chapter twenty-seven

I was on my knees on the narrow ledge, back hunched with strain as I tried to hack up a lung for what felt like the better part of forever. Ethan patted my back and murmured comforting words, but I was too miserable to be comforted.

My throat and nasal passages burned from expelling all that water from my lungs. My chest ached from taking all that water in. And all my joints throbbed from being a tug-of-war toy between Ethan and the moat monster. I was also soaked through and chilled to the bone, my whole body shivering violently.

When the coughs had calmed some, Ethan pulled me against him, wrapping his arms around me and holding me close to the warmth of his body. It was only then that I noticed he was wearing nothing but a pair of pants. Even so, his body felt like a furnace compared to mine, and I curled into myself and huddled against him.

“What was that?” I rasped, shuddering at the memory of that awful, evil face in the water.

“It was a Water Witch,” Ethan explained. “They are natives of Faerie and at least nominally belong to the Unseelie Court, which is probably the only reason I was able to make her let go. There are dozens of them in the moat, and they will attack anything, Fae or human, that falls in. If the moat were just empty water, then people—and Fae—could enter and leave Avalon at will and the Gates would mean nothing.”

I shuddered again at the thought of dozens of those horrible things patrolling the moat, hoping for a free meal. Not that I was sure the Water Witch had planned to eat me, but with those teeth she’d flashed, it didn’t seem out of the question.

I started to cry, then, for once not ashamed of my weakness. I remembered Grace yelling the fateful order into her cell phone moments before she threw it—and me—into the moat.

“She killed my mom,” I sobbed against Ethan’s chest.

He held me tight and rocked me. “Maybe not,” he murmured. “I called your father after I called mine. He said he’d send Finn to rescue your mother. We can only hope that he made it there in time. I wish I could offer you something more certain, but I think my cell phone is at the bottom of the moat by now.”

I sniffled and tried to hope. Finn did this kind of stuff for a living. If anyone could have saved my mom from Kirk, it would be him. But everything had happened so fast, despite my attempts at delay. Would Finn really have had time to get to the hotel before Grace ordered my mother’s death?

“I want to go home,” I said, though I couldn’t rightly say where home was anymore.

“I know,” Ethan said. “But the purpose of the moat is to keep people out of Avalon, so there isn’t exactly an easy exit. There’s a trapdoor in the bridge above us, but my father’s going to have to get someone to undo the locking spells on it, and then they’re going to have to haul us up somehow. We’ll be stuck here for a while.”

I was so cold I felt like I’d never be warm again in a million years, and the contrast of Ethan’s warmth only made me feel colder. He scooted backward until his back was against the concrete piling. He had to let go of me to do it, but then he patted his lap.

“Come sit on my lap,” he said. “I’ll keep you as warm as I can.”

I thought briefly about what had happened the last time I’d found myself on Ethan’s lap, but I shoved that thought to the side. Even Ethan wasn’t enough of a player to make a move on me now, of all times.

So I crawled onto his lap, and he wrapped himself around me. His arms surrounded me, and my face was pressed up against his bare chest while his body heat seeped through my sodden clothes.

“Aren’t you cold at all?” I asked him.

I felt him shrug. “Not really. We only feel the cold when it’s extreme. And as you can probably tell, our body temperatures run higher than humans’ anyway.”

Yes, I could tell. Every inch of me that was in contact with his body was toasty warm. Unfortunately, there were a lot of inches left, and I shivered nonstop.

“You saved my life,” I whispered into his chest.

His chin rubbed across the top of my head. “It was the least I could do.”

I thought about the Water Witch, with her milky eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and sticky cobweb hair. Ethan had jumped into the moat after me, knowing there were dozens of those creatures in there. And while they were supposedly both members of the Unseelie Court, they obviously weren’t kissing cousins.

He’d lied to me. He’d tried to use his magic against me. And he’d set me up for an attack that could have gotten me killed. But in the end, he’d risked his own life to save mine, so how could I not forgive him for the bad things he’d done?

“Let’s just call it even now and leave it at that,” I said. Ethan kissed the top of my head but didn’t respond.

“How did you know Grace was about to cast a spell at my father?” he asked me. “You saved his life with your warning.”

That thought made me feel a tiny bit less wretched. At least I’d done something right. And I was glad to have saved a life, even if I’d needed rescuing myself.

“I could feel the magic building up,” I explained, and I felt Ethan go still. I tried to lift my head from his chest to see his face, but he wouldn’t let me.

“What?” I asked. “What did I say?”

“You felt the magic,” he repeated, and he sounded like he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Yeah. At least, that’s what I think it is. The cameo my dad gave me heats up, and then my skin starts to feel all prickly. I’m pretty sure that only happens when there’s magic around.”

Now Ethan pushed me away, allowing me to see his face. Not that I could see much in the darkness under the bridge. But I could see the intensity of his expression.

“I’m going to forget I asked you that question,” he said. “And I’m very certainly going to forget your answer. If your father or mine ever asks you, say you heard her muttering something and made an educated guess as to what it meant.”

“Why?”

“Because traditionally, the magic has always treated Faeriewalkers like humans, even though they are truly half Fae. But if you could feel it building, that means you have an affinity for it, which means you might be able to train and use it yourself. You are a powerful and frightening enough weapon as it is. If anyone thought you could do magic as well…” He shook his head. “Too dangerous. It wouldn’t be just the Queens who wanted to eliminate you then.”

“But it’s only because of the cameo,” I protested. “If I take it off’” I reached for the clasp behind my neck, but Ethan’s hands closed around my wrists.

“Keep it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what it does, but if it reacts to magic, then it’s an object of power of some sort and could come in handy someday. You wouldn’t have felt the effects if you didn’t have a natural affinity for magic. A human wearing it would feel nothing. So we never had this conversation. Got it?”

My eyes no doubt wide as saucers, I nodded. Why would my father have given me an “object of power” if he thought I couldn’t access the magic? Had he somehow guessed that I would be unusual even for a Faeriewalker? Or had he just figured that since I couldn’t sense magic, the cameo was harmless, just a symbol of my Seelie affiliations? If I couldn’t ask him about it, then it seemed likely I’d never know the answer. “And you’re not going to tell anyone?” I prompted Ethan. “Not even your father?”

“Tell them what?” he asked, and though he was trying to sound dry and witty, he just ended up sounding nervous.