a fae woman and had gotten her pregnant before he met the woman he ended up marrying. I just couldn’t imagine how anyone who knew what the fae were could knowingly sleep with one.
I exhaled shakily and thought that maybe I would expel all my tears onto my pillow. I sort of just wanted to roll over and let it all out. Actually, I honestly didn’t want to think about any of it, but that was impossible.
“You need to let him go,” Tink said quietly.
I turned my head to him. “What?”
“Ren. You need to let him go. Push him away. Break up with him. Whatever. You need to get as far away from him as possible.”
I stiffened and my response was immediate. “No.”
“Ivy—”
“No,” I repeated, waving my left hand. “End of discussion.”
Tink stared at me mutinously, but he shut up. I knew that letting Ren go and pushing him away would be the smart and right thing to do in case things went south, but I couldn’t bring myself to even consider that. That probably said really bad things about me.
Okay. It definitely said really bad things about me.
But I had just found Ren. I’d fallen underwater, completely over my head, for him, with him, and I couldn’t do it. I was too selfish. He was . . . he was
mine
, and I’d be damned if I lost that too due to things completely out of my control. It wasn’t fair. I . . . I deserved him.
“Fine,” Tink muttered finally.
Lying there for a few moments, I gathered what remained of my composure like it was a tattered blanket, wrapped it around me, and sat up, wincing. “I need to shower.”
“Thank Queen Mab!” Tink buzzed to the foot of the bed, giving me room. “You were starting to get a bit rank.”
I shot him a dark look as I rose.
“And your hair looks like I could cook French fries in it.” He twirled in the air and what was left of the powdered sugar hit my face. “It’s
that
greasy.”
My shoulders slumped as I shuffled to the bathroom. “Thanks,” I said, pushing open the door.
Suddenly Tink was right in front of my face, causing me to jerk back. “I know you’re mad at me and you probably want to slice and dice me up and wear my skin as a new bracelet.”
I glanced around. “Um. That’s not exactly what I want to do.”
Hope widened his eyes.
“But I kind of want to flush you down a toilet,” I amended.
He gasped. “I’d get stuck! And these pipes are old. How would you even do that? I’m not a goldfish.”
I rolled my eyes.
Tink swayed and then shot forward, placing his tiny hands on my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
Blinking, I tried to remember if Tink had ever apologized for anything. Not even when he knocked my laptop off the balcony when he’d decided he wanted to watch
Harry Potter
outside. Or when he caught the stove on fire and then tried to put it out with my favorite blanket. Or when he . . . Well, there were a lot of examples of when he should’ve apologized but hadn’t.
“You might not believe this, but I didn’t stay with you because of what you are.” His pale Otherworld eyes met mine. “I stayed because I like you, Ivy. I stayed because I care about you.”
Oh gosh.
My lips parted, and that messy knot of emotion ballooned in my throat. I wanted to cry again. I was such a mess, a hot and stinky mess.
Tink grinned and his eyes glimmered. “And, okay, I also stayed because you have the magical and wonderful Amazon Prime.”
Chapter Two
Exhausted physically, mentally, and most definitely emotionally, all I managed to do was pull on a pair of pajama bottoms and a tank top after my much-needed shower. There was no way I was going to have the energy or even the desire to dry the mass of wet curls on my head, so I twisted them up and shoved a thick bobby pin into my hair.
I roamed back out into the living room around eleven. The entire time I was showering I fought down a hot mess of emotion and locked it away and threw away the key. Well, to be honest, I probably only lost the key to the Pandora’s box level of emotional breakdown, but I stayed in that shower until I was confident I could handle everything.
I had to handle this.
I walked into the kitchen, noticing that Tink’s bedroom door was cracked open and the room was dark inside, but I doubted he was actually asleep. Stomach grumbling, I headed for the carryout container Ren had showed up with earlier. Mentally crossing my fingers, I flicked open the lid and sighed.
There was one beignet left.
One.
Shooting Tink’s door a glare, I snatched a paper towel off the counter and scooped up the piece of sugary heaven. Then I grabbed a root beer out of the fridge and the can of Pringles out of the cupboard.
Healthy eating at its finest, but I figured I deserved it.
Back in the living room, I eased down on the couch and turned on the TV. Settling on a show about child geniuses, I did the whole hand to mouth thing, getting more sugar and potato-chip crumbs on my chest than in my mouth while I got way too engrossed in the TV. I was equally fascinated by how incredibly smart these kids were, and somewhat shamed because I had no idea what the capital of Tajikistan was when a ten year old did.
I must’ve dozed off, because the next thing I knew I felt the soft brush of fingertips coasting down the right side of my face. My eyes flickered open, and the first thing I saw was a powerful forearm covered with vines shaded in deep green. I followed that tattoo up to a dark-colored sleeve, knowing it formed the most amazing design under the shirt, and over a sexy throat. I never knew throats could be sexy, but they could be. Oh yes, they could be.