Spin the Shadows (Dark and Wicked Fae #1) - Cate Corvin Page 0,71

girls from a terrible fate.

Silke took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re full of shit. I would’ve seen nothing but the inside of a Garda cell until you decided to cut my head off.”

Robin just shook his head. “I tend to reward my informants, which you know perfectly well. You could’ve been a free Fae, Silke.”

The huldra looked utterly stricken, her pretty face drawn into a rictus of agony. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

But her hand was shaking ever so slightly, the first loss of control I’d ever seen from Silke.

“It’s not too late.” Robin shifted in place. “Come clean. Tell me where he keeps the human girls, and I’ll petition to the queen to have your life-debt reduced.”

“For what?” Silke snarled. “To maybe live out a few years of freedom, if I even survive that long? No. We both know I’ve already gone too far, Goodfellow. There is no forgiveness for me.”

She let out a hollow laugh. “The only way out is for you to die. And do you know what the worst part is? I admired you so much. So deeply. I should be happy to finally rub your face in something you fucked up.”

“Oh?” Robin raised an eyebrow, the same look he gave me when he was waiting for another torrent of words.

“But I’m not. I just wish… I want you to know this before you die. I wish I hadn’t done it. I really do. Every morning I wake up and look at that lazy meatbag stuffed full of evanesce, and all I feel is regret over what I ruined.” Silke’s teeth were bared so rabidly she looked like she could bite through bones. “I regret it, Robin. But I won’t let you steal my life away for a second time, either.”

“Silke.”

Hearing her name spoken like that by Robin, so softly and yet loaded with a weight of history, sent a pang through me.

I focused on the gun loaded with Faebane. Priorities, Bri. Priorities.

“Was it worth trading the lives of mortals for your own gain? They will never see the light of day again. They will never feel, never taste, never understand what is happening to them. They were hardly more than children.”

Robin took a step closer.

Silke exhaled. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t. You’ve never had your freedom stripped from you. I loathe Brightkin with every fiber of my being, but he was the only chance I had.”

Robin scoffed. “Do you think I work for Titania because I love her? No. Everyone owes a debt, Silke. Even me.”

Silke’s brow softened and her lips relaxed. She looked at Robin like she was having an epiphany.

He held out a hand. “It’s never too late,” he said fiercely. “Never.”

Silke’s arm swiveled towards him and she fired.

Three shots rang out, the bullets glancing off the stones and sending up sprays of sparks. My heart dropped to the floor.

She had to have missed, but…

Robin was standing there, hand still extended, no longer wearing Calder’s face. His white shirt was spattered with mud, black hair and blue eyes standing out in the darkness like a prince of night.

The bullet had ripped the glamour clean away.

A neat hole pierced the left side of his chest, just below his collar bone. A sluggish trickle of blood crept out, staining through the white in an inexorable crimson cloud, growing darker with every beat of his heart.

Silke stared at him with enormous eyes, her hands now shaking.

He tried to speak, but blood coated his lower lip. Dark veins began to grow up his neck, peeking over the edge of his white collar.

The Faebane was in his veins, turning his blood black as it poisoned him.

Robin went white as a sheet, the dark veins standing out like roots beneath his skin, and dropped to one knee.

“Robin,” I whispered. My lungs were full of ice. It grew inside me in dangerous, sparkling shards, fragile as glass but ravenous to pierce through them all. “Robin!”

My body moved without even thinking, stumbling through the mud and stone to Robin’s side. I pressed my hand to the hole in his chest, and blood pumped out over my palm in a torrent of black like ink.

“Robin?” I asked, dangerously close to crying. There was a horrible jagged sensation under the tears.

He coughed. The Faebane tendrils were creeping across his face.

I looked up at Silke, gasping for breath. Robin was going to die. The walls of the tunnel were closing in on me, it was so hard to breathe, my lungs crushed under