Page 112 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
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Aman. Not as big as Sepher. No horns like Roark. Was it Cadan? Had he come back to talk about Zinnia? Had he somehow hidden a lie and really was her killer?
Questions clamoured in my throat as the figure approached, his stride light and assured on the narrow walkway. He was familiar, of course. I knew all the fae who lived here, now, and I’d spent a month studying the suspects.
Up here, I was in a precarious position—he blocked the only way off this catwalk. One of the other walkways might be close enough to jump to, but they hadn’t all been repaired in Sepher’s refurbishment. Some rattled and shook under the weight of a single step.
I rose, pushing a smile to my face, hiding the dagger in the folds of my skirt. “Hello?”
He didn’t answer, just continued that well-balanced stride closer.
Wait. I knew that stride, the lithe muscles of his arms and shoulders. I’d known them a long, long while.
“Eric?”
Dark hair gleaming, he stepped into the light with a smile I couldn’t help returning. “I watched your performance from up here.” He shook his head. “You were incredible. The best I’ve ever seen.”
“What the hells are you doing here?” A laugh of disbelief edged my words.
His brow furrowed as he took another step closer, almost within arm’s reach. But something stopped me from going forward and hugging him. “The fae wouldn’t give you back, so I’ve come to take you.”
Like his letter. “What if I don’t want to leave?”
The lines on his brow deepened as he came closer and snorted. “What? Why the hells would you want to stay here with him?”
My jaw ratcheted tighter at his assumption, and my brain threw at me the image of the last time I’d seen him. “And why the hells would I want to leave with you when you betrayed me?”
He sucked in a breath, eyebrows shooting up before they clashed together. He bent in, looming over me. “I admit that was hasty. I handed you over because… because of how you reacted… ordidn’t. I told you I loved you, Zita, and you… you…” He shook his head, gaze raking over me. “You’re just like her. Blank.” He bared his teeth, the small canines all wrong. “There’s something wrong with you.”
Something in his tone made me back away when he advanced, but my mind caught on how odd his teeth looked compared to the fae ones I’d grown used to.
“You were both broken, unfeeling wretches.”
“Both?” I held the rail, not for balance, but to feel for one of the upright supports. It would warn me I was reaching the end of the catwalk. I didn’t dare look away from the strange intensity in his eyes.
“I tried, Zita. Itriedto make you feel, to make you feelme. But…” His chest heaved. “You reacted just like she did. She didn’t care that I loved her, either.”
I missed a step. He closed in as I exhaled her name. “Zinnia.”
“Of course fucking Zinnia.” His smile was tight as the words burst from him, flecked with spittle. “I thought handing you over to him would feel good. And if there was any lingering guilt, the money would soothe that, right?”
For a second, I thought the music had started again, but it was my pulse drumming in my ears. My breaths sped, shallow. My feet moved back of their own accord—they understood something the rest of me didn’t yet.
“But,” he went on, “it didn’t feel as good as my hand around her throat. It didn’t feel as good as knowing I was the last person she saw, the last voice she heard, the last man who had her.”
No.No.
He was… he was angry and trying to scare me into coming with him. This wasn’t—
He held something up to the light—the ring he always wore, a sovereign with a flower etched in its flat surface. It glinted gold as he turned it. Behind the sovereign design, tucked in the back where it would be hidden against his skin as he wore it…
The rhythm in my ears built—louder, faster, like a performance coming to its crescendo.
A carefully braided lock of chestnut hair.
The world spun. I clung to the handrail, because without it, I would fall.
When I met his dark gaze, it held no denial. “You…” I shook my head, brain faltering over the impossibility of this. The treachery of it.
