Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,21
understand how she came to be that way or how else she might be connected to the wildness. Are there others like her? Is there a way to replicate the effect she has without needing her at all?”
Kellan lifts his nose haughtily. “Is that your main concern: finding a way to return the feeble thing to her ‘home’?”
Sylas manages to keep his glower restrained, but there’s no mistaking it for what it is. “Are you so caught up in your scorn for humans that you can fail to see she’s hardly a permanent solution to our problems, for the same reasons you scorn her? What are we supposed to do years from now when she succumbs to old age and we’re still here with the moon and its inevitable waxing?”
The absinthe is still bubbling through my veins headily enough that I barely catch my laugh at how taken aback Kellan looks. His mouth closes into a sour line, so I ask the necessary question.
“What are you proposing we do with her in the meantime, exactly?”
Sylas spreads his hands. “We have four weeks until the next full moon when we could demonstrate her usefulness to the arch-lords. Until then, we treat her well enough that she’ll trust us, we find out what we can from her, we observe her, and at the same time we evaluate how to balance the fallout of Aerik’s potential anger—and how we might avoid it entirely. It should be simple enough. From what I’ve observed already, I don’t imagine she’s going to ask for much.”
“We could speed all that along with the right wine and a charm or two,” Kellan says. “Magic her into telling the truth or at least into total compliance.”
“No. I don’t think she’s purposefully hiding anything from us—she’s even more bewildered by all this than we are. And she’s hardly a threat. We simply need to find the right questions to get at the answers we need. Controlling her with magic might make her less inclined to open up if it reminds her of her treatment at Aerik’s hands. She’s already recoiled at the idea of being presented with intoxicating food.” Our lord folds his arms over his chest. “We’ll treat her as we should any respected guest.”
The other man’s lips curl back. “You can hardly expect me to pamper—”
“I expect you to steer clear of her if you can’t control yourself enough to avoid terrorizing her, kin-of-my-mate,” Sylas says sharply. “We want to open her up, not tear her down. But you can leave that to the rest of us.”
Kellan looks as if he’s bit back a grimace, but he says nothing more, just ducks his head in acknowledgment. Then he marches out with an audible huff.
August turns to our lord. “How do you think Aerik found her to begin with?”
Sylas rubs his jaw. “From what she was able to tell me about her capture—and from that scar on her shoulder—it sounds as though Aerik and his cadre roamed into the human world while caught up in the wildness and came across her. When they attacked her, the taste of her blood must have woken them from their madness. Which gave them enough wherewithal to decide to bring her back with them so they could make more use of her.”
“And torment her at the same time.” August’s eyes flash again. “We can’t let her fall back into their hands.”
“I agree with you completely on that. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“They’ll be sniffing around for her,” I can’t help noting. “It’s quite the prize to lose.”
Sylas gives me a grim smile. “And we’ll deal with that eventuality when it comes for us. Now…” He taps the notebook lying on his desk. “I’d like to return to my reading, if you don’t mind.”
His reasoning makes sense, but I’m not sure I like the vehemence with which he’s expressed it. I saw how carefully he handled the girl last night, how quickly he attended to her needs this morning. Whatever flaws our glorious leader has, one of them is definitely an over-inflated sense of honor, especially when it comes to the vulnerable. We wouldn’t be putting up with Kellan’s impudence otherwise.
It won’t do any of us any good if he softened to the poor thing as much as August has—or more.
Sylas will hardly appreciate my saying that to his face, though, so I motion to August, putting on an innocent tone. “Come on, Auggie. I believe I might smell something burning. Did