Unhooked(52)

“And did this world answer your call, Young One?” she asks, her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“No. I mean . . . I don’t know,” I admit, uneasy under the intensity of her stare.

“Perhaps it would be better for all of us if it did not.” She takes another threatening step forward.

I don’t ask the question I want to ask. Instead, I make myself stay perfectly still as she continues to stalk toward me, almost herding me to the chasm’s edge.

“The one who calls himself Pan has long searched for one to whom this world will answer.” She cocks her head to one side. “One of the Queen’s own blood.”

“The Queen?” I ask, my skin going cold as I take a step back.

“One who is more than human. And less than Fey,” Fiona continues. “One, perhaps, such as you.”

Sharp needles of warning are prickling across my skin, urging me to run, but I have nowhere to go. A few steps more, and I will tumble back into the dark abyss that has already claimed many bodies today. And in front of me, Fiona blocks any escape.

I shake my head in denial. “I’m not any Fey,” I say, curling my fingers into my palms.

“Pan believes so,” she says. “He believes you could be the heir to the Queen’s True Child, the Fey prince she left in your world many ages ago in exchange for the human child who became Pan. He has long heard whispers of this Fey prince and the children he left unprotected, a halfling with the Queen’s blood—the Queen’s power—in its veins. It is why he sent his Dark Ones to find you and bring you to this world.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. Because she’s wrong. “The Dark Ones overthrew his mother.”

“The Queen was never his mother,” she snarls. “The one who calls himself Pan was nothing more than a plaything for her. When she grew bored with his weakness, she cast him out of her palace, banishing him to the farthest reaches of the island. She never expected him to survive. But she’d given him too much of her own power, revealed too many of her secrets.” Fiona’s sharp teeth glint in the night as she sneers at me. “Instead of dying, he found the Dark Ones, and they were more than willing to lower themselves to a mere human in exchange for the opportunity to exact their revenge for their fallen King.”

I take a shaking breath, willing her to be wrong. “But he hates them,” I counter.

“Of course he does,” she hisses. “He hates any reminder that he is not truly Fey, that he is weak and dependent upon our power.” Her mouth curves into a mocking smile.

“But I’ve seen—”

“Only what Pan wishes you to see,” Fiona interrupts, taking a menacing step toward me. “He showed you the Captain’s greatest secret in order to turn your affections, did he not? But Rowan is not alone in requiring the assistance of the darkest Fey to survive in this world. Pan also needs the lives they bring to him.

“This is why he has searched for one of your kind. He thinks he can claim the Queen’s power from your blood, the same as he has claimed countless human lives over the ages. And he believes that with that power, he could rule this world once and for all. Without need of the Dark Ones’ assistance. And with complete power over this world and my kind.”

I shake my head in denial, even as Pan’s words echo in my memory: I’m not trying to find a way out of this world. I would do anything to save it.

“I’m not—” But I can’t even say the words. “I can’t be.”

The way Fiona’s looking at me makes the prickling across my skin a hundred times more painful. “It is true that you do not seem as we do, but the one who calls himself Pan believes in your promise. For he is sure now that the other girl holds no such power. But you, he has a great interest in.”

“No,” I say. “I’m human. My mother’s human, and . . .”

“And?” Fiona drawls. “Who is your sire, Young One?”

I take a step back in shock. My sire . . . my father? “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “But he can’t be . . .” But when I start to step back again, my heel reaches the edge of the chasm, sending a few small bits of rock tumbling into the depths.

Fiona only smiles. “Perhaps not . . . but I wonder, then, how you came to have these?” Fiona reaches out a single, claw-tipped finger and lifts the necklace I’m wearing made from the few blue-gray stones I managed to salvage from my bracelet. “Humans call these deora sí. Fairy tears,” she says with a sneer. “A stupid enough name, but such a powerful and dangerous gift can only be bestowed by one of the Fey.”

Before I can stop her, Fiona gives an abrupt jerk, and the thread breaks. The second the stones fall away, her finger transforms, the sharp, clawlike nail shrinking into a softly rounded manicure. I’m too surprised by her transformation to bother to worry about the stones at first. Instead of the Fiona I’m used to, a lovely and very human-looking girl stands before me. Her skin isn’t iridescent, and her teeth are completely normal.

She smiles—a perfectly normal smile now—but there is something in her eyes that gives away her otherness. “Yes, Young One. They allow you to see through our glamour, but they are not what has hidden you from him for so long,” she says, licking at the air, lizardlike, as if to taste it. “There is some other power doing that work. You would have been discovered long before now had you not been protected by those who were loyal to the Queen’s True Child. Someone knows of what you are. Someone has protected you quite carefully.”