The Whims of Love (Monstrous Whims #3)

Chapter 1 The Note

The note.

STELLAN

When I was a kid, my mothers had a collection of documentaries on one of their laptops. They traded with traveling merchants to get them for me as I was growing up.

“To teach you about the world,” Jess had said, “even if the world has changed.”

I was born after the Rise and I’ve only ever known life in the wastelands, so I was fascinated with documentaries about the oceans. Whales, dolphins, octopuses, seashells, and the abyss. Everything was so alien and captivating.

And among them, seahorses were astonishing in their fragility.

These small creatures have no means of defending themselves in the vast sea and are terrible swimmers.

If you take them out of the water too fast, they die from the pressure change.

And yet, in their fragile existences, they only choose one mate.

They share their time with only one seahorse, and they endure great distress if separated from them. Some even die of a broken heart.

Back then, I found it absurd. I had never met people who loved each other as much as my mothers did, and yet I knew that if one died, the other would survive. We’re meant to be strong and endure. Life goes on. Humans are not as fragile as seahorses.

But that was before I met Perri.

I found him during a storm a few years later, when we were both teenagers. And I know for a fact now that I would die if he does. I can’t live in a world where he doesn’t exist.

This deep-rooted knowledge and fear has been following me ever since. And it feels more true than ever this morning, as I notice the silence in our home and the note on the kitchen table written in his messy handwriting.

I have to rescue her. Sorry.

Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in a few days.

Love,

Perri

I’ve never known such fear as I do now, my shaky hand holding the note.

By her, he means the AI he’s been communicating with for weeks. Perri is always on the hunt for lost signals. It’s a hobby of his. Black boxes from crashed airplanes, satellites still working in orbit, and radio signals from faraway communities.

And one day he found her. Vex. From what she’s been telling him, she’s a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence in an artificial body—a robot—who has been forgotten in an old lab near San Francisco. Apparently, she’s been trapped for more than twenty years.

I don’t believe her story for one second.

But Perri does. And he’s been trying to gather a rescue team for a week.

I laughed it off, telling him it was madness and certainly a ploy from desperate nomads.

We had an argument, and he refused to talk to me for a few days.

He even went as far as to request the King of Merchants’ help.

Of course, the King refused. He has no men to spare to cross two states in search of a shady AI who certainly doesn’t even exist. Even though Perri and he have been getting close lately—too close for comfort.

Perri always had a thing for dangerous men. I had to threaten—and sometimes kill—a few of his ex-lovers over the years. But Alastair is the first mutant to make it to the list, and I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage if things go south.

And he’s my king, of all things.

My king…

I crumple the note and rush out of the house.

The sun is rising over the wastelands, but the Traveling Market is already bustling with life.

It’s in the early hours of the day, when the heat is still manageable, that merchants trade.

The stalls are open and the sellers are hollering to catch the attention of the traveling merchants going back out into the wastelands with new wares to trade.

In the Market, everything is built precariously over the three Baggers—the biggest vehicles in the world, also called the Eiffel Towers on wheels.

Most of the stalls are hanging from the giant arms but the living quarters are closer to the ground.

From the apartment I share with Perri, I have to cross four rope bridges to reach the higher side of the Market, where the King has his throne room.

This is where I know I’ll find him at this hour.

He always makes himself available to settle any conflicts among merchants.

The throne room is at the end of the arm carrying the giant excavation wheel of Bagger One.

It’s a circular room made entirely of wood.

There is a tall chandelier of seashells falling from the ceiling.

Strings pull it from all sides to prevent it from swaying excessively when the Traveling Market moves.

I heard there used to be four chairs in the room—four thrones. One for each of the Market founders, the king’s adoptive fathers. But they all perished one by one, leaving him in charge of the Kingdom of Trade.

Two merchants are arguing as I rush inside.

Something about spoiled goods. I stride to the center of the room, forcing them to let me pass and interrupting their squabble.

One of them squares his shoulders and grabs for my arm.

But I’m a head taller than most people, thanks to the Scandinavian blood I get from my mother.

I also got her blonde hair, blue eyes, and square jaw.

