Chapter 83
I wake to a wet carcass slapping me across the cheek.
Groaning, I toss it aside, but the un-rhythmic sound of flapping wings and the click-clack of claws scratching against stone pop my eyes open.
I shove up so fast my head spins. Stuffing down the tufted throw I don’t recall tucking over myself, I rub my eyes and blearily scan the space, hunting for the blue beast. Find him astride the bag of carcasses that now has a hole torn through the side.
A hole Gruffin’s head, neck, and front claws are stuffed in while the fucker roots through the bloody contents—wings wide for balance, tail poised above his head like he’s preparing to stab something with his prong.
“You’re a fucking menace, you know that?”
He yanks a carcass out by its stripped spine and thrashes the skull against the ground as though he can sense the brain within, trying to crack it free. Like splitting the shell of a nut.
“Creators,” I mutter, dragging my hand down my face.
He’s one step closer to eating us in our sleep.
Seeing Essi has shifted from her seat, I turn to check the seater she sometimes coils on—also empty.
“Essi?”
My only answer is a ravenous squark that hackles me the wrong way at the wrong fucking time.
I make for the stairs that lead to what I believe is Essi’s suite, pointing at the little mite on my way past. “If you ate her, you’re done.”
“Sqwarrrrk!”
I’m three steps up when I catch sight of something pale fluttering in my peripheral. A parchment lark, nodding against the window frame, trying to merge with one of the runes Essi filled with my blood when she granted me access to the dwelling.
I frown, cross the room in four long strides, and snatch the lark.
It wriggles in my grip, like it’s just as confused as I am about its apparent attraction to my blood-soaked entry rune, making it hard for me to open the thing.
Once it’s finally flat, I skim the text, my frantic pulse slowing when I recognize the handwriting.
But then I register the words.
Gruffin was stirring and I didn’t want to wake you, so I went to get him some food.
Be back soon!
E.
My heart pitches from left to right.
She’s only left once since we met. With me, to find more round stones after the last one spontaneously combusted into a cloud of black dust. She usually avoids leaving the dwelling at all costs, and now she’s gone hunting for game?
This makes no sense …
A distant howl lures my gaze out the window as the Mists shred apart, revealing a lone fae with long red hair limping across the plains, making for the wall. Dragging a dead snow wyrm behind her in a makeshift sling.
My next breath feels like a stab.
Essi …
Another shift of the Mists, and I squint, glimpsing a sleek white crowl skulking in her wake like some skeletal slumber-terror—nose to the ground, its patchy pelt almost blending with the snow.
Another larger beast creeps up beside it, pausing to tip its head, crank its long maw, and release a scratchy howl that sends a shiver up my spine.
I’m armed, boots on, and out the fucking window before reality sinks its claws too deep.
Crowls don’t hunt in duos. They hunt in packs large enough to take down an injured dragon, hiding in swaths of mist because even the waifs don’t like the taste of their corroded souls.
But their favorite food is lone, wandering fae.