Touch (Touched by the Fae Book 3)

by Jessica Lynch

  Touch

  Jessica Lynch

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Lynch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Jessica Lynch

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Zella

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  Tricked

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  Stay in Touch

  About the Author

  Also by Jessica Lynch

  1

  Before I even get the chance to meet my parents, I almost lose them.

  The tug of the shadows is harder than I’ve ever experienced before. It takes everything I have to keep them wrapped around all four of us: me, my mom, my dad, and Nine. Once or twice, I panic that it’s out of my control, that I’m going to shade-walk too far and I won’t be able to keep us together.

  Without the power that Nine gave to me when we shared our first kiss, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to.

  Did he know what was going to happen? I think so. My Shadow Man has always had a tendency to keep everything locked up tight, bottled up inside, and I bet he’d been planning something like this since the minute I got snagged by the Seelie guards.

  Was that why he kissed me?

  He just claimed me in front of the whole Seelie Court, announcing that he was taking a half-human, half-fae woman as his ffrindau.

  His soul mate.

  Can he take it back? It was as a big a surprise to me as it was to everyone standing in the Fae Queen’s throne room, and regardless of what happened after Nine did it, it’s one of a hundred different thoughts beating at my brain as I struggle to move through the darkness.

  Can he take it back?

  I really, really hope not.

  I push, telling myself that there’s no time to think about that now. This is the first time I’ve ever purposely shade-walked without it being an accident, while I was asleep, or because I had no choice. Not like I had a choice this time around, either. I definitely didn’t. Since it was between sticking around and waiting for Melisandre to turn me into a statue for her royal garden or getting the hell out of there, I went with option B.

  One problem: I don’t have any clue what I’m doing.

  The last time I jumped into a portal to escape someone chasing me, I landed in Faerie, almost as if the shadows knew to bring me from the human world over in order to save me. What happens when I take a portal in Faerie instead?

  As the shadows thin and the darkness lightens, the space spinning like I’m trapped in a midnight twister, I grit my teeth and close my eyes, using every drop of strength Nine passed to me to keep us all together.

  My hair is whipping around me, slapping me in the face as the wind carries us through the portal. I push and I push, screaming through tight lips and a clenched jaw.

  Don’t puke, Riley. Don’t puke.

  The air is cold, the tips of my sensitive fae ears feeling like someone’s shoved them in a freezer. I can’t tell if it’s been seconds or minutes that we’ve been trapped in this strange in-between place, probably because I’m not only clueless, but I’m lost, too.

  Someone is slipping away. I can’t tell who with my eyes screwed shut, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not willing to sacrifice any of my passengers.

  Somewhere safe, I think. I don’t care where we end up, so long as it’s safe.

  Isn’t that how Nine said it worked? When I shade-walked in my sleep, traveling through shadows as if I were a full-blooded Dark Fae instead of having a Light Fae father and a human mom, my body always knew to bring me home.

  That used to be the asylum. Then it was my nightmare of an abandoned house where I squatted until it claimed a second life right in front of me.

  First Madelaine, then Carolina. No way I can go back there.

  But, then, where?

  The wind dies down as quickly as it began. I can see light seeping in through the cracks of my eyelids as I drag us through the other side of the Unseelie portal.

  We land in a heap. My mother, my father, me, and the statue that used to be Nine.

  My eyes fly open, terror gripping me that I’ve left myself blind for too long. What if Melisandre sent some of her soldiers after me? I don’t even know if that’s possible—there’s only one fae who’s left his mark on my skin so that he can follow me anywhere and he’s with me—but I have to be sure.

  The first thing I see when I focus is that I’m inside… somewhere. It’s not familiar, but I don’t see anyone waiting with a sword—or a scared shitless expression that a bunch of people just popped up out of nowhere.

  On the plus side, I didn’t bring us back to the sewer or the death house.

  That’s something, at least.

  Now that I’ve assured myself that there’s no immediate threat waiting to toss me back at the Fae Queen, I start to move. I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now. It’s not even something I realize as I’m doing it. I crawl out from under the others, then wheel around on my knees, reaching immediately for Nine. I touch his cheek.

  I touch his cheek.

  I can feel the chill through the leather glove that both shields and hides my reconstructed hands. His cheek is hard, too, and I don’t mean his sculpted cheekbones. Even his flesh is hard as a rock.

  No.

  A statue.

  It takes all of my energy—and I don’t have much after that last bit of shadow travel—to heft Nine up by his arm. It’s easier than I expect to pull him away from the rest of the pile of fallen bodies. He might be hard as stone to the touch. Surprisingly, he doesn’t weigh as much as he should have if he really was a marble statue.

  I get him up on his feet, making sure he’s sturdy before I check him all over.

