Page 66 of Hunted By Fae

Not a lie.

At first, Ifearedthat the dark ones would come with the black air. Butknow?

And time went on.

Weeks, quarantine, survival, deaths—and then months had gone by with no dark fae.

I let myself hope.

That was stupid.

Tesni’s response is a murmur, “Where did they come from?”

“The same place as the darkness.” I watch her, closely. “From another world.”

For a beat, she’s motionless, then her throat bobs once, her lips turn inwards—and she bites down on them.

Without a word, she peels her damp hair into four sections, clips them, then leans over the sink.

She lets the cloth slap to the basin before she turns on the tap, then rinses off the sections.

Water is quick to splash on the tiles and spray over the toes of my boots.

Tesni’s voice echoes off the curves of the sink, “But it’s a world you know of.”

I breathe the answer, a reluctant sigh, “Yes.”

Tess expected it. There’s not even a flicker of surprise to pause her.

“Theothers—” Her fingers comb through the last section of her wet hair. “—you know what they are, don’t you?”

I reach for the rail and tug off a towel. I hand it to her as she gradually lifts her hair out of the sink.

Tess snatches the towel then turban-wraps it around her head.

The quiet in the bathroom is disturbed by the droplets of water leaking from the tap over the bathtub.

I watch Tess fold her arms over her chest, then lean against the sink. The porcelain basin must be cutting into her spine, but she doesn’t so much as flinch as she reclines—and meets my gaze.

My mouth tugs down at the corners.

That disconnect has happened already.

If her soul and body were stitched together, those stitches have already started to come undone.

The unwavering blue of her stare lures out the answer. “They are fae. They are thedarkfae, the dark ones, the dokkalves.”

For a beat she just frowns at me.

“Dokkalves,” she mouths the word, pink lips morphing around a word entirely foreign to her.

“There are a lot of different kinds of fae, but there are only two races that rule, the light ones and the dark ones. The light ones live in the light… the dark ones live in the dark.”

Tess just stares at me.

The dropletsdrip, drip, dripinto the stagnant bathwater.

If those threads between her soul and body were unravelling before, they have disintegrated now.