His fingers leave the side of my neck and travel down to my throat. He grips, loosely. The lazy grip of a tired beast holding onto prey it’s not all that interested in.
Pain nips at my neck—the bite of his nails against my skin. I wince, the first sound I’ve made since being thrown at the wall. His grip tightens somewhat, as if to respond to my sound, as if just realising I’m a person, trapped.
He holds my neck tighter and pulls me to the side, forcing my head to turn until I face him. I look up at him from beneath wet lashes. I realise just now that I’m weeping.
The leader stares down at me with eyes blacker than the darkness that swallows the world. He studies me in a thick, tense silence that I’m sure will end with my head severed from my body.
Our faces are so close that our noses touch, barely. Just a ghost of a touch, but it’s enough to flood my body with adrenaline. Ever been this close to a wild, savage beast before? Every nerve and muscle in my body is screaming for me to run, run into the fire to save myself from the agony he’ll inflict upon me.
I turn my gaze down at his full lips to avoid his stare.
The silence is becoming deafening when he finally breaks it.
“Have you more?” he asks.
With a jerk, I look up at him, my brows arched. I definitely didn’t expect him to speak any human language, let alone the one I know.
But once the shock settles and I register his words, confusion creases my forehead and I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I tell him in a choked, whispered voice, a voice that speaks of fear and panic.
“More of these,” he says, his tone thick with an earthly accent. His hand abandons its grip on my neck before his fingertips graze over the freckles he touched before. “Three freckles,” he explains, holding my gaze steady, “in a crooked line, like the stars.”
As if I can see the stars, I look up to the sky. But even with the blaze that eats through the village, I can’t see them, and I don’t know what he’s talking about. What stars? There are more than three out there.
But I shove aside my poor astronomy skills and force myself to focus on what he said. Three freckles, in a line—a crooked one at that.
I race to think over my entire body. I know my scars well, better than I know the back of my own hand, or the reflection that greets me in the mirror.
I come up with an answer. “Yeah… I mean, I think so.”
The word ‘why’ sits on my tongue, burning me. I’m desperate to ask why he wants to know about my freckles, why they have to be in a crooked line. But I bite my tongue, hard, to stop from stirring rage in the beast who could easily tear out my throat.
“Show me,” he says and releases me. He takes a step back, still standing in the orange blaze that grows hotter by the second. I only realise now how much I’m sweating.
With a slow, unsure nod, I peel off my cardigan. It sticks to my clammy skin like cling-film on a wet surface.
My tank top hugs me like a second skin, and I’m all too aware of the holes in it at my belly. My stomach is practically sunken in from how little I’ve eaten lately.
Shakily, I outstretch my arm, letting it bask in the fiery light. The heat is almost unbearable now. But if the dark fae aren’t fleeing from the fire yet, then maybe I shouldn’t worry. Not that I’ll live long enough to be concerned about the fire.
My arm stays outstretched between us.
The fae rinses his gaze over my tattered flesh. He lingers over the fresh wound, wrapped loosely in a cloth. Slowly, he reaches out for the cloth and pinches it between his sharp fingernails. With a gentle tug, the bloody rag falls to the ground and lands between us.
Now, my arm is bare. As naked as can be. He sees all of the scars smearing my flesh, and the red, angry cuts slicing through my skin. The tattoo between my fresh cuts and the bone of my wrist.
My heart stops as he takes my wrist in his gentle grip and, with his thumb, brushes the skin of my tattoo. His brow creases as he studies the odd shape of my ink.
It doesn’t mean anything—it’s just a shape. But he’s too interested in it. His mouth tilts into a frown to match his face as he uses his thumb again to brush over the inked skin. It’s as though he’s trying to wipe it away.
He murmurs something under his breath. Too quiet for the blond fae to hear him, and I don’t understand anything he says in his language, so I get the feeling he’s talking to himself, mulling something over.
The leader finally wrenches his stare from the tattoo. He looks up at me instead, a smouldering curiosity swimming in his molten eyes.
Slowly, his hand leaves my wrist and travels up along my scars to the three dotted freckles tucked away at the crease of my arm. He clutches my elbow tightly and turns my arm toward the flames blazing up from the street. Light blasts my
