As soon as I stood alone with Vaughn, a knot formed in my throat. He looked so vulnerable, so helpless, which filled me with rage because he wasn’t any of those things.
I squeezed his hand. “You’re strong. You can pull through this, you hear me? You have to fight the poison. I know you won’t let the Habermanns win after what they’ve done to us. You’ll wake up soon.”
I leaned forward and kissed his lips. As I pulled away, the door opened, and Becca strolled in.
“I knew it!” she said. “You two are in love.”
I blinked away tears and swatted them away. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m exploring. It’s an interesting place.”
Her eyes carefully examined Vaughn. I tried to understand how she could remain so callous throughout this entire ordeal. She still wore the same impractical clothes since she’d arrived: a short leather skirt, now torn to tatters, and a top so dirty I couldn’t tell its original color anymore. I still remembered the clumpy shoes she’d worn, which we had replaced with my boots. She was one of those humans who seemed unable to see beyond her nose.
Inching closer while twirling a lock of red hair around her finger and never taking her eyes off Vaughn, she said, “What happened to him? Is he going to be all right?”
“Yes, he will.”
She sighed, her gaze darting around the room. Unexpectedly, her eyes shot wide, and she snatched something from a bedside shelf.
“My ring!” She clutched her hand into a fist and pressed it to her chest.
Ring? What ring? Then I remembered. Vaughn had taken a ring from Adaline before we stuffed her into that freezer.
“Is that… your item?” I asked.
Becca nodded repeatedly, relief flooding her features. “I thought I would never see it again. Oh, God, I’m so happy.”
She shook herself and quickly slid the ring into her finger. Stretching her hand out, she held it against the light to admire it. It was silver, set with a large ruby. An absurd grin stretched across her lips, and she jogged in place, shaking her arm. A giddy, high-pitched squeal of joy filled the room.
Abruptly, her hands shot out, and she twirled them in an erratic pattern. I blinked, confused, and in the next instant, every speck of dirt that covered her clothes and body disappeared. She stood looking radiant as if she’d taken a bath and undergone a five-hour-long beauty regime. She blinked at me, her eyes twinkling, her red hair lustrous as silk.
“There,” she said. “Isn’t that better? Oh, I feel like a billion bucks.”
I stared, incredulous. Had this island taught her nothing? Were superficialities the only things that mattered to her?
As I stared, open-mouthed, Becca approached Vaughn and took his hand. I remembered her ogling him when shifting left him naked. On the verge of telling her to take her hands off him, her eyes fluttered and went completely white. A slight wind picked up inside the cabin, stirring Vaughn’s overlong curls.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
She didn’t answer. Her expression grew slack and faraway, and she appeared to go in some kind of trance. I hesitated, unsure of what to do. Panic building, I reached out to pull her away just as a groan sounded deep in Vaughn’s throat.
I froze, my eyes fixed on his face.
Becca pulled away and blinked. “Pheew, that man is intense.” She gave a slight shiver.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I talked to him. It’s a talent of mine.” She preened and smiled.
I placed a hand on the bed to steady myself. “What do you mean you talked to him?”
“I know everyone thinks I’m an airhead,” Becca said. “But I just deal with things differently. My father… he was in an accident when I was ten. It left him in a coma. I visited him almost every day for a year.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. “I held his hands and talked to him, just stupid stuff about school and my life. We formed a connection, somehow. I started sensing how he felt, and as time went by, I learned to communicate with him. He was a great warlock. I think he guided me, taught me how. I was with him the day he died. He told me everything would be all right. Nobody has ever loved me like he did.”
I swallowed, feeling as if I’d been punched in the gut. “I’m sorry, Becca.”
She shook herself, blinking rapidly. “Anyhow, Vaughn said he’s fighting, that he’ll beat the poison.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth. He’d heard me.
“And he also said that…” Becca paused and smiled mischievously, “he loves you.”
My heart froze for a few seconds, then started beating at twice its normal rate.
“You lucky fae.” Becca punched me in the shoulder and left the room, leaving me paralyzed with surprise.
Had Vaughn said that?
My eyes drifted shyly in his direction? He was unconscious, and I was blushing. I returned to his side and took his hand in mine again.
Words crowded in my mouth. Whatever I said next, he would hear it. Only one thing made sense.
“I… I love you, too.” I squeezed his fingers as the words echoed in the small cabin.
Did I truly love him? Or had I said it out of a sense of duty to give him something to hold onto while he fought a silent battle against the poison? I’d never been in love before, so I didn’t know. I felt a great deal for him, but was it love?
I released my grip on his hand and retreated. “I have to go now, but I’ll come back as soon as I can. Just keep fighting. We’ll find a way.”
Choking on my own tears, I rushed out of the room. Out in the hall, I dropped to my knees. It took me several long moments to regain my control. When I did, I stood and straightened my shoulders, a cold resolve sliding down my spine and stoking the hatred I felt toward Adaline and her depraved brother.
They would pay for this. I was raised to be a fighter, but the Habermanns with their cruel games had turned me into something more, something they would regret creating.
I marched down the corridor and, guided by the din of voices, found the meeting place. I walked into a large room at the front of the ship. Everyone stood around a square table with a luminous image of the island reflecting on its surface.
“Ah, there you are,” Dean McIntosh said. “We can begin now.”
Chapter Four
“How do we get through the Habermanns’ defenses?” I asked, splaying my hands out on the table before me.
More than a dozen pairs of eyes turned in my direction. All the great minds of this rebellion sat around the table: the dean, Tyler, Vinya, Charlie, Disha, Bridget, and Rowan. We’d added, surprisingly, Ronnie, Antonio, Regina, and Becca, though some of them concerned me. Regina and Antonio were impulsive and selfish on their best days, and Ronnie and Becca were still in high school.
The dean, however, had insisted. “The more heads the better,” she’d said.
There were a few faces in the room I didn’t know. The burly guy leaning against the far wall was the shifter called Neil, who had carried Vaughn out of the dome. Twins sat beside the dean—thin, waifish males with long white hair and milk-white skin. They remained silent as the dean turned to Vinya.
“Tell us what you learned when you went into the dome’s defenses.”