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Would Rainer be exiled, too, if they knew the truth about him?
Rainer glances up at me, his features drawn tight.
The fae hate demons. They don’t know their Umbra Prince is half-vampyr himself. As he meets my eyes, there’s a new emotion there I haven’t seen before, not even when he was worried about losing control. It’s fear. True terror flits across his expression.
What has the Prince of Fear so distraught?
“Alessia,” he warns, shaking his head and striding toward me as if he’s trying to block the body from sight.
Before he can stop me, I peer at the body.
It’s a man, and he’s covered in rust-colored streaks and wounds. It’s a gruesome sight, and bile rises in my throat. His limbs are bent at odd angles, and he’s missing a hand, but when I observe the man’s face—brown eyes wide, lips split open in terror—my heart stops.
Whatever he saw before his death frightened him.
His skin is pallid, and there’s a dark spot around the groin of his beige trousers, as if he peed himself out of fear.
My hands fly to my mouth, covering the guttural cry that leaves me.
Everything around me fades away, and I’m stuck staring at the lifeless man.
A man I once knew intimately.
His eyes are open, glossed over and seeing nothing. There’s a wound on his neck. Two little puncture marks, tiny black holes.
It reminds me of how I saw Rainer and Fern, with his mouth on her neck. I’ve never seen wounds on her, but she likely uses the healing salve so others don’t notice.
This is careless. Messy.
It wasn’t Rainer.
Please.
It couldn’t be him.
Seeing this brings back the memory of Char’s death—of seeing my only other friend’s life fade from her body. Right when I finally made it to the outskirts of grief, it washes back over me like a tsunami, flooding my insides.
“No,” I croak out. All eyes flick to me. “No!”
The scream that rips from my lungs is guttural.
Rainer strides to me, catching me right as my legs give out.
“I’ve got you, mo róisín. I’m here.”
He pushes my hair out of my face, planting an uncharacteristically tender kiss on my forehead. But I can’t appreciate it right now. Not in this moment.
“What happened to him?” My voice sounds foreign, disconnected. Rainer gives me a look of pity and I fist his shirt. “Tell me what happened to him, Rainer.”
But I already know the answer to that. We both do.
“Do you recognize him?” Eoin asks softly, frowning at me.
I can’t answer him.
Because yes, I do recognize him.
thirty-six
