Yes, he was certainly getting better.

Tiger eyes were not only open but moving with unabashed appreciation over the skin bared by my bra and underwear. He pushed my hand off his mouth.

Quickly—and possibly in large part because I was tempted to eat it myself—I knelt over him and shoved the last strip between his lips.

He sat up so fast our heads banged, hard.

I yelped and he spat.

Unseelie flesh went flying from his mouth and flopped on the ground between us.

He looked at the animated piece of meat, then he looked at me, and I’m not sure what he found more disgusting: the smelly gray flesh with oozing pustules, or me, for putting it in his mouth in the first place. It pissed me off, because, even on my worst day, I was preferable to Unseelie flesh. The absence of heat in those amber eyes was downright chilling.

“You might try thanking me,” I said stiffly.

He gagged again, cleared his throat, turned, and spat over his shoulder. “What,” he said, turning back to me and pointing, “the bloody hell is that?”

“Unseelie flesh,” I said coolly.

“That’s Unseelie? You fed me the flesh of a dark Fae?”

“How do you feel, Christian?” I demanded. “Pretty good?” He certainly looked good, sitting there in faded jeans, wet T-shirt straining over his wide shoulders, muscles rippling in his arms as he slicked wet hair back from his face. “No burns, no blisters, no hunger or thirst? Has it occurred to you that I saved your ass?”

“At what cost? What does eating it do to you? Nothing Fae is without price!”

“It heals you. Would you rather I hadn’t?”

“Big, huge lie in there. There are drawbacks. What are they?” he pushed furiously.

“There are drawbacks to everything,” I snapped.

We glared at each other.

“Would you rather I’d let you die?”

“Did you even try anything else first? Or are you all about magic, instant gratification?”

I leapt to my feet and began pacing. “What would you have had me try? Dragging your big body into the shade all by myself so you wouldn’t get burned worse? How about figuring out how to start a fire with twigs? No, I have it!” I whirled around and shot him a look. “I should have gone looking for a convenience store for sunblock and aloe gel and then when I found that, set off for a vet so I could find you subcutaneous fluids like my neighbors gives their sick cat!”

His mouth twitched. “Nice outfit, Mac.”

I bristled. I’d been stomping around in my bra and panties and he found me amusing in my underwear? “My clothes are soaked,” I growled.

“I was speaking of your—” His gaze shot upward. “Would you be calling that a hat, lass?”

I closed my eyes and groaned. I’d gotten so used to the weight of it on my head that I’d forgotten I was wearing my MacHalo. I unstrapped it, snatched it from my head, scraped off strands of dripping moss, and inspected it for damage. Two of the brackets were broken at the base, and several of the lights had been turned on in our roll down sand dunes, wasting precious batteries. I clicked them off and put the helmet on the rocks near my clothes.

I nodded at the piece of Unseelie lying on the ground between us. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Not for love or money,” he said vehemently.

“Well, pick it up and put it in your pocket. You might need it again. Like it or not, it saved your life.” No matter how badly I wanted it, I didn’t dare impair my sidhe-seer abilities. If we encountered anything Fae, my Nulling talents were all I had. We’d have to freeze them and run. Or use the stones again.

“It did something to me. Something … wrong.” He studied it with distaste, picked it up, drew back his arm, and flung it into the quarry. I heard a splash, a second much larger splash, and a snapping sound, followed by a third splash. Since my back was to the water, I had to interpret what happened from the look on his face. “Something awful-looking ate it?”

Looking mildly shocked, he nodded. “Tell me everything you know about what you just fed me and the effects it has. And as for the loch, lass, I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it.”

Christian’s clothes were soaked, and after a scan of the snow-covered peaks around us, he concluded there was a high probability of a sharp evening drop to frigid temperatures, which meant we needed our clothes dry, fast. As there was no convenient dryer nearby, toasting them in the sun was our only option, so a short time later we were both stretched out, me mostly naked, him completely. He was unself-conscious nude. I had to admit, he had reason to be.

After a quick glance, I’d sought privacy on the other side of the tumble of rocks our clothes were drying on and savored the warmth on my skin. All that was missing was my iPod.

And my parents. And my sister. And any feeling of normalcy or safety. In a nutshell, everything was missing.

I was terrified for Mom and Dad. Since the Silver I’d entered didn’t show the tunnel from the outside, what assurance did I have that the destination it did show wasn’t also an illusion? What if the LM wasn’t holding my parents captive in my own living room but someplace else and I’d sent Barrons on a wild-goose chase with the photo I’d texted?

A wave of frantic helplessness was building inside me, threatening to turn tidal. I didn’t dare give in to panic. I had to stay calm and focused and work on moving forward however I could, even if it meant taking baby steps. Right now that meant getting my clothes dry and resting while I had the chance. Who knew what dangers the night—or even the next few hours—might hold?

Christian and I talked while we sunned, our voices carrying easily over the rocks between us. I told him about the effects of eating Unseelie. He questioned me extensively, wanting to know who else had eaten it, exactly what it had done to them, and how long it had lasted. He seemed especially interested in the increased “skill in the dark arts.”

“Speaking of dark arts,” I said, “what did you guys do the night of the ritual? What happened? What went wrong?”

He groaned. “I take it that means the walls came down anyway. I’ve been trying to convince myself that my uncles managed a miracle. Tell me everything, Mac. What’s happened in the world while I’ve been stuck here?”

I told him that the walls had crashed completely at midnight, that I’d watched the Unseelie come through, and that the Lord Master and his princes had captured me at dawn. I omitted the rape, being turned Pri-ya, and my subsequent … er, recovery (no way I was talking to the lie detector about those events), and told him merely that I was rescued by Dani and the sidhe-seers. I brought him up to speed on Jayne’s efforts, filled him in on what we’d learned about iron, and told him that his family was okay and searching for him. I told him the Book was still loose but withheld the gruesome details of my recent encounter with it.