Blood Before Sunrise

“What?”

His lips curved into a sardonic smile. “Why would I tell you?” he said. “No, I think I’d best keep that secret to myself for the time being. First, we have to find the Time Keeper. And after she surrenders her half of the hourglass, all will be set aright.”

I could only guess what kind of shit storm would be caused by bringing the two halves together. “What makes you think she’ll do that?” I mean, give me a break. Faolan had to be pretty full of himself to think this would all tie together with a neat little bow.

“I have no doubt she will.” His confidence sickened me. “She’s going to surrender the glass to you.”

“Not likely.” But the cold feeling of dread sliding down my spine said otherwise. Reaver hadn’t tried to stop me. In fact, I probably could have marched right up to the front door and asked for it. But since I had not a goddamned clue why that was, I had to assume Faolan knew something I didn’t. I mean, didn’t everyone have one up on me in the knowledge department?

Faolan turned me to face him so quickly and so roughly, it nearly gave me whiplash. He hit me across the face-with a closed fucking fist-a right hook that sent me headfirst to the ground. Christ, I was tired of getting smacked around. Blood trickled from my nose, mouth, and cheek, staining the grass that cushioned the unbattered side of my face.

Before I could drag my sorry ass up to a sitting position, Faolan drew the dagger from his belt. The veins of green glowed bright against the black, and he pounced, pinning my legs beneath his and holding me down with his hand constricting my airway. He held the dagger high and looked around us, his eyes glowing deadly silver. “She is beloved by your father!” Faolan shouted to the sky. “Do you hear me, Brakae? Will you sit idly by and watch her die?”

Fucker! Faolan was well versed in the ways of abusive control. Mental, emotional, physical-oh yeah, he had it covered, the triple play of abuse. My entire face throbbed, and my blood continued to flow, which shouldn’t have happened. I usually healed fast, almost instantaneously. And I hurt like hell. Unconsciousness threatened, the pain sending me into a state of near shock. I hadn’t felt this degree of prolonged agony since-well-since the beatings I’d endured from an abusive husband in my human life.

Silence answered us. A dead silence made all the more dramatic for the promise inherent in Faolan’s words. He’d kill me and not even bat an eyelash. I’d brought him to Brakae, making me as good as expendable. “Perhaps she thinks I’m bluffing,” he said more to himself than to me. “I’m sorry, Darian, but I’m going to have to prove to the Time Keeper just how dire your situation is.”

Sure, he warned me, but that didn’t mean I was close to prepared when he brought his arm down in one forceful, sweeping motion. He drew the dagger across my skin from my collarbone to my sternum, opening a deep gash in my flesh. Screams pierced the still air. Shut the fuck up! I thought, until I realized I was the one screaming. Liquid fire seared from the wound, spreading through my body like poison.

His laughter fueled my rage, and I snarled like a wounded animal, working my broken jaw, despite the hurt it caused me, to toss out a string of curses. Holy shit, I was in some serious pain. My body could start with the healing…anytime now… Come on, damn it. Heal. “Faolan!” I shrieked. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die!”

“Quiet.” The command stalled my mind, numbed my pain, and stilled my body. Our surroundings blurred in my vision, leaving only the two of us alone in a sea of gray nothing. Faolan towered above me, looking too far away to be so close. “I’m going to kill her!” he shouted again. “Just like the others! Do you think your father will weep for her? Will he relive the pain of losing his child? Would you be the one to deliver that agony upon him for the second time? I. Will. Kill. Her!” His words rent the still air, ragged and strained with his rage. He looked down, his eyebrow cocked, and he whispered the last words for me alone. “Believe it.”

Something in the distance stole his focus from the business of sending me to my death. Lucidity returned, and with it an excruciating pain that made me want to retreat back into my mind, anywhere but the present moment. My breath came in shallow pants-all I could manage with Faolan’s hand squeezing my throat. Above me the dagger hovered in his fist, dripping my own blood onto my body. He leaned back, his grip slackened, and I resisted the urge to turn my head and look. But when I noticed the half-crazed expression creep onto his face, my heart sank into my stomach. Stupid girl. She’d done just what I would’ve done in her situation.

Brakae had surrendered.

Chapter 24

Faolan eased himself up from the ground, dismissing me like an insect beneath his boot. I could have just closed my eyes and drifted away right there in the fragrant grass for all the attention he paid. He stumbled backward, his eyes glued to the figure standing barely beyond my line of sight. Hate, jealousy, and-could it be?-love twisted his features into something even more otherworldly than he already was.

The longer we’d been in this strange place, the more his Fae glamour slid away, as if he couldn’t spare the concentration to keep the guise intact. And I focused on those things: his face, the way his body trembled in Brakae’s presence, the slight shifting of his eyes, how they’d become rounder and brighter. Because if I didn’t, I’d succumb to my fear and pain, and I’d be damned if Faolan saw me weakened by anything he’d done.

Grass rustled in the distance, and with it came a stirring breeze and the fragrant scent of Shaede, though there was something foreign about it that my senses could not identify. I closed my eyes, the hairs standing on my arms as I felt her presence beside me. She knelt and gathered my head in her hands, cradling it on her lap. Don’t open your eyes, I thought as she combed her fingers through my hair, sweeping it away from my temple. Just lie here and sleep.

“Faolan, my love.” Brakae’s words jump-started my heart as if I’d been struck by lightning. “What have you done?”

I’d heard her wrong. Of course, she’d said, “Faolan, you low-life piece of shit, what have you done?”

But, no, just like all of the lovely surprises in my life, I’d heard her plain as day. “My hand has been forced.” The longing in his voice was unmistakable. “You helped them imprison me. And why? For the pestilence known as humanity? I loved you. I love you still; yet you would rather see me dead than a race so disgustingly fragile their lives are nothing more than a flash of lightning against a black sky.”

Here I was, sliced open and bleeding to death in a realm where time flew by at a blurring pace, with Brakae and Faolan positioned on either side of my battered body having a bittersweet lovers’ reunion. Wasn’t this just fan- fucking-tastic? Brakae continued to stroke my hair-did the whole of the supernatural community have an affinity for petting?-as Faolan paced back and forth, as agitated as I’d ever seen him.

“This is an old argument,” Brakae said. “Too old for us to revisit. Life, all life, is precious, and there is not one of us who deserves a higher place above another. I will not reopen healed wounds by entertaining your madness again.”

Hello? Anyone remember the bleeding girl here? And why the hell was I still not healing? God, I wanted to pass out from the pain. Yet the little Days of Our Lives moment unfolding at my head and feet kept me nice and conscious. “I hate to interrupt,” I said, struggling to lean up at least on one elbow. “But, Brakae, this should be the part where you stand up and run the fuck away!”

“Shhh.” She cupped the side of my face Faolan hadn’t managed to break. “Don’t worry. I trust you.”

You trust me? What the hell kind of thing was that to say at a moment like this? Good Lord, I was beginning to wish Faolan would hurry up and kill me, just to give me a reprieve from all of their cryptic talk and strange behavior.

“Get up,” Faolan commanded, and I felt my world go fuzzy and gray. “I don’t have time for idle discussions. Brakae, take us to the glass.”

I looked up at Raif’s daughter, the deadly smile on her face an exact replica of his. How had I not recognized it the moment I’d met her? A light of calculation gleamed in her sapphire eyes. Maybe she wasn’t as harmless as I’d thought. “Yes,” she said as she placed her hands under my arms, easing me to a sitting position. “It’s time to