I turn slowly towards him. He must have seen something on my face because he lets go immediately and backs off.

Perri is gone. Today is not the day to make me lose patience.

“Stellan,” says Alastair the First, King of Merchants.

His voice is deep, as if coming from the darkest parts of the ocean.

He’s sitting on his throne, sculpted from the heartwood of an ebony tree.

A craftsman gifted it to him when he rose to power a few years ago, shortly before our arrival at the Market.

The back and the armrests are shaped like tentacles reaching outward.

A stark reminder of the old god’s DNA he was created from: the Kraken.

Alastair’s skin is as dark as his throne, but his heavy locs and under-shave haircut are white as bone, and his eyes are an unsettling shade of gray.

This is a man that can never pass for normal, unlike Jude’s lover, Oliver.

His mutations are for all to see. He’s wearing his usual long leather coat.

“I come for an urgent audience,” I say, holding his pale gaze.

“Come on! We’re busy here!” says the merchant I interrupted. He’s a burly man with a beard.

But the King watches me for a heartbeat, then says, “Leave us.”

The two merchants open their mouths to argue, but one look from their king and they exit the throne room. Alastair is not the kind of ruler that you rebel against without good reason. Unless you want to find yourself kicked out of the Market—or dead.

The King watches me with a raised eyebrow. I never ask for audiences. He’s usually the one who requests things from me. Like repairs on the Baggers and other vehicles. I’m his prized mechanic, even if we rarely talk.

As soon as the door closes, I say, “Perri’s gone.

He left while I was working on the job you gave me.

” I have been in the desert for two days to repair a merchant’s truck that broke down two hours away from the Market, then came back this morning and found our apartment empty.

“I request your help to go after him. I need men, trucks, and supplies.”

“Gone where?” the King asks.

“To San Francisco.”

“The AI?”

I nod grimly. “Yes.”

Alastair sighs. “Fool,” he says.

I frown. A ‘fuck you’ almost crosses my lips. “If having a kind heart makes someone a fool, then yes, he’s the biggest fool there is, but also the best of us.”

The King smiles. He’s devilishly handsome, to the point where it’s annoying to look at him.

“Yes, that he is,” he admits.

“I need the men, and fast. I’m leaving in the next hour. He already has more than a day of travel ahead of us.”

“I can spare three people plus you,” Alastair says. “And two vehicles.”

My frown deepens. The wastelands are too dangerous for only four people to suffice.

Some of the Highwaymen are still hunting down merchants.

Many nomads have turned into beasts out there in the wilds.

And that’s not even counting on the old gods we might encounter.

If I were to die during the journey, who would go find Perri?

We can’t leave him alone in the wide world.

“Four people aren’t enough,” I say. “I need—”

“Myself included,” he cuts me off.

My next words die on my lips. “You?”

He rises from his dark throne. He’s taller than me by a few inches, which infuriates me, too. “Yes, me. I’m coming.”

The King often leaves the Traveling Market to go on important ventures. Usually the kind that requires force and persuasion, like rogue nomads or unruly communities who have threatened or killed merchants. Which isn’t the case here.

I might have misjudged his relationship with Perri. I know that they finally had sex two weeks ago, after the banquet for the fall equinox. Perri had been sending him secret smiles for weeks. I knew it was a matter of time before the King gave in. Nobody can resist those smiles and looks for long.

After that, Perri disappeared for a few nights in a row and only came back in the early morning. One day, I waited for him in the kitchen as he walked in with a smug expression, his long, brown hair unbound and tousled.

“Had fun?” I asked.

Perri sighed with content. “Yes. He’s good in bed, to say the least. And very… special.”

I didn’t take the bait.

“He’s not a man to be trifled with, Perri,” I said. “He’s our king, not a traveling bard to have some fun with.”

“I know. Our arrangement is purely physical.”

“I doubt that.”

Perri always gets attached. Then his heart gets broken when they eventually walk away or disappoint him, and I’m left to put the pieces of him back together.

“You know, I think he would like to have you join us,” Perri said. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you when we’re together. He wants you.”

