this? Or more than that?
Without thinking, I step toward him, drawn by the urge to meet that trace of vulnerability with some fraction of the gentleness he showed me pulling me from the fray last night. But the moment I move, something in the fae man’s expression shutters. He dips into a mocking little bow and sweeps his arm toward the staircase. “I believe our breakfast awaits. Ladies first?”
I can’t see anything good coming out of pushing him either. I turn toward the staircase and drag in a breath, ready to begin my first day here as an actual guest rather than a prisoner.
32
Talia
Sylas tests the uppermost sliding bolt on the door for what must be the hundredth time, giving it a tug with the full heft of his massive shoulders. It doesn’t budge, but he still doesn’t look entirely satisfied, even though there are three of those bolts now ready to lock my bedroom door from the inside. Watching the fae lord, August frowns, unusually serious himself.
I shift on my feet as if I can squirm away from my anxiety. “Is this necessary? You wouldn’t really…” I can’t bring myself to finish that question.
Sylas glances from me to the open window. Light glows through it, but it’s turned an orange-gold hue as the sun sinks to the west. Soon the day will dwindle into evening. And then most of the light that shines over the keep will be that of the full moon.
“I wish I could say no,” he says gravely. “But when the wildness takes over, it clouds our minds completely. We won’t remember in the morning, won’t have any idea where it took us other than what we can piece together from the evidence around us and on us. Often there’s blood. We have a solid enough strategy here that no one’s been gravely injured so far, but you are a new factor.”
A vulnerable human factor. I restrain a shudder. “But if you taste my blood, that should snap you out of it.”
“Any of us could do an awful lot of damage on the way to that tasting.” Sylas’s gaze falls to my shoulder, the ragged ends of the scars peeking from beneath the short sleeve of my shirt where Aerik or one of his cadre mauled me.
“But if you took it before the moon—”
He cuts me off with a sharp shake of his head. “I will not ask that of you,” he says emphatically. “This affliction is our responsibility to deal with, not yours. You’ve already given up far more for my Seelie brethren than you should ever have had to.”
I can tell there’s no point in trying to argue. Since the other morning when he told me he wouldn’t require me to offer up my blood to the pack, he’s stubbornly avoided the subject of my cure and what it could mean for him, as if allowing me to make that offering would injure me in some way far greater than a few drops pricked from my finger.
Still, I can’t let it go completely. “Will you be all right?”
“As I’ve said, we have a solid strategy. The one saving grace of the wildness is that we can’t work magic or useful things like doorknobs while we’re in that form. We lock ourselves in separate areas of the keep so there’s no chance we’ll injure anyone. The pack members who are most vulnerable stay shut in their homes while the others roam far before the moon has fully risen so there’s less chance of them meeting up and savaging one another.”
“We’ve had to patch up wounds here and there the morning after,” August puts in. “But nothing serious so far. The furniture and the lesser beasts in the forests are in much more danger than any of us.”
Sylas pats my door, grim but apparently satisfied. “This should hold. You’ll be fine as long as you stay inside with the bolts drawn. So do that.” He glowers at me as if he can force me to follow his command with a stare.
I’m not in any hurry to seek out the company of the fae in murderous wolf form. Just the thought stirs up too many memories, ones that send a chill over my skin. When I’ve seen Sylas and the others as wolves before, they were always still in control, even when they were fighting. In the grips of the uncontrollable rage the full moon brings out in them, they might be just as vicious as Aerik