Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,102

have to be the lord my pack put their faith in.

I push myself faster still, the brush scraping at my shoulders and haunches. And then a sound reaches my ears that makes my blood run cold: a cry of fear, so faint in the distance I don’t know if we can possibly reach its source in time.

29

Talia

The woman from Tristan’s cadre draws a dagger from a sheath at her hip. She stays where she is, braced to spring, her dark eyes fixed on me. “I asked you, where are you going?”

My whole body has frozen, including my vocal cords. I’m not remotely prepared for a fight. I have no weapons, nowhere to take shelter. There’s no sign of any of those thicker patches Whitt mentioned that should lead me to the human world—and even if I found one, I wouldn’t be surprised if this fae woman followed me through to continue her interrogation.

My gaze focuses in on the gleam of the moonlight catching on her dagger. Bronze. One of my last conversations with August wavers up from my memories—true names and the magic that comes with them.

I don’t know if there’s a hope of working magic, but it might have happened once before, and I haven’t got anything better. Fee-doom-ace-own, I repeat in my head. Fee-doom-ace-own. Like a mantra, like a shield.

“I’m taking a walk,” I say aloud. For once, despite my fear, my voice comes out clearly—not booming by any means, but more than a whisper. My heart is thudding, panic twisting through my veins, but holding me steady against the terror is that new emotion I’ve discovered. I’m scared, but I’m also angry.

Every faerie in this realm seems to think they have the right to demand things from me and order me around, if not outright torment me, even this woman I’ve never met face-to-face before. If I don’t belong to Sylas, I sure as hell don’t belong to her.

“A walk so far from home?” the woman says, spinning the dagger between her fingers. “Does your master know you’ve come all this way?”

“Of course he does. He told me to come.” There are other stories I could spin, lies I could tell, but I stop there. I don’t know what magic she might cast on me, what secrets she might force me to reveal, but I suspect the less I say, the better. What I have told her could even be presented as true if I count Whitt as one of my “masters.”

“Somehow, having watched you for a while, I doubt that.” Her eyes narrow. “And what have they done with your hair? That can’t be its true shade.”

“They thought I looked nicer this way.”

“And for all they care about prettying you up, they didn’t allow you to make any appearance during our recent visit to your keep.” She cocks her head, her grip on the dagger tightening. “I think there’s more to this than you’re saying, but that’s easily fixed. I think you’ll find that if you don’t volunteer the truth, I can cut it out of you quickly enough.”

A deeper shiver runs through me. Panic is gaining ground over the solid foundation of my anger. It’s a struggle to get my next sentence out. “I don’t think Sylas would appreciate that.”

“Oh, he’ll have to understand when I explain how uncooperative you were.”

Without any more warning than that, she launches herself at me, snatching at my wrist and yanking me toward her and her blade. The painful jolt through my arm shocks a yelp from my throat.

I kick out instinctively, and the foot brace gives me one small advantage. The wooden slats smack into her shin harder than my foot could have on its own, throwing her off balance. As I try to wrench away from her, I stumble, and we both topple over.

The fae woman throws herself onto me a second later, pinning my arms, her knife flashing toward my neck. A snarl reverberates from her chest. At the same moment, the syllables spill from my lips in a ragged gasp. “Fee-doom-ace-own.”

The dagger slams down toward me and droops as if melting. When it hits my shoulder—she wasn’t trying to kill me after all, only wound me into submission—the sharp tip has folded in on itself into a blunt end that jabs me hard enough to bruise but doesn’t slice into my flesh.

The fae woman spits out a curse and yanks her dagger back to stare at the collapsed blade. I stare at it too, my