Page 87 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
Meanwhile, he set to work on a list of the friends who’d accompanied him to the private performance and any details he knew.
We worked in companionable silence until I looked up and found him watching me. The skin around his eyes tensed in calculation.
Was I wrong? Was he the killer, after all, and this was all part of some greater ploy to punish me with hope? Fae were skilled at manipulation and all the little ways to deceive without lying. He might’ve slipped something sneaky into his phrasing.
Or was he really helping me?
“Have you finished?” I peered at the sheet of paper before him, and my shoulders sank at the long list of names. Over a dozen.
“I’ve seen every part of you, and yet I’ve found no sign of magic written upon your body.” His gaze trailed down me, like he could undress me with his eyes alone.
I gripped my pen, otherwise I might’ve obeyed that unspoken instruction.
He canted his head. “Where’s your fae mark?”
“Gone.” I pushed up my top lip, displaying my blunt canines. “These were sharp like yours, but Zinnia filed them down so no one would realise what I was.”
His face dropped. The gold of his skin went ashen. Not tearing his attention from me, he rose. In an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness, he knocked the table as he stepped out from behind it, and that shook me even more than his look of horror.
As soon as he was within arm’s reach, he lifted my chin. His eyes gleamed as his gaze followed his fingertips, questing over my jaw and lips. I opened my mouth when he pressed. I let him run his thumb over my blunted teeth.
With a long exhale, he shook his head and sank to his knees. “You call me a monster, and yet humans made you do that. It’s despicable. Your teeth.” His eyebrows pinched together. “Your beautiful teeth. They should be a matter of pride. A sign of your power. A warning to fools who might think to cross you.” He looked up at me like I was an idol at a shrine. “All the world should see them and know Zita the cursewitch is not a woman to be crossed.”
A knot tied in my throat, salty and tight. I’d never been looked at like this. Leered at, yes. Admired for what my body could do and for its appearance, a thousand times.
But never seen like he saw me now.
Framing my face with his hands, he dragged in a breath. “If I ever find the people who made you feel like you needed to hide, I will tear them apart and hang their remains outside their houses. A reminder of what happens to those who wrong you.” The softness of his voice was a lie, almost masking the full depth of fury shaking each word.
That fury cracked me like his cruelty never had. His face blurred as the pressure behind my eyes built beyond bearing. I tried to hold it back. I tried to hold my breath and not let it show.
But the tears spilled.
He acted like I was the one who’d been wronged. He acted likeIdeserved vengeance. He acted like I wasn’t just somethingprecious, but someoneprecious.
Arms coming around me, he nuzzled away my tears and murmured comforting nonsense sounds. I clutched his shirt, too shaken and broken to pull away.
After a short while, he said, “No tears, love.”
When I looked up, I found myself on the floor with him, gathered in his lap.
He wore a fierce frown, but for once, his ferocity wasn’t aimed at me. “Yours isn’t a sad story; I won’t let it be. Not anymore. Yours is a story of revenge and living. Of obliterating those who wronged you. Of making the worldsee youwhether it wants to or not.”
I stared up at him, no more of that horrible pressure on my eyes. What the hells was I supposed to say to that?
“And, besides,”—the corner of his mouth lifted—“I have something that will cheer you up.”
* * *
“That night,you saw me take something from your sister’s body. But it wasn’t a lock of hair.” He frowned at the box he placed on the table before me. “It was this.” He opened it, revealing a brass disc large enough to cover his palm.
Craning forward, I peered closer. Cutout sections in the top layer revealed a regular series of lines below, showing the paths of planets and stars. An arm a lot like a compass needle stretched across its full width. An astrolabe. I’d seen other fae with them during our visits to Elfhame. They carried these or orreries like human gentlemen carried pocket watches.
But Zinnia? I shook my head. “That wasn’t hers.”
“I know.” He pulled it from the box and held it out to me. “It’s fae-worked. I…” He exhaled, shoulders and gaze falling. “I took it because I knew it would incriminate one of my friends.”
I shot him a look pointed enough to kill.