  His body is frozen in the same position as it was a heartbeat before the Fae Queen turned him into a gorgeous Nine statue: his long dark hair raining down his back, his shoulders hunched forward, his arm thrown out protectively. He’d been trying to keep me behind him, sacrificing himself for me.

  He made a mistake, though. A huge honking mistake. So desperate to protect me like he’s done my entire life, Nine entered into a bargain before making sure that there wasn’t a way that the Fae Queen could twist the terms. He didn’t and she did and now Nine’s frozen while Melisandre is probably losing her damn mind that I escaped her clutches before she could force me to suffer the same fate.

  I would’ve, too. To save my parents.

  That was the bargain—the deal—that Melisandre offered me. Give up my freedom, stand as a statue in her gardens where she could keep an eye on me, and she would let the parents I’ve never known go free.

  For twenty years, they were frozen just like Nine, all because they’d had the bad luck to create a halfling that was the star of the Shadow Prophecy.

  Just like Nine, they’d sacrificed themselves for me back when I was barely an infant. Trading my life for theirs… it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, it wasn’t like I thought I had any other way out of her palace in Faerie.r />
  Until the golden fae who haunted my thoughts and my dreams for more than six years helped me escape…

  No. Don’t think about Rys, I tell myself. My last glimpse of the Light Fae was as he fell beneath the weight of Melisandre’s personal guard.

  I couldn’t save him. I have to focus on the ones that I can.

  Once I’ve proved to myself that Nine is completely still and unmoving but otherwise okay, I turn to my other two passengers and get a huge surprise.

  My mother is awake.

  My father… isn’t.

  He looks bad. Like, really bad. In the Fae Queen’s Court, I compared my father to Rys. His skin wasn’t as bronze as the other Light Fae. It was still a few shades darker than my pale tone.

  Now, he’s lost any color that he had.

  What’s going on?

  When I stole them away from Melisandre’s throne room, they were statues just like Nine. The spell on them seems to have failed now that we’re back in the human world. Though Ash looks like hell on the floor, his body is relaxed into a totally different position than it had been.

  He’s not frozen. Neither is Callie.

  What’s going on?

  My mother has a dazed expression on her face as she slowly pulls herself into a sitting position. Her long white-blonde hair falls forward, a curtain that covers her shocky face. She shoves it over one shoulder, glancing around, her brow furrowing as she looks at our dingy surroundings. It’s dark in here, the only light coming in through the shuttered windows, and she’s obviously confused.

  I know the second her gaze falls on the Light Fae lying on his side, his eyes closed, his chest still. Is he breathing? I… I can’t tell and, hovering near the frozen Nine, I can’t find the balls to check.

  “Ash?”

  She crawls over to him, reaching for him but not quite touching him. Her fingers are shaking, her eyes big and wild in her pretty face. Even as she rears back, her expression accusing, she’s still so very lovely.

  “He’s… what did you do to him? Who are you?”

  Isn’t that a loaded question?

  I can’t bring myself to answer her. Not yet. A lump lodges in my throat as I gape like a fish. Finally, because I can’t help but quail under the fierce yet frightened look on her face, I say, “I didn’t have any choice. I had to bring him through the portal.”

  “Portal?” she echoes. “What kind? You don’t look like one of his people.”

  No. I don’t. Face to face with the mother I lost when I was one-year-old—looking at the woman I was convinced up until recently had abandoned me—there’s no denying that I look like her.

  Same delicate features. Same pale hair that falls in a straight sheet, though hers just about hits her elbows so it’s longer than mine. Same blue eyes that are in abject disbelief of what we’re seeing.

  Shit, give or take a couple of years, we’re the same age.

  I gulp. “I’m half,” I tell her, not ready to admit that I’m only half because of her. “But that’s not the way we came here. I shade-walked with you guys to save you.”

  Her eyes are drawn back to her mate, to my dad, as she shudders out a breath.

  “Why would you do that? Iron always made him sick, but Ash got used to it. Shadow travel, though? He’s a Light Fae. Part of the Seelie. And no Seelie can survive walking through an Unseelie portal.”

  My stomach stinks.

  Oh, no. Did I just kill my dad?

  “I didn’t know,” I blurt out, dropping to my knees at her side. “I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know what she would’ve done to you guys if I left you behind.”

  “She?” My mother doesn’t stop running her hands over him as if, some way, that’ll help revive him. Except for the tiniest flutters of his eyelashes, he’s as still as Nine. “The last thing I remember is being dragged in front of the Fae Queen. Who are you?” she asks again. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  Somehow, telling this young-looking woman that I’m her twenty-one-year-old daughter doesn’t seem like it would go over so well.

  First, Ash.

  First, we have to save my dad.

  “Here. Let me. I did this to him… maybe I can help.”

