“It still won’t be easy,” I said. “Once we figure out what’s happening, we’ll fight back. And yes, the fae have abilities we don’t, but we have a reason to fight no matter what.”
“And what reason is that?”
We’d reached the wooden area, and strangely, but not exactly surprising, there were no sounds of life. No birds. Insects. Nothing. “We value freedom above anything else.”
“Except most humans will already be bent to our will and they will fight
for
us,” he said. “Human cannon fodder.”
Disgusting. Terrifying.
“I’m done with this,” he said abruptly, startling me. “It’s time.”
Heart lurching in my chest, I took a step back. “Wait. We haven’t been out here long enough. I still have questions.”
“You can ask them later.”
Taking another step back, I struggled to keep the panic down. “Can we walk for a little bit longer? I don’t—”
“You’re delaying the inevitable.” Impatience rang throughout his tone.
Sweat dotted my palms. “I don’t have to . . . have to feed. You’ve made your point now. I get it. You can make me do whatever you want. I don’t need to do that. I don’t want to.”
“You obviously haven’t gotten the point since you keep referring to yourself as a human. It’s time for you to remember what you are,” he said. I knew there was no winning this argument with him.
I spun around quickly, prepared to run back to the house.
“Ivy. Stop.”
I stopped.
Just like that, my body was compelled to answer even though my brain was desperately yelling at me to get away, to move—to do anything to stop what was coming.
“Look at me.”
His voice slipped over my skin like silk. My ears buzzed as I felt my body slowly turning to face him. Against my will, my gaze lifted to his. I waited.
Drake’s eyes deepened. “You will do as I say.”
And I did.
It was strange. One minute I was outside, skin chilled from the cold air, and the next I was in that room. There were different people in here now. The woman was gone, and I wondered what had happened to her. Then I was sitting next to an older man I didn’t know. He had silver hair at his temples, and then after a few whispered words, I was . . . feeding, and then I was upstairs, slipping into a deep sleep.
I was shaken awake, a demanding hand biting into my shoulder. I woke to a dark room and a pale, silvery face.
Faye.
I leaned away from her, rolling onto my side. My thoughts were full of cobwebs, and I couldn’t quite recall the last several hours. All I knew was that I wasn’t supposed to be awake yet. I needed more time. My eyelids started to drift shut.
“You need to wake up,” she said, grabbing my arm and squeezing hard.
Confused, I resisted when she tugged on me. “I . . .”
“There’s no time to explain. You must get up now,” Faye said. “It’s your only chance if you want to escape.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“W-what?” I whispered.
Faye leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. Soft light flooded the room. “You must get up, Ivy. The prince is not here and this will be your only chance.”
Her words tumbled through my brain like tumbleweeds rolling down a vacant street. I was slow to make sense of them, but I didn’t close my eyes again. I pushed myself up into a sitting position. Nausea hit me, clearing enough of the cobwebs for me to realize that was different from when I woke normally after . . . after feeding.
Feeding
.
My gaze lifted to Faye’s. “I fed again.”
Frustration pinched her features as she reached toward me, unlocking the band around my neck. She tossed it onto the bed. “I know. And if you keep feeding, you’re going to get addicted. You probably already are.”
“Addicted?” I repeated dumbly. That was the first I’d ever heard of that. “What do you—?”
“Ivy.” She clutched my shoulders and shook me until my head snapped back. “You need to focus. We have to go now. Do you understand me? This will be your only chance before your time is up and the prince will be in this bed, creating a child that will open all the gates to the Otherworld.”
Creating a baby . . .
Holy shit. I tossed my hair back from my face as the remaining tendrils of sleep cleared and the fogginess left my thoughts. “The prince isn’t here?”
“No.” She pushed off the bed and stood. “He left about thirty minutes ago, taking three of the ancients with him. It was a planned trip, but we don’t have a lot of time. There’s only a small window of opportunity.”
Pushing off the bed, I moaned as a wave of dizziness hit me. I fought through it, straightening. “Sorry,” I gasped out. “I’m not feeling too well.”
