Chapter 1 #2
Time chips away at me, fading me into an echo of myself, and even now, standing, I sag with the weight of the boredom.
At this point, it’s possible I would shove someone into the flames just for a book.
No. Not a book.
A movie.
A good show.
Something to stream and binge, beginning to end. Something to kill this boredom in me.
It’s growing, swelling, and as it does, it’s hollowing me out.
It was like this before, when I was with the girls. In the quiet moments, I found myself slipping into the void of depressive-bitch and straight-up-energy-vampire.
Can’t help it.
If I could get myself out of it, I would. Obviously. But I never can seem to claw out of it.
An amateur vibe killer since 1994.
And it stems from that fucking void that lives in me.
Bee’s the only one who could ever tolerate it. Met her in a share-house, and that happens to be ground zero for my energy sucking ways. But she was never phased by it. I’d hum about my misery, project it onto the world, and she would laugh.
No one ever laughed. But she did.
She is the sun.
Not a replica of it, not filled with rays of false warmth, but the true essence of a burning star.
I could never point my finger at Bee. I could never throw her to the wolves, like I have done to so many others, like I did to Emily.
I don’t know what Bee sees in me.
No clue what she gets out of our friendship.
That part is a fucking mystery.
I just know that, in the moments like these, of quiet and yawning boredom, it’s harder to not think about her. My mind drifts, lured by hormones, to a place of pain—
Then my wrist is yanked.
And I’m pulled out of my spiral as Arwyn hands over the tether.
I turn a frown on Samick, a sort of dazed look as I stumble back from the mental abyss.
His stare cuts me.
A pale, crisp hue, not unlike the inside of an apple.
There’s nothing particularly unkind about the look he gives me as he ties the tether to his belt. He just stares at me, like he’s working out a puzzle.
Then he jerks his chin to the flames of the campfire.
Stuck in routine, I’m a silent shadow at his side, moving towards the warmth of the flames.
The closer I get, the more I melt.
The relief ribbons out of me in a faint breath before I slowly sink to the damp grass.
I let my lashes shut on the bliss of the campfire, the familiar flickering of flames, the crackling kindle, the embers that pop.
I hug my knees to my chest and ride out the pangs in my gut.
A lull stretches over the camp.
Meals are dished out, fae flop onto their backs and find their dreams, notebooks and journals and parchments are spread out, some warriors write and sketch, maybe penning letters to loved ones back home.
Mika rests.
Shark finds himself down at a campfire where bottles of wine are being passed around.
Rust is down there, too.
Watching.
Always watching.
Beside me, Samick draws out his sketchbook from the satchel, I guess so he can draw and scrap the same garden over and over.
He never finishes it.
Never seems appeased by his work.
Every time, he gets as far as the drop of a cliff into rippling waters, then he stops.
That’s when his hand hovers, moving around the page, but never adding anything, like he knows it needs more, but just can’t quite decide on what and where.
But that is an hour or two in.
For now, he’s starting fresh, on a blank page.
He starts where he always does—at the round pavers leading through tufts of grass and wildflowers.
Then he’ll sketch a pond and rows of garden beds. It all makes for a lovely unfinished garden.
For a long while, I watch the tip of the black, dusty chalk glide over the thick parchment page for a long while.
It’s sort of hypnotising. Or meditative.
I zone out.
And when Samick speaks, I blink out of a daze, and time has passed.
“Eat.”
The drawing is mostly done, the camp mostly asleep, and I’m sagged against the boulder, my lashes heavy over my eyes.
A stifled yawn twists my mouth.
I rub the ball of my palm against my eye. “Huh?”
“Eat.” His softly murmured echo comes with a promise of something he doesn’t deliver. He has chalks and a sketchbook in his hands.
No food.
He handed me a full bowl earlier, taken from the man and given straight to me. Instant mashed potatoes, stirred through with chickpeas. Nothing to write about.
My voice is thick with the exhaustion weighing me down, “Eat what?”
The look he gives me is withering.
With a harsh tut, he reaches over my knees for the backpack flat on the dirt and hits it once.
Oh.
I do have food in there.
Snacks.
Not much, but some.
He returns to his book, and I’m forgotten.
The camp is too quiet, too asleep to just tear the zipper open and dig through my things.
I move slowly, carefully, and sway my hand around in the backpack. My gaze swerving to Rust. He’s asleep.
I pull out a handful of items.
A tin of tuna in chilli oil, a small box of trail nuts, and a chocolate bar.
Not a favourite combo of mine.
But I’m just so fucking hungry that I take whatever I’ve grabbed, and I don’t want to risk waking any fae with all my rummaging around.
I start on the tuna.
I hook my finger through the tab, then peel back the lid. My teeth bare against the faint creaking sound.
Arwyn’s attention drifts to me.
There’s nothing to read on his face, no hatred, no curiosity, no nothing. He just watches as I pick out lumps of tuna and stuff them into my mouth.
And he watches still as I set down the empty tin and bring the other two items onto my lap.
Trail mix and chocolate.
Arwyn eyes the tiny box, the kind meant for kids’ lunchboxes, and the golden bar of chocolate that’s a bit too nutty for my taste. But beggars and choosers.
The trail mix is the smarter choice. More calories, slow release, the kind of food that keeps me going.
The chocolate is that treat I need, a sliver of grace I’m desperate for, because there are so few pleasures left in the world. And I’m on my fucking period, but—like each time I’ve chosen a treat before—Samick spares it a cold look, then returns to his sketching.
He’s not impressed by chocolate.
Bet he’s a real fucking bummer in his world.
Who the fuck hates chocolate? It’s like hating animals. Weirdo territory.
My cravings turn me ravenous.
