Page 39 of Unfettered

“Welcome home, nisny,” he says with an unnerving grin.

“Am I in the fey world?” I blurt.

His grin widens. “More or less.”

“Send me back!” I demand, but it comes out sounding more like a terrified shriek.

“No one summoned you, little nisny. You found your own way,” the stranger answers calmly. His eyes are slitted like a cat’s and for some reason that is scaring the crap out of me.

“Your soul knows what it needs,” he says smugly.

His tone is enough to shake me out of my fear and make me bristle instead.

“I don’t need this. I don’t need you!” I snap.

The stranger merely flashes his white teeth at me. His ears are pointed and there are small plaits and twists woven into his hair.

“You need Flyn,” he says.

My heart thumps. My blood turns to ice. Hearing Flyn’s name on this creature’s lips is all kinds of wrong.

“What?” I stutter. He can’t have just said what I thought I heard.

“Would be such a shame if something happened to him,” the fey all but purrs.

I swallow thickly. “You have no power in my world.”

He tilts his head to the side. For all the world like a dog. Or a wolf.

“Do you wish to bet on that?”

My heart flutters frantically, and my lungs seize up.

“Open the portals, Jade, and your Flyn will have a long and happy life.”

I gasp and shudder and all of a sudden I’m lying on my bed, and Gray is peering down at me. I yelp and scramble up to a sitting position. I’m dripping with sweat.

“That was just a dream, wasn’t it?” I plead to Gray as my mind scrambles to adjust to my new bearings. It feels like part of me is still in that clearing in the woods. As if not all of me is back in my bedroom.

Gray’s brows furrow, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he steps closer and reaches for my amulet that’s tucked into my tee shirt.The amulet Gray made me. The one I never take off. The one that is supposed to keep the fey out of my head.

I fish it out for him, and he holds it in the palm of his hand. A warm, jagged and fizzy sensation spreads from the necklace and to my chest. Magic. It’s demon magic. Gray is doing something to the amulet.

Fuck. Was it broken? Have the fey found a way around it?

Gray bites his bottom lip. He releases the amulet and takes a step backwards. The strange buzzing feeling fades.

“Is it fixed now?” I ask.

Gray stares at me with his too-dark eyes. “You went there.”

I swallow. “I… I didn’t mean to.”

The demon stares at me for several agonizing heart beats. Then he nods and walks away, disappearing into a shadow in the corner of my room. I shudder as every hair on my body rises.

I really wish Gray would get the hang of using doors. It would be far less unsettling.

My lungs heave in a shaky breath. I wipe my arm over my sweaty brow.