“Of course not. You have to sleep off the more unpleasant effects until you get used to them.” She walked over to the door, pressing the side of her face against the wood. “Fae don’t necessarily experience the adverse reactions, and only the younglings, when they first start feeding, experience the euphoria and following sleepiness, but for halflings . . . it can be different. But that’s not important right now.”
I raised a brow as I tucked the bushy mass of hair behind my ears. I had a feeling what she was saying was going to be important later, but right now, it wasn’t a priority. Later, I was going to have so many questions for her. “So you’re going to help me escape?”
She nodded. “And before you ask why, all you need to know right now is that the Order is not the only ones who want to prevent the gates from opening.”
I stared at her carefully. Trusting her was risky, but then again, why would this be a trap? And if it was, could the consequences be any worse than what I was already facing?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
“I couldn’t get a thorn stake.” She reached around to the back of her jeans and pulled out an iron dagger. She pressed the handle into my hand. “But this will do.”
My fingers curled around the handle of the weapon I was oh so familiar with. It felt like ages since I had held one, and I welcomed the weight in my hand. “It will do,” I said as she reached for the door. I thought about something. “Wait.”
She looked at me.
Grabbing a handful of the dress, I lifted the skirt part and used the dagger to cut a slit halfway up my leg to allow for more movement. “Ready,” I said.
Faye grabbed the doorknob but paused. “I won’t kill any of them,” she warned me. “I will incapacitate, but I will not kill.”
I thought about that for a second. “Okay. I’m probably going to kill them, though.”
She made an exasperated sound, but opened the door and peered out. “It’s clear.”
Knowing this could somehow blow up in my face, but willing to risk it for a chance to get out of this place, I took a deep breath and pushed everything aside. Now was not the time to think about what I’d been forced to do while being imprisoned here, or about Ren, or anything other than escaping.
I followed her out into the hall, and we made our way to the stairs. At the top, she said in a low voice, “There are three fae downstairs in the main room. There are more in the house, but I hope we can get out before they know what’s happening. Valor is . . . he is occupied at the moment in the back room.”
Knowing what the back room was used for, I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Can you incapacitate quietly? Because I can kill quietly.”
“Yes.”
I looked down the stairs, not seeing anyone yet. “Let’s go.”
We crept down the stairs, and of course the steps creaked every couple of steps, sounding like cracks of thunder. The truth was, I wasn’t sure how quietly I could kill. I had never really attempted to do it without making noise.
Faye reached the landing first. We were about twenty feet from the front door, and we were so close, but the foyer opened into two rooms. There was a good chance we’d be seen. My pulse pounding, I stepped down into the foyer, pressing the dagger against my leg. I took two steps before a voice rang out from the adjoining room.
“Where are you two going?”
Cursing under my breath, I looked over to see a male fae walking toward us with another fae behind him. Faye didn’t answer, so I decided to go the “whole kill me some fae” route.
I stepped toward the male. A flicker of surprise scuttled across his features a second before I slammed the dagger into his chest. He did the poof-begone thing.
“What the hell?” The second fae charged toward me, but Faye intercepted him. Spinning gracefully, she dipped behind him and caught his arm, easily flipping him onto his back. She twisted as she went down, snapping bone. The fae screamed. There went being quiet.
“Sorry,” Faye said a second before snapping the fae’s neck. Damn, she was a beast.
Snapping a fae’s neck wouldn’t kill them, but it would definitely take them out of the equation for a bit. I darted past her and threw open the front door. She was right behind me.
The cold night air greeted us. So did the third fae, who was outside smoking.
She spotted us, and as she turned, she flicked her cigarette off the porch and rushed us. I easily side-stepped her and jerked my arm back, preparing to deliver the killing blow.
“You don’t need to kill her,” Faye cried out. “They don’t know any better.”
“Not kill her?” I ducked as the female swung at me. “Oh, we’re really going to have to talk about the whole ‘they don’t know any better’ part later.”
Shifting onto my back leg, I spun and delivered a kick that sent the female flying into the porch railing. Wood splintered and gave way. Arms pinwheeling, she fell backward, off the porch.
Not so graceful then.