I had noticed it too. But to me, it looked more like envy than anything else. What Perri and I share is unique. It must be lonely to be king.

I shook my head. “This is going to end badly.”

“Or not,” Perri said, sliding between my arms. He buried his face in my chest; he’s so much smaller than me. When he looked up, his hazel eyes were full of mischief. “Come to the bath with me? I’m well spent, but I can suck you off to take the grumpiness out of you.”

I laughed and followed him to the bathroom.

“Let’s meet outside in an hour. Get the things you need,” says the King, bringing me back to the present. He comes down from the dais, leaving his throne behind. When he reaches me, his voice is strangely soft as he says, “We’ll get him back.”

He leaves through the back door and I take off running and head for our apartment.

We won our place in the Market years ago, when our skills as a hacker and mechanic turned out to be invaluable.

For me, it meant finding a place where I could keep Perri safe from the harsh world we live in.

And yet, the little fucker has gone out into the wastelands alone, set on getting himself killed.

Not on my watch.

As I reach the house, I immediately aim for our weapon cache. I need everything that I can carry. I’m sure the King and his men will manage the food and water supplies.

Once I’m equipped, I grab a few extra clothes for Perri and me. I don’t know what he took with him; he always sucks at packing. Most of the time, he can’t find a matching pair of socks in our home.

And yet, he’s out there alone right now… My chest expands with difficulty as I choke on fresh panic. I should have listened to him when he asked to go rescue the AI. I should have realized how important it was to him.

My hands shake as I grab all the things we might need, including, of all things, a spare toothbrush. It somehow reassures me to imagine that the biggest of our problems in the wastelands will be dental hygiene.

Please, let it be it.

Our radio is missing. It’s the one Perri always uses to communicate with Jude and my mothers. At least I know that he’ll keep one ear on the merchants’ channels. They relay important news, like the movement of the old gods every hour. He’ll know which coordinates to avoid.

I rush out of the house with two heavy bags over my shoulders. I throw them inside my rover; Perri took our truck. But before I have time to start the engine, one of the King’s men appears in the hangar.

“Stellan! The King awaits you,” says the old man, out of breath. “You’re leaving in his vehicle.”

He grabs one of my bags and leads the way outside, down the ramp and into the desert surrounding the Traveling Market. We’re somewhere west of Nevada, near Walker Lake—now almost dried out.

The King’s ride is hard to miss. It’s a large pickup truck with a camper built on top of the truck bed, like the old world expedition overland vehicles.

The wheels are twice the size of normal ones.

It’s a rusty mess of metal sheets nailed together.

It doesn’t look like much, especially for a king’s ride, but I worked on it enough times to know that it’s one of the best vehicles in the wastelands.

Alastair spent years turning it into a monster of a truck, with hidden features and weapons.

The metal sheets and windows are bulletproof.

There is another truck beside it with two of the king’s men inside. Janice and Leonard. They’re pulling a trailer that I’m guessing is full of fuel and other supplies we might need for the journey. San Francisco is a day or two of travel through the wastelands. More, if we encounter trouble.

“You’re riding with Alastair,” Janice tells me as I walk closer.

She’s a woman in her fifties with a cigarette hanging from her lips. Leonard is a wisp of a man but is renowned to be an excellent shot. They’re some of the King’s best mercenaries.

I run to Alastair’s truck and use the step to jump inside. I’m not one to argue. The faster we leave, the sooner we can get to Perri.

Alastair watches me as I drop my heavy bags at my feet. As soon as I close the door, he puts his foot down on the pedal and we’re off.

I spare one last glance at the Traveling Market behind us, wondering if I’ll ever see it again. It’ll move tonight. Going west to find a place where there is more water.

Alastair turns on the radio and finds the merchants’ main channel. A warning echoes in the truck. “Hartross is on the move. She’s going north, at coordinates…” followed by a string of numbers.

The King points to the glove compartment, and I open it to find a map of the Broken States. I unfold it with urgency and look for the coordinates.

Cold dread slither around my heart as I realize it’s a day’s travel west of our position. In the direction that Perri took to reach San Francisco.