Chapter 2 #2
He had chosen this timepiece specifically for his task, for minding the time had never felt more important.
If he didn’t, he’d never make it back to Silva.
He’d had the cogs and wheels repaired and replaced over the years, keeping it steady and precise.
Mechanical, nothing digital about it, nothing the very air of Faerie would make fail.
The watch had a double-wound barrel, extending the time it would run, enhancing the precision when the forest would demand inattention. Tick, tick, tick.
He was counting on that steady tick. He had already decided, at some point between the cereal and the peanut butter, that if he couldn’t make it back to her, there was no point in returning at all.
It’s night where she is as well, lad. Don’t let it slip away from you. Mind the time. You’re only going to get one shot at him. Don’t waste it on nerves. Because if you miss, he’ll make sure she bleeds for it.
He wondered, sometimes, if the watches were the reason he carried Faelnor’s voice with him everywhere.
Too many episodes of Attic Wanderers: Paranormal Mysteries, more than likely, but the voice of the elf who’d raised him was the one constant he had, and Tate couldn’t help but feel that it was an asset now.
Aye, and he’ll probably make me watch him do it.
His attention was caught by something hanging in the tree to his left, suspended from a thin line of rope, dangling down from one of the higher branches. Tate squinted. When it turned in the moonlight, he could make out the silhouette.
It was a shoe. A boot, one similar in style to the sort he himself preferred.
He scoffed, shaking his head in disgust. Fucking ridiculous.
Several of the small red eyes disappeared at the sound from his throat, tentatively blinking their way back into existence a few moments later.
Everything here noticed him. Everything here paid attention.
Tate knew well that the trees themselves were aware of his existence and watched his progress through the woods.
The moss, the trees, the animals . . . spies, all of them.
It was a vicious irony for someone who had desperately wanted to be noticed and accepted in childhood.
Now, all he wanted to do was slip away unseen.
“Sulking is a very bad look for you.”
The voice melted from the trees, sliding out of the darkness as if it, too, were smoke filtering through the twisting branches. Tate mentally stiffened, forcing his form to stay slack. Don’t give them anything.
He didn’t need the queen’s consort to announce himself.
The very air did it for him. Instantly, the breeze had a colder undercurrent, like a cool autumn night with the latent threat of frost. The air had the taste of apples that had sat rotting for too long on the ground, a cloying curl of smoke that clung too close to the body, and the smell of silver, edged in dried blood.
“Perhaps I’m grieving, you stupid cunt. I liked my job.”
He heard the chuckle before he heard Cadoc’s footfalls, melting from the darkness and falling into step with him, matching his pace without ever quite touching the ground.
“That feels like a bit of an overstatement. It was just a pub.”
Just a pub. He couldn’t explain to anyone in his topside life that the Pixie had been so much more than just a pub.
She had saved him at a time when the thought of merely continuing to exist at all felt hopeless and without meaning.
He certainly wasn’t going to try doing so here, but he bristled nonetheless.
He’d taken his time leaving the old girl that night.
The apartment, by that point, was mostly complete.
Prepared for Silva, if she chose to use it once he was gone.
All of his belongings had long been tagged, leaving clear directions in his absence.
Some things were staying, more were being shipped.
He’d already prowled and picked through everything he owned, forcing himself to see his belongings through a stranger’s eyes, attempting to limit what would be shipped back across the sea, what would be shipped to his storage unit in Starling Heights; what would stay, what would go.
He’d pulled everything that had already been prepared into the main room to make it easier for Shona.
Ensured the letters he’d left for both her and Ains were clearly visible.
Took a hot shower. Went back downstairs to put the car up on blocks, change the oil, and add fuel stabilizer, vacuum her out.
Took another shower. Settled into the corner of the new sofa with a bowl of cereal, deciding afterward that he had time for a nap.
It wouldn’t do to go wandering into Faerie at a disadvantage, and he’d barely slept a wink in the time he’d spent in Silva’s apartment.
Too busy watching her, memorizing every contour of her face, the soft curve of her cheeks, the slope of her nose, the shadow of her eyelashes.
