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fresh water. In the dull light of her lantern, Eliza’s pale hair glowed like a nimbus around her heart-shaped face.
    “Now then,” her voice trembled in the dim, though she did an admirable job of hiding it, “I’m going to clean you up.”
    “No.” He grasped her wrist, staying her progress. When she stared at him, mutiny in her eyes, he sighed. “Lass, if you help me anymore than you have, they’ll know. And we’ll both suffer for it.”
    “Surely my aunt —” She bit her bottom lip, a little wrinkle forming between the wings of her brows. “She knows about this, doesn’t she?”
    A dry laugh escaped him. “Dove, she’s the one who does this to me.” Repeatedly.
    Eliza’s perplexed expression deepened. “She must have a good reason.”
    “Oh, aye,” Adam drawled. “She’s a demented bitch.”
    The fine bones of her wrist shifted against his firm grip. He wanted to loosen it, but his hand wouldn’t obey. He liked touching her. Too well. How could he not? He
felt
her. He hadn’t been privy to pleasurable feelings for centuries until she entered his life.
    “Tell me why she does this. Why are you chained down here? Why were you a dog, for heaven’s sake?”
    “Do you know this is the most you’ve spoken to me in all of our acquaintance?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. He’d waited for months to hear her speak to him. Now that she finally was, he both reveled in the sound of her blunt, flat American voice and resented her for making him wait so long to hear it.
    She made a scoffing sound. “Because we are conversing now. Before, you talked
at
me, as though I were a dog.”
    “Untrue and unfair,” he protested weakly.
    Something close to a smile hovered at her lips. “Stop trying to deflect and answer me.”
    Warmth and a small bit of numbness worked through his body. Adam let his head rest on the floor. “I’m turned into a dog because she believes that causes me humiliation.” It didn’t, but he wasn’t about to let Mab know that. When he was the dog, his pain was somehow more bearable. Unfortunately, the animal had no qualms about voicing its pain, which had brought Eliza to him. “Only the touch of a fae will turn me back, usually for torture.”
    “I am not fae.”
    Adam made a crude noise. “Oh, aye? Not of Mab’s blood, are you? Forgive me if I spoke in error, and yet, here I am, a dog no longer.”
    “That is debatable,” she grumbled.
    “As to why she does this,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “she is fae, ye ken?” Christ, his Scots hadn’t emerged in a good five hundred years, but weakness and days without food or water had his tongue slipping. Adam swallowed hard and tried to focus. “You do understand what she is?”
    Beneath his fingertips, her pulse beat faster. “Yes, but she saved me… from you.”
    He snorted. “Do not start that up again.” He’d go mad if he had to justify himself once more. When she gave a stiff nod, he went on. “Fae are friends to no one but themselves.”
    “She’s my aunt. Why should I believe you over all the kindness she’s shown me?” Oddly, her voice lacked heat. If he didn’t know better, Adam would suspect she was merely trying to get a rise out of him. Bollox, her tactic worked. He wanted to shake some sense into her.
    “I’m the one lying here broken.” He let out a sharp breath. “She isn’t your aunt; she’s your grandmother and the fae queen.” Eliza started to protest, and he spoke over her. “I have never lied to you, and I won’t start now. It’s true, and what’s worse, if you stay here in her sphere, you’ll soon be sorry for it.”
    “Why would I?”
    “Because she’ll find a way to use you for her own gain.” With an odd twinge of regret, he let her go and then rubbed a tired hand over his face. “More than she already has.”
    “I don’t understand how you came to be her prisoner. You are known – widely, I might add – as a great and powerful