Chapter 9
“Are you looking to get yourself killed?” asks my murderer from across the table.
I examine his stony eyes, his casual stare. Does he know how our fates intertwine? Would he consider murdering me his fate at all, or just another day on the job?
“Well, at the very least, you must not want your voice back as badly as I’d assumed. You do know we need those two to reclaim it.”
They’ll come back, I write.
The Nomad leans back in his chair. “And you know this, how, exactly?”
Because I did. Because they lost something precious to them, something intertwined with their identity. A piece of themselves.
I say none of this though. Instead, I write, What kind of magic did they possess?
The Nomad smiles. “We’ll just leave the answer to that question unsaid for now. I find curiosity quite the motivator.”
The bell on the tavern door dings. And, for the first time, I watch the Nomad’s face turn ashen. I glance over his shoulder at the newcomers, only to find two rather unassuming men in even less assuming robes cross the threshold.
“Don’t look at them. Look at me,” says the Nomad.
I make a point of dragging my gaze back to his as slowly as possible.
I wait for the Nomad to remark upon my stubbornness. Instead, his voice is biting, commanding for the first time. “I said look at me.”
It’s when I flick my gaze back to him that I notice the sweat beading on his forehead.
My inclination is to examine the newcomers more thoroughly, but the Nomad whispers, “This would be one of those occasions in which it would be in your best interest to do as I say.”
My best interest or yours? I say with my eyes.
From the conceding shrug the Nomad gives me, I take it he read my mind well enough.
“Seat yourself,” says the tavern hostess.
“No need,” says the first man. “We’re looking for one of your patrons. Seen him around?” He holds up a poster, and though the image is facing the tavern hostess, I glean enough about who is on said poster by the way the Nomad grimaces.
The hostess works her lip. Anyone else might assume she’s trying to place the face, but I know better.
She’s served us twice tonight. The hesitation isn’t a matter of memory.
She’s trying to decide who she should fear more.
My gut reaction is the Nomad. But I’m probably biased. He does kill me every night.
But who is more terrifying than the men the most terrifying being in the world is afraid of?
Just then, one of the men turns his head in my direction, locking eyes with me. Except one of them is completely white, milky where there should be an iris and pupil.
“What did I tell you?” says the Nomad, voice agitated.
I’ve no idea how he can tell what is happening behind him, but that’s the least of my concerns at the moment. It’s not the man’s strange eye that has my pulse racing, but the tattoo stretching up his neck.
Two faerie wings dripping blood. The Company insignia.
These are faerie dust harvesters.
Just hold still and it’ll hurt less, I promise, says a voice from the past. Peter, as he shredded my wings, the first step in harvesting my faerie dust.
The nerves on the ends of my wings fire, phantom pain tingling.
The men make their way toward our table, but I am frozen in time, back in Neverland with Peter, sobbing silent tears, screaming silent screams as the pain rips through me. As he refuses to look at me, so he doesn’t have to see my pain, much less hear it.
“Snap out of it, Wanderer,” says the Nomad, “we’re going to get you out of here.”
The Nomad is the last person I should believe.
The first time I realized the man of my nightmares was real, that there was someone out there hunting me down, it had been when I was sixteen.
A pair of harvesters had come into town, and we’d overheard them asking the local butcher if he knew of any winged faeries.
That part wouldn’t have been so odd, except they’d had a sketch of my face.
Luckily, the butcher was a friend and prattled on while my father and I slipped out of the shop.
I don’t know how the Nomad knew what I looked like at that point—probably paid a seer to sketch that drawing. But I know he sent a pair of harvesters after me.
Still, I don’t know what it is about his expression, but when he says he’s getting me out of here, I believe him.
“They said he’d be looking for a faerie who fits her description,” whispers the first man to the second as they walk toward our table, my fae hearing able to pick up on their words.
Great—the Nomad has been looking for me long enough that my description is tied to him.
Well, at least the harvesters aren’t after me.
Though, it would be unlike any harvesters I’ve met to turn down a chance at kidnapping two people who would be worth their weight in gold just because they were sent for only one.
“You,” says the first, taking the Nomad by the shoulder from behind him. “You’re coming with us.”
“You haven’t seen my face,” says the Nomad from under his hood. “How do you know I’m the man you’re looking for?”
“You should choose less conspicuous travel companions,” says the second.
Not sure what makes me conspicuous, since my wings are hidden. I’d be inclined to be offended, were I not so terrified.
“You don’t truly know who I am, though,” says the Nomad.
“Oh, yeah?” says the first harvester. “And why do you say that?”
“Because if you did, you would have killed me before getting this close.”
Just like that, the Nomad grabs the first man’s arm and yanks him over his shoulder. The man goes careening into the table. I jump out of my seat just in time to avoid the splinters shooting through the air as the man hits the floor, skull-first.
The second man lunges for the Nomad.
This is one of the advantages of being a female. Because the second man might be bulkier than the first, but he’s forgotten one thing.
He’s outnumbered.
He sends a fisted hand toward the Nomad, and it collides with his jaw. The Nomad stumbles back a step, rearing to return the blow, when the harvester reaches for the dagger at his belt.
Except his fingers grasp around nothing but air.
Confused, the man glances down at his belt.
He should be looking at me.
Normally, I’d go for a hilt to the head, but as this man is a harvester who now knows my face, I’d rather not risk him waking up.
He spins around to face me, just as my dagger plunges toward his neck. But it only grazes skin. That would be thanks to the Nomad, who got to him first and has tackled the man to the ground.
I watch them wrestle on the floor, the Nomad’s hands wrapped around the struggling man’s throat. I’m not quite sure how the Nomad is stronger than this bulky fae male, but I don’t have time to ask questions.
“That dagger would come quite in handy right about now,” says the Nomad, just as the man closes his hands around the Nomad’s throat.
I’m tempted to let the man choke the Nomad out, if not for the fact that he’s my future murderer, then because I’m rather irritated that the man who ruined my killing shot is now asking for me to hand him the dagger I intercepted.
“Wanderer!” says the Nomad. “The dagger, please.”
I’d rather stab the man myself, but since the Nomad seems so intent on doing it, and I already have mud caked on my robe and don’t like the scent of blood, I toss him the dagger.
He catches it out of the air just before plunging it into the male’s throat.