Charging forward, I hopped off the porch and picked up a long piece of splintered railing. I could have taken her out right then, and I wasn’t even sure why I felt I should try to follow Faye’s wishes, but she was helping me. Hopefully.
The female fae started to sit up, but I swung down, using the railing to impale her to the ground. Blood spurted, and as she opened her mouth to scream bloody murder, I knocked her out with an elbow jab to the temple.
I stood up, tossing my hair back.
Faye gaped at me.
“What?” I demanded. “It won’t kill her.”
She slowly shook her head. “We need to go down the driveway. Leads to a road about a mile out. We’re going to cross it and keep going. Okay?”
A mile out? God, I hated running. But I also hated being forced to do things against my will, so I’d run five miles if I had to. It might kill me, but I would do it.
The cracked pavement was cold under my bare feet as we ran with only the moonlight and stars to guide us. Faye was faster, staying several feet in front of me. Hope was welling up in my chest. We were almost to the woods, and then we’d be out of sight of the house and close to the road. We’d be closer to—
“Stop!” a deep male voice shouted.
Faye looked over her shoulder. “Dammit, two fae. We need to keep going.”
I was going to take her word for it, and I was also going to ignore the fact that she wasn’t even out of breath. “They will catch up,” I gasped out as we entered the wooded area. “We have to take them out.”
Faye stopped suddenly, eyeing my location and how far behind her I was. “You’re right.”
Looking around, I slowed down and then stopped. There wasn’t even time to hide for an ambush. We had to face them. “I’m killing this time,” I warned, glancing over at her. “It’s too risky not to.”
Her jaw was set in a hard line, but she nodded.
One of the fae reached us ahead of the other. It was the male who’d been in the room the first time I’d fed, the one who had been on his phone. I sprung forward, thrusting the dagger out. He spun to the side, narrowly avoiding my stab. Anger twisted his features into something animalistic. He swung on me and I dipped as Faye caught the other fae, a female, by the waist and drove her to the ground like a linebacker. Damn.
I knelt, avoiding the next blow. On the ground, I kicked out, taking the male’s legs out from under him. Leaping up, I came down on him, bringing the iron dagger home. I lifted up as he sucked into himself, earning a one-way—hopefully—ticket back to the Otherworld. When I looked up, I saw that Faye had broken another neck.
I heard rustling and spun around, praying to God an alligator didn’t try to eat me. Scanning the area, I didn’t see anything. Thank God for small—
“Ivy, watch out!”
I spun around and gasped. Valor was less than a foot from me. I jumped back, but that didn’t help. He caught my arm and I went flying across the driveway. Barely able to brace myself for the impact, I hit the soggy ground on my side and rolled into a bush. Pain arced across my back, but I pushed through it as I sat up.
Faye was tossed aside. She smacked into a tree and hit the ground face-first. She didn’t get right back up, and I hoped she was okay.
“Shit,” I muttered, pushing myself up. I still had that dagger and I was sort of proud of my mad skills there.
“What were you two thinking?” Valor demanded as he stalked toward me, crossing the driveway. “Did you really think you could escape?”
“Uh. Yes.”
“Stupid,” he growled. “And because of your actions, she will die and you will wish you had been smart enough to know better.”
I didn’t feel necessary to point out that my actions hadn’t driven Faye to do this. I waited until he was a foot in front of me and then feinted to my left. Valor fell for it and darted in that direction. I spun out, delivering a kick to his right side. He stumbled and threw a punch. It connected with my jaw, stunning me for a second as tiny bright lights burst across my line of vision. I knew I had to fight hard. I had to get him down and not give him a chance to use any of his special ancient abilities or to get the best of me, because I knew taking down an ancient wasn’t going to be easy.
Kicking out again, I hit his right leg and then straightened, jabbing the dagger deep into his side. He grunted and swung, but I anticipated the move and dipped under his arm. Now in front of him, I caught him in the chest again with the dagger, and immediately brought my leg up, kneeing him in the nuts.
Valor doubled over, and I caught his shoulders, shoving him down with my weight. He went, clutching his poor boys. He rolled onto his back, and I saw the opportunity. I had to do some major damage to keep him down.