Chapter 1
ONE
Rain patters on my jacket.
It’s been drumming down on us for hours.
I breathe, and the air is drizzle.
I blink, and droplets cling to my lashes.
I walk, and the road is slippery.
But the loose yellow rain jacket protects me from being drenched through to the flesh, then even deeper to the bones. My soft, thermal clothes are warm on my body, my socks dry in my boots, and with the hood pulled over my head, my hair only frizzes in the mist of the rain, it doesn’t soak.
But I’m still not comfortable.
More than the constant damp in the air as we leave behind the snow of the northern parts of Canada, more than the slick roads beneath my boots in a trek that just keeps on going and going—
It’s that warrior.
Rust.
He’s around somewhere, lurking in the dark.
But I have no idea where.
I lift my hand in front of my face—and I don’t see a thing. Not the pale, freckled complexion that should poke out between the sleeve of the rain jacket and the cuff of the glove; not the blue and grey of the inhaler that Samick presses against my palm a heartbeat later.
When I look down, I don’t see my boots kicking through puddles. If I look over my shoulder, I won’t see the captives probably huddled in the cold, pushing against the wind to keep up with the steadily marching unit.
The blackout is as dense as ever.
But I don’t need to see anything to know that Rust is in the dark, watching us—as he has been since he came back to the unit.
A lot of staring.
A lot of watching.
A lot of plotting.
I’m sure of it.
He’s probably figuring out the gaps in my constant fae-shield, a warped vendetta propelling him into some fucked up obsession with me.
Guess logic doesn’t sit with the fae too well.
It was Ramona who shot the guy, not me.
He knows that. And still, he’s a stubborn psycho about it.
Maybe I should relax a little, let the stiffness loosen from my tight shoulders, let the breaths ease a bit in my tight chest, maybe stop clenching my teeth so much that they’re starting to ache.
I am, after all, surrounded by a shield.
When we left the cemetery behind, that shield formed around me—and it hasn’t changed. Not in all the treks and marches since.
Mika moved in front of me.
I remember the way the torch-flames bounced off of her, how the plaited rope of her hair fell down her spine like a glass sword, glinting over the rippling ink of her leathers. A gold dagger was firm in her left fist, and in her right, a black knife.
Arwyn, the other icy fae, the one that echoes that same cold indifference as Samick, came to my right—and there, he walks.
The darkness can hide the fae from me all it wants. I still feel them, the cold ones, the ones fashioned from ice, born of winter.
I’m used to Samick now, but having Arwyn on my other side gives me chills. Literally, my skin pebbles, it prickles all over, and I fight back the occasional shudder, like it’s too much to be around more than one of them at a time.
Shark follows behind, the wilder fae with rows of jagged teeth that look like they could melt flesh with a single, slow bite.
While we walk, they don’t leave me, not more than an inch.
They aren’t creating a barrier between me and Rust out of the kindness of their hearts.
For whatever reason, they use their bodies to shield me—for the sake of Samick.
And he has his reasons and bargains with Dare.
I shouldn’t let the protection fool me.
But it does.
It’s Samick that’s the constant.
The one I feel safest with.
I used to flinch and sneer and recoil from his touch. Now, his fingertips graze over my palm in the dark, taking the inhaler back, and my heart doesn’t miss a beat.
My breaths come easier now.
Sometimes, I think I confuse the tightness in my chest for that iron dread weighing me down and whatever that plague did to me. And, I wonder why, when Samick touches the air with that chill inherent in him, it eases the constriction of my lungs.
The wonder is pushed out of my mind when a murmur rushes through the unit.
It sounds like a grumble of barbed curses—and in front of me, Mika tuts her tongue.
A second later, the rope tightens on my wrist with a tug to the left.
The ground shifts beneath my boots.
The slickness of wet asphalt turns into an uneven, muddy terrain.
My face crumples, and my steps kick that bit higher just from the effort of tugging my squelching boots out from the mud before they can sink.
I’m not the only one put out by the turn off the road.
There’s a sigh somewhere in the dark. And a huff. And an annoyed hiss.
And I guess that means this is another unexpected turn, one of the detours this unit has had to make in the dark over the past week (I guess a week, but I’m counting time by camps and cramps, so it might not be reliable).
I don’t know why we need to take these detours.
It’s always too dark to see.
But this is the third time it’s happened in this trek alone, the unit grumbling to a pause, then taking a sharp turn off-path, off-road, like we suddenly have to go the long way.
