Chapter 15 Wild Things
WILD THINGS
I slipped in and out of sleep, tormented by the image of my sister’s head falling underwater. I saw her pale body, washed up on the street, her eyes open and vacant. Too late, Vaeris’s voice echoed. I couldn’t save her.
I woke on a bed of moss, my nose stinging from tears I didn’t remember shedding. The cloak was tucked around me like a blanket—when had he done that?
I sat up, rubbing my face.
A low fire crackled, banked beneath a ring of stones. Skewered over the flame were several pheasants. Plucked, gutted, and roasting on a spit.
I licked my lips.
Kairos crouched beside the firepit, his expression pinched as though he’d slept poorly. He tested the heat with his fingers before handing me a skewer.
“Eat.”
“A whole pheasant?”
“We’ll leave when you’re finished.”
I reached for the meat with shaking hands. Food felt wrong when Rheya might be starving somewhere. But I pushed myself to eat, tearing off strips numbly.
“You screamed in your sleep.”
Mist coiled restlessly around his shoulders.
My throat tightened. Had I called for Rheya? Begged Vaeris to save her? “I had a nightmare.”
“About your sister.”
I studied his face, weighing whether to deny it.
“You kept saying her name. You clawed at me,” he said, rolling up his sleeve. Long, red marks crisscrossed his skin. “If you’d had a blade, you’d have cut me open.”
I bit back a sharper retort. “Then heal yourself.”
“Do you have nightmares often?” he asked quietly.
“No, that’s…I’ve never done that before.”
I forced down the rest of the pheasant. My stomach coiled with each bite, too full of nerves to enjoy it now. When I’d swallowed the last of it, Kairos beckoned me upright.
“Come. I want to get home before nightfall.”
And then what? I’m thrown into a cage?
He waved his hand and mist seeped over the embers, snuffing out the fire.
I stood, brushing ash from my palms.
Kairos led me through the forest, severing vines across our path. Monstrous trees twisted upward, their branches knit together so tightly the sunlight barely made it through. I’d never seen so much life. Such savage beauty.
Not unlike the fae in front of me. Hunter…soldier…none of those titles quite fit. Who was he? Why had the king condemned him to eternity in servitude?
Should I ask?
My palms sweated despite the cool air. Pushing him for answers was dangerous, but I was tired of stumbling blind through a world I didn’t understand.
“Kairos?”
Kairos glanced over his shoulder.
“Back there…when you jumped over the fellcat. I saw something.” I walked behind him, trying to sound casual. “Wings.”
He grunted. “I’m from Caelir.”
So he was descended from a race of winged fae. The most secretive of all realms, their people lived on islands in the sky.
“What’s it like there?”
“Brutal. Hot.”
I stepped over a felled tree. “That’s not what the stories say.”
He said nothing.
“The books I’ve read made it seem like a beautiful place. Glittering towers in the clouds. Fae floating down on white wings with bows and arrows. Like that one myth, Lysander.”
Kairos snorted. “He’s real.”
“You’re serious?”
He kept walking. “Yes. He’s an asshole.”
“You know him?” I asked carefully.
“He created a rune so potent, it mimics a mating bond. Then he engraved it onto arrowheads. He’s used it to wreak havoc between courts.”
My steps slowed. “A rune that forces fae to feel mated?”
“Temporarily, but some courts tattoo their heirs to make it permanent. To ensure alliances…control consorts.” Disgust seeped into his voice. “Royalty likes pretending it’s fate, but a real bond can’t be faked.”
“Forcing people together is barbaric.”
“It is, and once it’s tattooed, it’s forever. It cannot be undone.”
“So what happens if they find their real mate?”
Kairos paused, his hand on a tree trunk. “Mating bonds are very rare. But when they happen, any other…ties a fae has become insignificant.”
How many had lived their whole lives loving a lie?
“Damn it,” he swore, staring at something on the forest floor.
I peeked around him. “What kind is that?”
A rune throbbed over a jagged slab of rock.
Kairos unsheathed his sword. “Attack rune. Get back.”
“Why’s it here?”
His jaw tightened. “Invading armies leave them to maim the enemy.”
“Can’t you destroy it?”
“Runes don’t break,” he said flatly. “They last until their magic is spent. This one’s still strong.”
I studied its trembling lines and the blackened vegetation surrounding it. Everything within a few feet of the stone was dead or dying. A low hum filled the clearing, growing louder, vibrating through my chest.
The rune hissed, and a shadowy wisp shot out. The fern beside me split in half.
Kairos shoved me back. I stumbled, bark scraping my palms as I caught myself against a tree.
The rune thrashed, blackness seeping into the soil like spilled ink. That earthy smell sharpened into acid.
A tendril lashed toward me.
Kairos blocked it, his blade cutting through the air. The tentacle wrapped around the steel, coiling tight. It jerked hard enough to make him stagger forward, teeth gritted as he fought to keep his footing.
“Fuck,” he growled.
He extended his free hand. Fire burst from his palm in a violent rush of heat.
The rune shrieked—a sound that made my bones ache. Black veins stretched across the earth in every direction, radiating outward like cracks in glass. Ferns wilted. Moss dried out and curled. Even the roots of nearby trees withered.
This was why I hated runes. To the fae, they were tools of war. To humans, they were traps waiting to kill us. It was wrong. All of it.
But I could fix it.
I lurched forward and dropped to my knees beside the rune, ignoring Kairos’s sharp intake of breath. My fingers found its lines, and magic seared up my arms like lightning through water. The black veins shuddered, halting their spread. Then, slowly, they retreated.
A tendril shot out. It coiled around my throat like a noose and yanked. My feet left the ground. The world lurched as it hauled me up, my legs kicking, fingers clawing at the shadow choking me. The forest tilted and shrank until the treetops were level with my boots.
I couldn’t breathe.
Kairos snarled, and flames erupted below me. The heat slammed into me, and the tendril recoiled with a hiss. Its grip loosened just enough for me to gasp. Through the haze, Kairos blasted the rune with torrents of flame.
The tendril released.
I plummeted. Too fast. The ground hit me like a fist, and my shoulder popped. I lay there, gasping like a landed fish.
Boots crunched beside me. Then gentle hands lifted me from the dirt. One cradled my head, fingers threading through my hair.
“What is it?” he rasped.
I groped at my neck, trying to inhale. It felt like swallowing shattered glass.
Kairos snarled and batted my hands aside.
My fingers went limp as his palm pressed against my throat, and heat flooded into me. The world blurred. The trees swayed as darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, swallowing everything.