Linton
“So, how do you know so much about Tam Lin’s plans?” I growl, increasing my pace to keep up with Warden who has changed to his Brag form.
“I don’t.”
“Then why am I following you?”
“Because you have no alternative to get back into the Night Lands.”
“I can get back into the Night Lands if I want.”
“You were walking in the completely wrong direction when we left your place.” Warden tosses his head.
“I was checking for Redcaps.”
He snorts at my lie.
“I thought Bluecaps were good at navigating” he says.
“If there is a moon.” I make an exaggerated gesture at the sunlit sky.
“Seems like a pointless ability to have,” Warden mutters.
“Depends whether you like the dark or not. I am deadliest in the dark.”
“You are annoying in the dark.”
I clutch at my chest. “Oh, my wound. I don’t think I can go on.”
“If you think for one single second I’m letting your bloodsucking form on my back, you need to think again,” Warden growls.
“I’m in my mating cycle,” I retort. “I only feed from my mate.”
“Lucky female,” Warden rasps. “What did she do to deserve you?”
“She accepted me for what I am.” I move ahead of Warden. “And she let me put my spicket in her…”
“I don’t need to know.” Warden puts on a spurt of speed and trots past me, kicking up dust. “Really, I don’t need to know your weird mating practices.”
I decide Warden is simply jealous of my mating prowess. Which is understandable. I have a mate, but he does not.
If he does not want to know the joy of mating, I will not tell him about it.
The Yeavering is large, and I know the direction he is taking, regardless of what he says. We’re going to the most dangerous of all the portals within the realm, the Yeavering stone.
What Warden intends doing there, I can only hazard a guess. It will be his way of getting into the Night Lands.
I’d rather eat my own wings than go to that place again, but if Tam Lin has taken Kaitlyn, I will follow her into the bowels of hell and not look back, not once.
She is all I want, all I need.
My Kaitlyn makes me whole.
But the Yeavering stone is a tricky portal, and after my experience with the witch, I’m not entirely sure how my new powers will affect it.
The stone might be strong, but the moon is stronger. And I’d prefer not to end up beyond the veil like last time.
Our surroundings change from scattered forest to open moorland. The wind whistles across it unfettered, lifting my wings and sending my scales drifting away.
“Do you ever stop shedding?” Warden growls. “It took me an age to get rid of them from the Shadow Keep.”
“No,” I say proudly. “And now I am mated, I will be able to shed on demand.”
“Your mate is going to love that,” Warden grumbles.
The road rises higher and higher into the moors until the unmistakable dark shape of the stone appears on the horizon.
It’s getting late, and there is the faint hint of a ghostly moon in the sky. Already I feel more prepared to take on whatever the Yeavering may have against me. Not just for Kaitlyn but for all who are against the Faerie.
Tam Lin made but one mistake when he took her.
He took her from me.
The stone itself is imposing, if you look at stone in that way. But with the moon at my back, I stand before it, daring the thing to do something.
“Are you ready, Linton?” Warden asks. “Once we’re through, we’ll have to cross all of the Night Lands to find the portal to return us.”
“If it takes me to my mate, I care not,” I rasp, pulling out a couple of daggers and feeling my antennae lift in the gathering gloom.
Warden trots close to the stone, turning his back on it, which seems somewhat foolish.
“Then it is time to go,” he intones, kicking out with a back leg and his hoof impacting on the stone with a deep, resonant ring.
“Take me to my Kaitlyn.” I growl at the stone as everything goes dark.
But the dark is the place all Bluecaps inhabit. We are perfect in the darkness. We were built for it.
I own it.