No one tells me shit.
So my ignorance holds as firm as the blackout.
And it doesn’t take long for the mood of the unit to sour.
Turns out that even fae can’t trek through the mud without their boots sploshing.
Not nearly as noisy as me, or the humans way at the back of the unit.
But I hear them. That squelching. Boots being peeled off the mud, then slapping down on a fresh patch.
It’s another surprise, another vulnerability I’ve learned about the fae now that I’m living with them.
My list of dark fae weaknesses went from one to two.
Neck shots.
And mud.
Not that any of this is helpful, since the mud might be the end of me, too.
The aches in my legs are worsening, digging deeper into the muscle of my knees, and I’m wobbling with every other forced step.
I bump into Samick. A lot. Shoulder just knocking into his arm over and over.
If he’s annoyed, hurling me those scathing glares of his in the dark, I don’t know. He doesn’t throw in a snarl or hiss or anything.
He doesn’t yank the tether, either.
Not once in the dozen times I’ve smacked into him.
After a while, the mud levels out into the firmness of asphalt again, and even though it’s slick with rainfall and puddles, I’m grateful for the return to the road.
Samick tugs me closer every so often, like he’s pulling me out of the way of potholes and fallen bikes, but it isn’t much longer before the torches rise, starting as orange lights cupped in darkness, then—together—blasting through the shadows.
The town ahead is revealed.
Without a word, Samick steers me back to the captives—the humans, the kuris, the evates—and leaves me in the protective circle of the guards.
Pissed me off the first time he left me with the guards after Rust came back. Now, I think I’ve figured it out. Here, I’m protected by the rules of the general, the law of the unit. Like, Rust would get in serious trouble for attacking me among the captives, out in the open, in plain sight.
So he’s biding his time, watching, scheming.
I’m sort of safe as the fae destroy the town. As safe as I can be.
I don’t weep as screams come from the buildings.
I don’t talk to Connie, the evate of one of the warriors. A mate, who I just think is cursed.
I don’t even sit with her.
I sit as close to the biggest guard as I can.
And I watch, mute, until the town is ash and we leave it behind.
Just another day in the blackout.
Except this one is coming with the heaviest cramping weight settled in my belly. The last day of my period. I can tell it’s the last by the sensations, like my body is trying to rinse out all the leftover scraps of blood hanging around in my womb, and it’s fucking horrible.
Thankfully, the unit stops to make the big camp somewhere in a field near a murky reservoir and with troughs toppled over. Must’ve been a farm once upon a time.
The rain has stopped. But the mugginess sits stagnant in the air, and so I feel the damp on my face, glittering on my gloves, wetting my lungs with the threat of another virus.
I look forward to the campfires. But those are a good fifteen minutes away.
The pattern is predictable now.
Samick hands off my tether to Arwyn, then hikes up the hill arching away from the lake’s shore.
I don’t know for sure where he goes off to, but I’ve got an inkling.
Ever since I saw the antenna poking out of his satchel, I’ve suspected that he’s contacting them.
Dare.
Bee.
The thought of her sends my stomach slingshotting through my chest.
I steel myself.
It doesn’t help me to wallow about her. Or even think about her for more than a few seconds.
It’s too risky—because I know myself, and I know that obsessing over Bee is only going to send me spiralling.
I hold onto the facts around me, and my theory about the antenna.
Maybe Samick uses the radio to check in, see if he still has to uphold his end of the bargain to keep me alive, to see if Bee has broken her end and run off.
If she has, then my throat is likely to be torn out, the way Samick ripped out his horse’s throat.
But he’d do it to me with a lot less regret.
Feels like he’s gone for ages. That’s because Arwyn never lets me sit down.
The rope is wound so firmly around his fist that I can’t drop my ass to the ground even if I tried. I would just dangle from my wrist.
So I stand, sagged in my weariness, my exhaustion, and wait, wondering if Samick will return to take the tether or my throat.
I count the time passing in the pattern, the routine of the kuris around me. I decide he’s been gone fifteen minutes or so when all the campfires are lit.
I’m dying to edge closer to the flames over the stones, the ones that Shark and Mika are already standing at, palms pressed to the heat, warming themselves.
But Arwyn doesn’t give me an inch.
Across the camp, kuris dig through the carts, hauling out bags of grain and giant pots.
It’s all so monotonous.