Page 52 of Taken By Shadows

“Now?” He turned his head to me, and it was darkness in his eyes, not blue. “Now, you find a way to stay out of trouble. Or I’ll find a cage and lock you in it.”

His words echoed in the silence around me. There was no humour in them, no misunderstanding them.

“Did you expect me to just sit around? I was just exploring the city!”

Kaed appeared right before me then. “You tried to take something from me today.” His chest was heaving up and down like he’d just run the length of the city walls.

“You can’t possess me! I’m a human being! You can’t protect me.” My frame felt tiny, fragile in the shadow of his enormity as I roared the affirmations at him. They were as much for my ears as his.

“Fae,” he said flatly.

“What?”

“You’re fae. Like me.”

I blinked. Why did that matter to him? “I’m nothing like you,” I said, my words crackled with sparks.

In response, a storm brewed as Kaed’s chest thundered, low and deep.

“Is this it? Is this it forever?” I threw my hands up. Frustration moved me like a marionette. “You just push me around and put me where you want me? You just decide everything for me? You think I’m not a person, but you’ve changed my entire life. You’ve taken me. Stripped me of my rights. Taken my freedom!”

Kaed’s nose was tip to tip with mine before I’d even finished taking a breath. “I saved you. You’d have bled out on the dock if I hadn’t.”

That black nothing waited in the back of my mind at the memory of just how close I’d come to being lost.

“I didn’t ask you to save me,” I snipped. I knew it was petulant.

I could feel his breath; we were so close.

“No. Not this time. Not the last time. Maybe you will someday.”

And I hated that he was keeping track of all the times I owed him my life.

I hated that he was right. Today would have been wholly different if he hadn’t found me. How had he found me? Actually, I didn’t want to know.

My lashes fell, and my eyes unfocused away from him.

This whole event had shaken the reasons I wanted to stay. Maybe this city was too dangerous, even if it had what I needed.

Disquiet settled into me.

“I don’t belong here, Kaed. Please just let me go.” My voice was a snowflake drifting helplessly; it would vanish before it had a chance to settle.

Maybe there was some part of him that could understand I wasn’t meant to be here. I didn’t belong to him. I couldn’t stay.

Something softened in his shoulders as he turned.

“You know I can’t do that.”

I did.

Whatever his motivations were, they were more important than what I needed. Whatever drove his decisions, it was more powerful than his compassion for me. Perhaps he was in trouble, and the faebane was his only bargaining strategy. I supposed that made two of us.

Maybe there was a way I could get out of this without selling out the people of Shadowfall, even if they didn’t quite deserve my protection or thoughts, and without ending up cornered by men—or Kaed.

“Give me what I want, Imogen.” Kaed had stepped back from me, and when he spoke my name, it sounded pained. The humour, the play, the dark charisma vanished for a moment.

Two sides of me warred in my mind. Was staying for the potential of finding something in the library, this city, worth it? How long would it take? I wanted to be able to leave. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I couldn’t sell my sister out, or the people of Shadowfall, no matter if they had never treated me with respect. I was more than what they believed I was.