Page 413 of Once Upon a Fable

Hadn’t shewantedthis?

Didn’t she want to be found? To go home to her family? To take me with her?

Christ.

I bent forward, digging both thumbs into my eye sockets as the helicopter banked and straightened out. Her hand landed between my shoulder blades, rubbing gently. Her touch both amplified my need to run away but also soothed the razor-sharp edges of my jumpy temper.

I sucked in a breath.

I let it out slowly.

I allowed life to drag me forward even while I howled inside to return to the valley.

How had thishappened?

For fuck’s sake, one moment I’d been having sex with Gemma.

The next, I’d been fighting a fire that Jareth started.

Then I was eating a cookie, watching my home burn, all while Jareth admitted to mass murder and a hunting expedition that would take him years to accomplish.

And now...fuck, now I fought against another wave of white blankness as it teased my vision, whispering that all of this could be deleted. I could let go and pass out and forget.

I could forget and wake up fresh without the nightmares of today.

I groaned under my breath.

But that wasn’t true.

I’d forget, but that would be the true nightmare, not this. If I forgot everything that’d happened—forgot that I was able to touch myself, sleep with Gemma and truly be with her, and that Jareth was alive and well—that would haunt me.

I never wanted pieces of my life lost to me again.

No matter the current cost.

My ears popped as we climbed higher into the sky.

I still couldn’t understand how I’d gone from standing in the forest, studying the black night where Jareth had vanished, and then grabbed by the arm and hauled toward the helicopter. Two men had thrown me inside before I’d even had the chance to fight back.

Gemma had been thrown in after me, the crew who’d grabbed us yelled something into their earpiece, then we left the ground in a dizzying, sickening swoop.

Nausea bubbled in my gut as the pilot added speed. Rotor blades crashed above me, making my head pound with pain. Headphones were shoved over my ears, followed by a pair placed around Gemma’s.

My protective instincts roared to life. How dare they fucking touch her? How dare they fucking throw her against her will into a flying contraption that—

“Are you the only survivors?” a female voice filled my ears. I narrowed my eyes, looking at the crowded helicopter, counting two women and two men all watching me and Gemma as if we’d crawled from some alien ship.

I swallowed hard as a rush of fury siphoned down my arms.

I didn’t like these people.

They’d come in, torn me from my home, and now looked at Gemma as if she was in danger from me. Grabbing Gemma’s hand where she sat beside me on the bench, I bared my teeth.

If they dared to touch her again, they’d be flying out the door and into the clouds.

“Does anyone else live in that house?” the woman asked again, touching her headset and nodding at the pilot behind her. I couldn’t hear the question she’d been asked, but the woman turned again and narrowed her eyes. “Do we need to turn back? Are there more of you?”

Gemma cleared her throat, her voice loud down her microphone. “No, it’s just us.”