Spin the Shadows (Dark and Wicked Fae #1) - Cate Corvin Page 0,43
eyes were lit with avid interest.
“Fine.” I rubbed my arms, the chill seeping into my bones. “I won’t tell you a damn thing about Robin, but I’ll give you this in exchange for leaving him alone. My mother is Pomona, the head of the Hesperides.”
I reached out with a shaking hand and touched the damp wall. Beneath the stone there was rich, dark earth.
“I hate apples because they taste like failure,” I said bitterly. “Because I’m defective and I have no place at home in the Grove.”
My magic took seed in the soil, pulsing with new life. Tiny roots burst from the seed and crept between the stones.
The wall groaned as the roots became twining, thorny branches, displacing stones that fell to the floor with hollow thuds.
“Emain Ablach doesn’t want or need me. All I do is choke the life from the apple trees.”
The vines and branches reached out for Jack, plucking at his white suit and enveloping him in their thorny embrace. The Gentry didn’t move, allowing them to curl around his arms and legs like eager lovers, his gaze fixed on my face. “I see.”
Tiny buds grew from the thickening branches and unfurled into pale pink, glowing blossoms. The scent of springtime filled the tunnel.
“That’s what I do.” I took a deep breath, crushing my magic back inside, where it couldn’t break loose and wreak havoc.
Jack was held in place by my twisted, climbing tree as much as I trapped in his ice. A bud blossomed near his face, bathing his pale, sharp features in its warm light.
“Different isn’t defective, Briallen,” he said quietly.
I dropped my hand from the wall, allowing my warped tree to take over from there. It would find these dark tunnels a pleasant home for its spiky, choking branches. “Goodbye, Jack Frost.”
He touched one of the blossoms near his arm, drawing a thin line of blood across the back of his hand when he came too close to a thorn.
My ring was frozen over. A thin layer of frost melted to drops when I spun it around on my finger.
Jack looked up at me again, a faint smile on his lips that seemed real, not an affected expression. “I look forward to seeing you again.”
“Spin me a tale,” I whispered to my ring, then I stepped out of the ice and sideways into pooling shadows, no longer here nor there.
It was a dizzying sensation, spinning the shadows. From one shade to another, I burst through the tunnels, sometimes on the ceiling, sometimes in a crack in the wall, and once in a Fae’s shadow.
I hid in the shadows cast by a lantern, and then behind a sign, stepping invisibly through the Skin Market until I slid through the cracks in the wooden door, right in front of the stairs leading upwards to Sobek Street.
Another step took me to the shadow of a streetlamp, and then to the darkness behind Robin. He was jingling coins in his pail, but didn’t startle when I grabbed him from behind and yanked him with me.
We burst through Sobek Street easily, and as the sun set over Avilion, Robin pulled the power of the shadows away from me. We were dumped in a small public garden with a pond.
I laid flat on my back in the grass, gasping for breath, my head whirling. I felt like I’d just been stretched out wide and shrunk down to the size of a thimble multiple times in the span of several minutes.
Robin was next to me, already sitting up and leaning over me. “What happened?”
I blinked, trying to make the sky and branches overhead stop spinning, and focused on his eyes. A giggle escaped me. “You have four eyes, boss.”
His lips flattened. “Where’s your glamour? Did Calder catch you?”
I tried to sit up, my stomach cramping with nausea from whirling around, and Robin slid a hand behind my back to help me. It was impossible to ignore how warm and rough his hand felt against my skin.
“Calder didn’t catch me. I planted the bug and downloaded the chip to his phone after knocking him out, but Jack Frost caught up to me in the tunnels.” I swallowed hard as my stomach slowly settled. “He asked me what you were planning, and… just some stuff about me. I think he likes getting under people’s skin.”
“He does. That’s probably what he’s best at.” Robin rubbed my back in small circles. “Not bad spinning shadows for your first time.”