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His touch, it was so gentle as he pushed a strand of her hair from her face, cupped her cheek, and turned her to face him again, but his expression…it was the most murderous she’d ever seen on him, would have frightened her if she hadn’t been so overwhelmed by emotion already.
“Who hurt you?” Tallak’s voice was barely more than a growl. “Who do I need to kill?”
At that, fresh tears spilled from her eyes, her thoughts returning to Rose like a hot poker lancing her chest. With a forlorn wail, she surrendered to fresh sobs that rattled her.
“Ah, shit.” A harsh whisper, his energy vacillating wildly.
She couldn’t see him anymore, her vision clouded by tears, but she thought she heard him mutter something like, “The fuck am I gonna do?” under his breath.
A moment later, he shifted to her side and pulled her into his arms. In between the sobs shaking her body, she stiffened. Too much. This was too much. She shouldn’t let him hold her like this. Shouldn’t lean into his strength, soak up his warmth, and let it dispel the chilling fear freezing her veins.
And yet, she couldn’t move, couldn’t scrounge up the will to push him away. Her fingers, in fact, found purchase in his shirt, and she clutched on to him as if letting go might shatter her.
“Shhhh.” His rough voice slid over her like a caress. “Come here.”
With one hand on the back of her head, he nudged her closer, and she buried her face in his neck while she cried and cried and cried. His scent, it was a balm that soothed the jagged edges of her torn heart.
Eventually, she calmed down enough to realize she’d gotten snot and tears all over his neck and shoulder.
“Oh, gods.” Sitting up, she pulled a tissue from her pocket and frantically dabbed at the mess. “I’m sorry.”
“Hazel.”
“I got you all dirty.” She continued trying to clean him up.
He caught her wrist, stalling her efforts. “I don’t give a fuck. What happened?”
She sniffed and lowered her gaze.
“Talk to me, baby.”
A shiver went through her at his murmured endearment, her walls cracked and crumbling. “Rose,” she whispered. And then it all came out in a rush of tear-drenched words. “I…I found the book on the sigils in her room. I just went in there to turn off her lamp, and I saw it on the floor, and then she came back, and she thought I’d been snooping, and—” Her throat closed up, her chest too tight to draw in air.
“Breathe.” His strong hand rubbed her back in soothing, encouraging caresses. “Take a deep breath.”
She did. And then another, and another, until the ropes binding her chest loosened. “I yelled at her.” A quiet confession, twisting pain in her heart. “I asked her if she murdered that human. She ran off.”
Tallak’s hand on her back paused, then moved to her neck. With a squeeze, he said, “It wasn’t her.”
She glanced up, meeting eyes of incandescent, gold-streaked amber.
“What I picked up off the witch’s aura, it was different from Rose’s.” He shook his head. “And she moved differently. When Rose walks or shifts her weight, she does so in a distinctly fae way. There’s a grace to her movements, a fluidity that normal people lack. It’s because she was raised among fae and learned to move like them. The witch who ran away was clumsy in comparison.”
Hazel’s lips parted. A tiny, hot, irrational coil of jealousy burned in her chest. Stupid. It was stupid. And yet the pain of it was real, didn’t care about logic and reason.
Lowering her eyes, she said, “You know her so well.” And I don’t.
“Only ’cause I speak Fae. She talked to me a lot when she first came here because me and Isa are the only ones who know the language she grew up with, and Isa…well, she’s fae. Figures Rose wouldn’t really want to spend that much time with her.”
Because it might just remind her too much of her captivity, interacting with someone from the same species as the ones who’d kept her under lock and key.
How ironic, that where Hazel had spent more time with Tallak’s son, knew him indisputably better than his own father did, Tallak had bonded with Hazel’s daughter in a way that eluded her.
With a sad little smile, she said, “Maybe we can compare notes about our respective children. Make it a Trivial Pursuit of estranged kids.”
Tallak’s answering smile was a tentative thing, underlaid by a keen sort of attentiveness that threatened the composure she’d just scraped back together. This caring side of him, it would slay her yet.
* * *