Arwyn watches—blatantly stares—as I bite into the chocolate bar, then shove almonds and raisins into my mouth.
Chocolate helps the trail mix go down.
I keep my cheek to the stony stare and watch the strokes of chalk down the thick parchment page.
Samick still draws.
He’s onto the house now. The outline of the building is done. He draws rows of windows, the slope of a roof, a porch that’s fenced.
But then, he returns to the garden.
Countless times I’ve seen him draw it.
And each time, it looks the same.
His frustration creases his brow and twists his mouth, like he can’t quite get something right.
The garden on the page overlooks a sea from the edge of a jagged, violent cliff.
Down the middle of the garden, stone pavers make a path between vegetable patches and wildflowers and a pond on the right and, on the left, nothing.
Just blank paper.
I finish the chocolate, and now I’m down to just some raisins and almonds.
I’m starving.
So full of cravings that, when I finish the mix, I’m not ashamed to admit I consider licking the wrappers and tin.
But I don’t.
I wipe my hands on the grass, watching the stillness of the chalk hover over the page.
“Sculptures.” My suggestion is a whisper—one that swerves Samick’s glacier stare to me. “And pews. Maybe a fountain?”
Strands of blond hair brush over his brow.
For a long beat, he just looks at me.
“You know, like marble statues,” I clarify, a mutter, and I gesture to the blank page. “Or stone, whatever.”
Samick turns his gaze back to the sketch.
Slowly, he tears the page out of the book, then balls it in his fist. The look he spares me is ice as he tosses it at the flames.
A scoff comes from my left.
Arwyn must still be awake—and clearly paying too much attention to us.
Nosy prick.
I don’t acknowledge him.
My jaw tightens before I roll my tongue around my cheeks—then, with a huff, I throw the empty trail mix box into the fire.
Arwyn murmurs something ugly and serrated, and whatever he says is funny to Samick, because a small smirk curves his pink mouth—
And it vanishes as quickly as it came.
Something else takes over his face.
Shadows cast over tensing muscles, a clenching jaw, a brow furrowing.
Slowly, he turns his cheek to me, slashed through with a dark shadow, and he looks out to the blackout beyond the camp.
I sit up straighter, stiffer.
There’s a faint creak at my side.
I cut a glance over at Arwyn.
The leather-bound book in his hand is creaking with his tightening grip—and like Samick, his focused stare is aimed at the blackout.
My face wrinkles.
Arwyn’s hand…
It’s tight around the journal, the one he writes in sometimes, but it’s the goosepimples crawling up his arms that turns my veins into threads of ice.
I turn a tightened look on Samick.
A flurry of ice spurs in my chest.
The shadow slashing over his cheek is darker now. The tension in him is so tight that his muscles look bolted to his bones.
Arwyn speaks, and not a heartbeat after those two curt words, Samick is pushing the sketchbook off his lap—
It thuds to the earth.
My brows raise and I stare down at the toppled book, the leather-bound cover parted, exposing the pristine pages inside.
Samick is a lot of things.
A beast, a feral creature, an icy monster—
But he is also neat. Careful. Organised.
Not once in all the time I’ve been his ‘ward’, as he calls it, have I seen him disrespect a single item he owns.
Especially not the sketchbook.
To see it on the grass, spilled open, and his boot coming down on it, is enough to stun me.
My lashes flutter as he tosses the tether down to the earth and stalks off.
I look between the tether, limp on the earth, discarded like the sketchbook, and the light that glimmers off the chain armour draped over Samick’s shoulders.
He marches through the camp.
Arwyn doesn’t follow.
But he has that same tension bolted through his body, from the stiffness of his shoulders, down to the firm planting of his boots on the grass.
He’s standing now.
Alert.
They sensed something out there, deep in the dark. Something that the other fae sleep through, and the ones who are awake don’t notice.
Faces turn our way from all over the camp. Curious glances from the dozen or so fae still awake. But none of them wear that same hardened concern that the cold ones do.
The more I twist around to look over the grey boulder, the more my spine protests with aches.
But my gaze pins to Samick, standing by the empty throne.
Heartbeats pass before the general emerges from her tent. Her eyes are reddish and swollen, like she’s been yanked out of a deep sleep, but she is dressed in her leathers.
Samick doesn’t wait for her to sit before his mouth moves around words I can’t hear.
The more he speaks, the more alert the general looks. The puffiness of her eyes lessens right in front of me, and something severe settles over her.
I throw a look at Arwyn, standing at Mika’s boots, staring out at the darkness.
Goosepimples are still smeared along his arms, crawling over his shoulders, exposed by the sleeveless leather vest that’s tightening around his tensing muscles.
“What’s going on?”
That throws his stare to me.
The weight of it strikes me like a fallen rock on my chest.
I steel against the assault of it, eyes wide. But the fear is momentary, passing, as he turns a frown up at the general and Samick.
His muttered answer is rough, “Storm.” The harsh crimson glare of the fire burns his milky-toned cheek. “Ice from sky.”
Ice from sky…
It takes my tired brain a moment too long, but the answer locks in, and once it does, I stiffen against the boulder and glare at the darkness.
Hail.
An incoming hailstorm.
Well that’s just fucking great.
That’s just perfect. Exactly what we need right now after being battered by winds and rain, and enduring this period from hell that’s taking way too long to wrap it up and fuck off.
But I now understand the urgency thrumming through Samick and Arwyn.
A hailstorm.
We’ll be thrashed out here, out in the open—in a field with no shelter in sight.
Tents won’t stand against hail, depending on how bad it is, how big the chunks are.
And I’m guessing, by the severe set of Arwyn’s face, and the brisk strides that Samick takes back to the campfire, that this isn’t some light hail headed our way.