Torn (A Wicked Saga, #2)(80)

He chuckled as he glanced over at me. “Humans are stupid.”

I shook my head. “Wow.”

“They ignore the obvious. They have a tendency to stick their heads in the sand and fabricate logical explanations that assuage their fears rather than face what’s right in front of them,” he said, and I kind of had to agree with some of that. “They won’t know we have taken control until it’s too late.”

“And how will you take control?” I asked.

He stood in the middle of the cracked driveway and faced me. I immediately lowered my gaze out of instinct. “There may not be seven billion fae in this realm, but there are hundreds of thousands of us now.”

The Order always knew there were a lot of fae, but hundreds of thousands? Holy crapola, that was a lot.

“One fae equals a thousand humans,” he said, and I figured his math was a bit biased. “And once we open the gates, all will come through, and there are millions of us.”

Wind tossed my curls across my face as I stared at his chest. There was no way, for obvious reasons, we could allow that to happen. “There are still more of us.”

“You mean more of them,” he corrected. “Do you think we haven’t been planning for decades? Centuries?” He stepped forward, and my muscles locked up. “We are not barbarians who can only conquer by war. Not that we’d completely rule out that option if it came to that.”

Good to know. I started walking past him, toward the end of the driveway. “But?”

“But we have planned,” he repeated, easily catching up to me with his long legs. “We are everywhere. Some are just ordinary citizens. Others have willed their ways into positions of power.”

I thought of Marlon. He was known as a huge developer in the city, and he had a lot of power locally, but I knew Drake wasn’t just talking about land development. “You’ve infiltrated the government, haven’t you?”

Without even looking at his face, I knew he was smiling when he spoke. “Local. Federal. Global. We are everywhere, and it’s only a matter of time before we have complete control.”

He made it sound so simple, and in a way, it was. If they got into enough positions of power, they could take over, slowly changing the world into what they wanted.

“It still won’t be easy,” I said. “Once we figure out what’s happening, we’ll fight back. And yes, the fae have abilities we don’t, but we have a reason to fight no matter what.”

“And what reason is that?”

We’d reached the wooden area, and strangely, but not exactly surprising, there were no sounds of life. No birds. Insects. Nothing. “We value freedom above anything else.”

“Except most humans will already be bent to our will and they will fight for us,” he said. “Human cannon fodder.”

Disgusting. Terrifying.

“I’m done with this,” he said abruptly, startling me. “It’s time.”

Heart lurching in my chest, I took a step back. “Wait. We haven’t been out here long enough. I still have questions.”

“You can ask them later.”

Taking another step back, I struggled to keep the panic down. “Can we walk for a little bit longer? I don’t—”

“You’re delaying the inevitable.” Impatience rang throughout his tone.

Sweat dotted my palms. “I don’t have to . . . have to feed. You’ve made your point now. I get it. You can make me do whatever you want. I don’t need to do that. I don’t want to.”

“You obviously haven’t gotten the point since you keep referring to yourself as a human. It’s time for you to remember what you are,” he said. I knew there was no winning this argument with him.

I spun around quickly, prepared to run back to the house.

“Ivy. Stop.”

I stopped.

Just like that, my body was compelled to answer even though my brain was desperately yelling at me to get away, to move—to do anything to stop what was coming.

“Look at me.”

His voice slipped over my skin like silk. My ears buzzed as I felt my body slowly turning to face him. Against my will, my gaze lifted to his. I waited.

Drake’s eyes deepened. “You will do as I say.”

And I did.

It was strange. One minute I was outside, skin chilled from the cold air, and the next I was in that room. There were different people in here now. The woman was gone, and I wondered what had happened to her. Then I was sitting next to an older man I didn’t know. He had silver hair at his temples, and then after a few whispered words, I was . . . feeding, and then I was upstairs, slipping into a deep sleep.

I was shaken awake, a demanding hand biting into my shoulder. I woke to a dark room and a pale, silvery face.

Faye.

I leaned away from her, rolling onto my side. My thoughts were full of cobwebs, and I couldn’t quite recall the last several hours. All I knew was that I wasn’t supposed to be awake yet. I needed more time. My eyelids started to drift shut.

“You need to wake up,” she said, grabbing my arm and squeezing hard.

Confused, I resisted when she tugged on me. “I . . .”

“There’s no time to explain. You must get up now,” Faye said. “It’s your only chance if you want to escape.”