  The shadows answer to me. If they’re hurting him because he’s a Light Fae like Rys, maybe I can do something to fix him. Mimicking the other woman, I place my hands over his middle, letting out a sharp curse when his body just… it bucks. A quick jerk, his body bowing as he rises a few inches off of the floor before slamming down on his back.

  His eyelids flutter again, then he goes motionless.

  Right over his belly, there’s a ray of golden light that expands to a softball-sized circle.

  My mother gasps. Reaching down, she grabs one of his limp hands in hers, squeezing it tight. “Ash! Ash, sweetheart! It’s me, Callie!”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Do it again,” she pleads. “Whatever you did, please do it again.”

  “I’ll try.”

  When I lay my hands over him again, he doesn’t react, though the golden glow seems to spread a little further. Frustrated, afraid, and panicking, it hits me that the leather might be holding me back. It’s a cover, an added layer of protection, but could it be affecting me pulling on the shadows?

  Only one way to find out.

  I grip the glove by the tips of the fingers on my left hand, yanking on the thumb then the other four before quickly peeling the leather off. It’s musty in this empty, quiet room, but it’s chilly, too, and I feel it on the mottled, clammy skin.

  Quickly, quickly, I pull off the second glove.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I notice that she recoils when she sees my bare hands.

  If I wasn’t so desperate to fix my mistake, that might have hurt. Me? I’m used to my ruined hands. And she might be my mother, but we’re as much strangers as we are blood.

  I’ll deal with that later. Right now? I have to figure out a way to save my father.

  Oh, this is so freaking weird. I have a dad.

  I don’t even have to touch him. I feel an answering tug in my gut as I reach for the shadows that I can sense burrowing deep inside of him. It’s hard to explain how it feels. Almost like a prickle against my skin, an itch I can’t scratch. I take a deep breath and grab it.

  They come flying toward me, wrapping my hands, hiding them from sight as Ash starts to glow like he’s on fire.

  It only lasts for a moment. As the bright, golden light spreads across his long, lean body, it reaches a fever pitch before dimming just as suddenly. He gasps, though his eyes are still closed, and he shudders before his breath levels out. He’s still not as dark of a bronze shade as… as Rys is—was?—but he’s got some color back.

  Thank God.

  He’s breathing. It’s something. He’s asleep now, and he probably needs it, but he’s alive and I tell Callie as much as I sit back on my heels.

  Even though the shadows are covering my hands, almost like they’re make-shift gloves, I grab my discarded ones and hurriedly slip them back on.

  Callie places her palm on the top of Ash’s head, running her fingers through the tawny hair that’s fanned out beneath him like a pillow. Her stricken look of fear has faded to one of pure relief as she finally tears her gaze away from him, glancing over at me.

  “Thank you. For saving him.”

  “I had to.” And not just because his near-death experience is totally my fault. “He’s my… he’s my father.”

  Her eyes widen and her mouth opens. Her head tilts just enough to make it clear that she’s taking all of me in. As if, for the first time since she came out from under the Fae Queen’s spell, she’s actually seeing me.

  “Zella?” she whispers.

  Oof.

  “It’s Riley, actually.” And, okay, my quick answer is probably a bit cheeky. I can’t help it. I’ve never been good with my emotions and, well, how am I supposed to react, coming face to face with the mother I thought was long gone? “The first
foster home I went to, they changed my name.”

  Her voice breaks a little as she echoes, “Foster home?”

  “No mom. No dad.” I shrug. “I had to go somewhere, right?”

  Her forehead furrows, faint wrinkles pulling on her brow as she asks me softly, “How old are you, Riley? How long has it been since the soldiers tried to take my baby from us?”

  I’d been wondering how long it would take before she asked that question—and hoping against hope that I’d never have to answer it.

  So, of course, it’s the first thing she asks.

  The lump in my throat seems to grow a little bigger. My baby… that’s right. Because the last time we were together, I was a little butterball baby and she was running for her life, driving a stolen car that eventually ended up abandoned—along with me in the backseat—outside of a rundown gas station when the fae caught up with her.

  That was twenty years ago.

  “I turned twenty-one last summer,” I tell her. “You were lost in Faerie for twenty years.”

  2

  My mother—Callie—is staring at me. I can feel it and, now that my heart has stopped racing and I’m sure that my father—Ash—is going to be okay, I purposely avoid her open attention.

  This is too, too weird.

  I mean, hell. I didn’t know what to do when she was crying. Patting her on the back seemed a little awkward, and pretending that she shouldn’t be upset was just cold. I had an urge to apologize, but since I didn’t know why I should be apologizing or even how to say that I was sorry, I got up and acted as if I didn’t notice her sobs.

  I don’t blame her. I’d be crying, too, if I woke up one morning and discovered I’d lost twenty years of my life in the blink of an eye.