“Annwyl, you’re not a servant anymore.” I opened the closet and hauled the sleeping bag and pillow from the top shelf. “That changed the second Titania banished you from the Nevernever. And I’m definitely not a prince.” I turned, tossing the sleeping bag on the floor, unrolling it with my foot. “You’re not with Titania or Leanansidhe now. You’re a guest here, and you don’t owe me anything.”
She gazed at me, still unsure, and my heartbeat picked up. I won’t lie; Annwyl was beautiful. Big green eyes, shining brown hair, her body soft and graceful beneath her dress. I was a guy, after all, and I wasn’t blind. But seeing her didn’t make my stomach twist with nerves or the corners of my mouth want to turn up in a smile like they did with Kenzie. Besides, Annwyl was someone else’s, someone whose insane protective streak ran even deeper than mine, and she was a faery on top of that. So that pretty much killed any tempting thoughts about having a beautiful girl spend the night in my room.
“Take the bed,” I told her again, pointing to the mattress. “I know this is a little awkward, but we’ll have to get through it until we can find Keirran. Hopefully it won’t be too long.”
After the Summer faery finally fell asleep on my mattress, I lay awake on the floor, thinking. About Keirran and his whereabouts, what he thought he was doing: hiding from everyone, dragging me into his problems. About Annwyl. She was Fading, dying, really, and the Iron Prince had to be frantic to save her, if there was a way at all. How the hell I would convince my parents that I needed to disappear again.
But mostly, I thought about Mackenzie and how I was going to protect her from the world she insisted on being a part of.
CHAPTER SIX
GURO’S ADVICE
School the next day was...interesting, to say the least.
Word had definitely spread, probably from the moment Kenzie and I had left the theater parking lot. People stared at me in the halls—not that they hadn’t before, but it was almost full-blown paparazzi-style now. Whispers and unsubtle glances followed me down the corridors, and I was sure I saw one or two camera phones aimed at me—or it could’ve been my paranoid imagination. I kept my head down and my usual ignore-everyone stance going until I reached my locker. Only to discover two girls were already there, and none of them was Kenzie.
“Hey, Ethan.” The tallest of the pair gave me a hesitant smile, flipping her blond hair over one shoulder. I’d seen this girl in class, though I’d never spoken to her and knew only that she was one of Kenzie’s friends. Christy? Chelsea? Something like that.
“Can I help you?” I asked, reaching past her to open my locker.
“Um, well. I...we...wanted to know if you would sit with us this afternoon. We never see you at lunch, and now that you’re with Kenzie, the four of us should hang out sometime.”
“No, thanks.”
A pause, where the duo eyed each other nervously but didn’t back off. “Why not?” Christy/Chelsea demanded. “Kenzie always sits at our table. Aren’t you going to eat with your girlfriend?”
Well, the short answer was getting me nowhere. Clearly, I was going to have to step my Mean Asshole persona up a bit.
I slammed the locker door, making them both jump, and turned to stare them down. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” I said, forcing my voice to be hard and cold.
The girls shrank back and would’ve fled, but a soft hand suddenly traced my back, and Kenzie stepped around me to smile at them.
“Hey, guys.” If she felt the obvious tension between me and the other two girls, she didn’t comment on it. “I need to talk to Ethan for a second. Wait for me?”
The girls nodded and backed off, giving me dark, unfriendly looks, before hurrying around a corner. I swallowed and turned to face Kenzie, who was watching me with amused exasperation.
“Are you terrorizing my friends, tough guy?”
“They were stalking me,” I answered, gesturing in the direction the girls had gone. “What do you want me to do?”
My girlfriend shook her head. “You could try being nice,” she suggested. “I know it’s in there somewhere. I’ve seen it, at least twice.”
I lowered my voice, stepping close to her so that the passing crowd couldn’t eavesdrop. “You know that’s not an option for me. I have to be this way.”
“No, you don’t.” Kenzie’s voice was equally low; she reached out and took my hand, squeezing gently. “You can’t push the whole world away because of Them, Ethan. That’s...that’s kind of like letting Them win, you know?” I started to protest, but she overrode me. “They’re out there, and They hurt people—I understand that. But are you really going to close your eyes and hope They don’t see you? Or are you going to fight back? Let them know that They can’t screw around with you or your friends and get away with it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“No?” Kenzie cocked her head, her brown eyes staring into mine. “It sounds pretty simple to me. They can control your life—what you do, how you act—or you can.”
I blinked. I’d never thought of it that way. I thought I was protecting people; if no one got close to me, the fey would leave them alone. But...I guess They were controlling my life in a way. I was so concerned about what They would do to others, I’d let myself become someone I hated. Someone I really didn’t want to be.