Page 65 of Hunted By Fae

I have to get ahead of this.

Still, my muscles are weighing me down, sagged and unwilling, as I slowly unfurl myself from the armchair.

The urge to twist around and make for the kitchen is strong. It’s the gargle in my gut, an acidic hungering for food, a distraction and delay from what I need to do.

I drag myself towards the bathroom door—and possibly my own funeral.

Emily doesn’t stir as my boots thud softly over the rug. Comatose, basically, huddled there, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the scuffed leg of the coffee table.

I inch past it, stepping over the toppled remote controls and mugs. There are brown stains on the rug, and I guess that the people who lived here were enjoying coffees when the blackout hit.

I step over a minefield of fallen things, remotes and mugs, sure, but also the shards of a broken plate, mouldy food stuck to the hardwood floors beyond the rug, sneakers and boots strewn about, socks and underwear, a coat and, strangely, a heavy-duty padlock.

That one earns a faint, dubious glance from me before I step over it and reach for the door handle. My other hand lifts to give a soft knock before I slip into the bathroom.

The light is dim.

Just a couple of candles lining the shelves, dusky red flames doing their best to pierce the darkness. But my eyes still strain against the shift, from Emily’s flashlight abandoned on the rug to some wisps of tiny flames.

I shut the door behind me and fall back against it.

Tess stands at the sink, stripped down to a fresh set of underwear. She wipes her body with a soapy cloth. Her hair is a wet, lathered mess down her back.

Crystalline eyes find me in the dusty mirror.

She considers me for the shortest moment before her gravelly voice comes, wrecked by all the sobs that plagued her earlier, “You aren’t telling me what you know.”

The glassy blue of her gaze in the reflection is so fucking hollow that my heart twists in my chest. I almost look away from the shame it brings me.

“I wait and wait and wait for you to come to me,” she says and throws me a pained look over her shoulder, like I have betrayed her, and maybe I have in trying to protect her, “to tell me what the truth is behind one of those lies. But you never come.”

The sweatpants in the tub stink of her urine. It’s a bubble of ammonia and soap in here.

I don’t blame her, though.

If I didn’t know what the dark fae are, then I would have pissed myself, too. Even knowing, I almost did.

Tess turns back to the mirror. She considers the smears of toothpaste staining her pale, freckled complexion.

For a beat, I just watch her rinse the cloth, then bring it to her face.

My lips part around a murmur, “I see the way you react to things. I only tell you what I need to—to protect you.”

“From myself,” she adds in a mumble, then scoffs. “I thought, when the blackout was coming, that you recognised it—or you knew what it was. Then… those things. Those…others… You do know what they are.” It’s a weathered statement, no rage, no tears, no sharp glares. “You do know what’s happening.”

She holds the cloth under the tap, then gently lets the water stream out. Some places have running water, still, and others have none at all. Gas works, too, which comes in handy, but not all places run on gas.

Sunken against the door, I’m quiet as Tesni lathers up a bar of soap onto the cloth, then turns off the tap. The smell of shea butter soap is strong, but not strong enough to conceal the ammonia.

“So why don’t you tell me the truth,now,” she says, and it’s no suggestion, it’s a command. The cloth slaps to her cheek, then moves in circles, like she’s buffing out all thefilth from this dark world. “And that way, we might be able to survive whatever the fuck is happening to us.”

The truth.

It’s what I came in here for.

I loosen a weighted breath.

“You’re right… I did recognise it,” I confess. “But I didn’t knowtheywould come with it.”