Page 53 of Stealing Tink

The Nomad leans forward. “I think you tell yourself those things to make yourself feel better.”

I tell myself that it’s my fault my voice and wings are gone to make myself feel better?

“Yes,” he says, a bit too smugly for my liking.

Explain.

“I think you tell yourself you should have known better. Because if you should have known better, if you had acted differently, then you could have prevented a very bad thing from happening to you. If you had done something differently, Peter couldn’t have hurt you.”

But he did hurt me. So how does that make me feel better?

“Let me ask you this, Wanderer. Do you know better now?”

Of course I know better.

The Nomad breaks out into a smile that for the first time in this conversation seems cruel. “Well, if you know better now, then you know what that means.”

I stare at him, refusing to ask the question.

“It means that, so long as you know better, you’re in complete control. It means that, so long as you know better, no one can ever do bad things to you again.”

My throat goes cold, and so does the air in the room around us.

“Is that not what it means?”

But before I can address the Nomad, Lars returns. “Well, the results are mixed. But I think I can help. The only problem—I’m going to need faerie dust. A lot of it.”

CHAPTER 23

“What do you mean you’ll need faerie dust?” asks the Nomad, still propped with his back up against the worktable.

“I mean I’ll need faerie dust to heal her wings,” says Lars.

I shake my head, reaching for my quill and notepad, but then a voice from behind us beats me to what I was going to say. “I thought faerie dust couldn’t be used on winged faeries. That their systems metabolize it too quickly.”

The Nomad and I turn around to find not only Phoenix, but also Venus and Acel standing in the doorway.

“How long have you been standing there?” asks the Nomad.

“Since before I came back in the room,” says Lars. “I thought you knew they had entered.”

I refuse to look at the Nomad, though I can feel his gaze boring into my skull, both of us wondering whether they witnessed our conversation on the floor as I patched up the his hands. I stand, instinctively wiping his blood off of my hands, though I realize I already did that.

Venus gives me a “we caught you” kind of look.

“That’s true for unrefined faerie dust,” says Lars, unaware of the silent conversation going on in the room.

“Wouldn’t refined faerie dust metabolize even quicker?” asks the Nomad.

“Yes, but…” Lars thinks to himself for a moment. “During the refining process, the element itself becomes easier to bind. I’ve been studying insects for a long time, and there is a certain insect whose biological makeup can slow metabolism. I’m thinking if I extract that insect’s blood and bind it to the faerie dust, as well as the faerie’s blood⁠—”

“Her name is Tink,” says the Nomad, but Lars continues without hearing him.

“—then I should be able to create a compound that will allow her wings to heal.”

“Well, that should be easy,” says Venus, “since we have a faerie dust supplier right there.”

The Nomad flinches even harder than I do. “I’m sure we can locate additional stores that will make that unnecessary.”