The soft bow of her top lip and the full swell of its lower twin, kissing her softly as she slept, oblivious.
He needed to remember the weight of her in his arms, the bump of her nose against his when she inevitably invaded his pillow, the emerald fire of her eyes when she pouted, and the warmth of her breath as she slept against him.
He had told her that he would try to make his way back to her if he could. It was a promise Tate intended to keep, but he needed to not forget her to make that happen.
And that meant he needed to be at his best. Needed to sleep for a little while, needed to finish off the already open jar of peanut butter on his shelf, needed to do as much as he could to ensure that things would be taken care of in the unfortunately likely event that he didn’t make it back.
Less to weigh on his mind when he stepped over that threshold for the final time.
“That’s a bit rich coming from you. You know, while it’s just the two of us, can I be honest?”
They stopped simultaneously, each turning inward like a reflection on glass.
Tate gritted his teeth. He hated how many of his tics and physical mannerisms had been inherited from this bastard.
It had occurred to him, during his long-ago resignation that he would never be free of this side, that his beloved grandmother, who’d loved him so hard, had to look into the miniature face of her rapist every day of Tate’s life, an added layer of punishment as payment for the coin she’d dropped into a wishing well.
Tate spread his arm out, gesturing to the trees where the shoe hung.
“You’re fucking terrible at this. Look here, there’s literal rubbish hanging from the trees.
Where’s your pride of ownership? I thought you were supposed to be in charge of things, errand boy?
It’s a fucking forest, and you’ve let it turn into a hovel.
Absolutely disgraceful. I might’ve run just a pub, but I never had literal trash darkening my doorstep.
If I’m going to be fucking condemned to this place, it’d be nice to know there won’t be foxes choking to death on plastic six-pack rings before the throne.
Whatever they’re paying you, it’s too fucking much. ”
As Tate spoke, the fae man rolled his eyes, turning away.
Cadoc’s cheekbones were so high and fine that the moonlight sought them out, eagerly reflecting her light on their carved angles.
His gold-lit eyes had an unnatural shine, their centers like honeyed whorls.
Intricate braids were bound back and a headpiece of ebony antlers sat against his silken hair.
He was at once beautiful and hideous, so lovely to look upon that doing so hurt the eye, and if one stared long enough, those fine features would distort, resembling a creature from the land of nightmares.
Tate shared many of his grandsire’s fine features — the high cheekbones and chiseled jaw, the shape of his nose and long, slender neck.
Tate was taller and broader, thanks to his father’s contributions to his unusual genetic makeup, heavier with muscle he possessed naturally .
. . but he had always been slender and lithe for an orc, and the origin of that ballet dancer-like frame stood before him, shaking his head contemptuously.
“Must you make everything so dramatic?” Cadoc chuckled without humor. “You were summoned, sweetling. Not condemned. And you took a very long time.”
“Again, you keep saying that, but you have no idea what it means. You sound like a bleedin’ fool. I’m still waiting to hear what constitutes a long time to you.”
Cadoc resumed walking, continuing to chuckle as he did so. Tate stood motionless, scowling at the other man’s back for a moment before he reluctantly began to follow once more, moving before he needed to feel that tug at his chest. You’re nothing but a beastie on a leash.
“And condemned and summoned are the same fucking thing here, which you know very well. You just like the poetry better.”
He was unprepared for the fae man to stop abruptly, turning on his heel to face Tate once more, a scant amount of space between them.
When a hand landed on his shoulder, he struggled not to flinch away.
He hated being touched. Hated this cunt most of all.
Every instinct screamed at him to shake the long-fingered hand off, a hand so like his own, to step out of reach, to bare his teeth, to draw blood first.
He did none of those things, remaining stock-still and impassive, allowing the weight of that touch to sink in.
There was no aggression in it at all. Cadoc’s grip on his shoulder was warm and steady, intimate in a way that made Tate’s skin crawl.
No force was necessary. No threat. Just ownership implied by familiarity and shared blood.
He was forever bound to Autumn because of that tie.
But once it was severed, perhaps he would be free. He and Silva both.
“You forget yourself.”