Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
He takes a single step closer. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I close my eyes and remember that night. “The night I met Misha at the refugee camp, I was captured. They injected me with that toxin, and I couldn’t access my magic. My arms were in shackles. I was outnumbered and so tired—from the metamorphosis, from the way I used my magic as I stormed out of the palace, and from helping those children get to the portal.” I swallow hard, and my insides shiver. I haven’t thought much about that night, haven’t stopped to wonder who slayed my captors. I realize now that I never let myself think about it. “I went to sleep wishing them dead, and when I woke, they were. Gutted in their sleep. And a bloody knife—my knife—lay on the ground beside me.”
“You think you did it?” he asks. “But you don’t remember?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to admit it even to myself. “I’ve gotten flashes of their panicked eyes as they were sliced open,” I finally say. “I told myself I was imagining it. That it was just my mind trying to make sense of something I couldn’t explain.”
“Shit,” Finn mutters.
“What does it mean? I’ve turned myself to shadow countless times, but never while leaving my actual body.”
He tips his face up and blows out a breath. “There are legends about Unseelie who could control their shadow selves. Generations ago. There’s a story about Mab. That she was captured once, locked in an iron room that nullified her power, yet she was still able to send her shadow self to destroy the guards and free herself from that prison.”
“Even though she couldn’t access her magic?”
“The idea was that her shadow self wasn’t bound to her corporeal body.” He shrugs and blows out a breath. “So much of it is legend. I’m not sure I ever believed it was real.”
“Is there any other explanation for what happened with us tonight?” I ask.
“I saw you—felt you—on me. I touched you, and you were as real as anything. But then once I spotted your sleeping form on the bed, you weren’t corporeal anymore. My hands just went right through you.”
“You don’t know anyone who could do this?” I ask, but I’m still shaking.
“No,” he breathes. “My father wanted to, actually. He trained with a special priestess trying to access his shadow self, but he never could. Just be careful, Princess. With you, we don’t—”
“—know how my magic works and why, because I’m a mortal who was turned immortal and holds the power of the Unseelie crown that Oberon never should’ve been able to pass to me to begin with.”
He shrugs, but his expression is apologetic. He glances out at the dark night outside the window and pulls the curtains closed. “We should get some sleep.”
I settle back against the headboard and cringe at the sight of the lock of hair and the knife on my bedside table. I’m so spooked, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep.
“What’s that?” Finn asks, following my gaze.
I shake my head, still staring at it. “I don’t really know, but I think it’s Juliana’s hair.”
Finn barks out a laugh. “You cut off Juliana’s hair?”
“I thought it was a dream.”
His chest shakes in silent laughter. “You thought you were dreaming, so you let yourself slice off her hair, but it just so happened that your shadow self was doing the same thing in the waking world.”
I shrug again. That about sums it up, but it doesn’t make it any less creepy.
“Remind me to stay on your good side, Princess.”
I cut him a look. “I’m not sure you’ve even met my good side.”
His gaze slides over my face to my neck and the low-cut top of the sleeping gown, then down to the blankets that cover my legs. His gaze smolders so hot I might as well be naked. “I have met your good side,” he says. “She came out to play that night in the shower. She was a lot of fun.” I throw another pillow at him, and he snatches this one out of the air, grinning. “Thanks. Looks like I have all your pillows now. Does this mean you’ll be joining me on the floor?” He grabs the other off the ground before lifting them both in the air. “Or would you prefer I join you on the bed?”
“What happened to staying on my good side?”
Chuckling, he tosses a pillow back to me before climbing back onto his pallet of blankets on the floor. We’re both quiet for a long time.
I close my eyes and listen to his breathing, but I know he’s not sleeping, and neither am I. With visions of those gutted orcs flashing through my mind, I’m not sure I will.
“You’re shaking,” Finn says. “I can feel it from here.”