against Zeph. “From the magical kingdom of Nerifir?”
“Yes,” he replied simply.
I gave out a strangled laugh at his confession. “And magic is real?”
Despite everything I’d seen with my own eyes, believing in things like that proved to be so difficult. Subconsciously, I still waited for some logical explanation for all of this.
He shrugged. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes.”
I would still believe anyone who’d tell me that my eyes had deceived me. However, the world of Nerifir had already become a part of my life, whether I accepted it or not.
“Tell me more about that magical kingdom, your home.”
Zeph covered our legs with an end of the blanket. On top of it, he then arranged the hunting jacket he had taken from the hook.
“Unfortunately, I don’t remember anything from Nerifir,” he said. “My earliest memories are of Lero. We had a townhouse in Paris. I went to school with human children. Lero taught me to never open my fins in public and never to play with water in school.”
Suddenly, I recalled the tantalizing jets of water in Zeph’s bathtub the night I spent at his place. I now understood the true nature of those jets. Zeph must have manipulated the water for my pleasure.
The memory of all the intimate places he’d sent the water to tease and excite me, heated my face and rushed with a tingle down my body.
“It must have been hard, to suppress what you were,” I said, struggling to keep my focus on our conversation as the memories sidetracked my thoughts once again.
“I got used to it after a while.” He draped an arm around my shoulders, drawing me into his side.
The warmth from our bodies under the blanket, finally, started to melt the freezing sensation in my legs and feet. I still shivered, but these were no longer the violent, whole-body shudders.
“I wonder if every single thing Madame had said about Nerifir and its dwellers was true. What kind of Fae is she? Ghata?”
“I don’t believe she is a Fae.”
“Isn’t she from Nerifir, too? How else would she know so much about that place?”
“I remember Lero telling me she’d escaped.” Zeph’s voice sounded stilted, as if he had to dig into his memories before coming up with an answer. “But she is not a Fae. She had a temple in Sarnala, the snow plains in Nerifir.”
“A temple? Was she something like a priestess, then? She definitely has some kind of magic, too. Doesn’t she?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure.” He huffed with frustration. “I don’t remember.”
I hoped his memory loss was temporary. Either way, it concerned me.
“How about bracks? What do you know about them?”
“They are Ghata’s servants.”
“Right, but she calls them her slaves.” The image of the mangled back of Radax rose in my mind. “And she has some real power over them. I saw her punish one of them. His tattoo, it was glowing and appeared to be strangling him, without her even touching him.” A shudder ran across my shoulders.
“Why did she punish him?”
“For talking to me. Radax was supposed to kill me, but he disobeyed her order and let me live.”
Suddenly, I was glad that Radax wasn’t in the basement when Zeph and I escaped. I would not have wanted to see him lying on the floor among the dead.
“She nearly strangled him with that tattoo then ordered him to be whipped until he passed out. Yet he still keeps working for her. They all do.”
Zeph leaned back against the wall again.
“When I was a child, Lero told me that Ghata used to have a whole army of bracks in her temple. I don’t know what kind of beings they were before she got them under her control, but she used her magic to modify them to her needs then took them along when she escaped from Nerifir. Bracks can travel between dimensions, fetching things for her from back home.”
“Not just things, the animals, and possibly other Fae, too. Her entire menagerie must have been collected for her by the bracks. She fed me something that I believe was supposed to turn me into her servant as well.”
“She did?” He shifted again, catching my gaze.
“Yes, but I didn’t eat it. I fed it to her pet pig, instead.”
He gave me a long stare, and it was unclear whether it was in disbelief or admiration. Finally, a smile moved his lips. “Well done.”
Warmth spread through my chest at his praise.
He hugged me tighter. Something touched the top of my head. His lips? Did