Chapter 2
TWO
The general’s deputy is fast to move. He lunges for the black wooden table lined with whips and weapons.
The weapons rattle as he snatches up something that looks too much like a bone.
I frown through the mist.
With the drizzle hanging in the air, it’s hard to see clearly through the distance, so I can’t quite tell what it is.
But then the deputy turns to face the unit of mostly sleeping warriors—
And he lifts the whitish thing to his mouth.
Not a bone.
It’s a horn.
The deputy throws his head back and billows a deep, stomach-reaching breath through it.
A yowl erupts through the camp.
I smack my hands to my ears and cringe.
Whatever that sound is, it’s fucking eerie. The crispy, whispering sound tickles my ears, claws through me, and makes my spine rattle.
I double over.
But the eerie whispering keeps crackling all around me—until it doesn’t, and the sound of rustling lures my clenched eyes open.
Every warrior is awake now.
Not only awake but moving, acting fast. Bags are being packed, dirt kicked onto fires, boots tugged on, weapons sheathed.
Even the kuris have emerged with their puffy bloodshot eyes and stifled yawns.
I expect the guards to push them, to shove them into action and get them started on packing up the camp.
But they don’t.
The guards are herding the captives.
They close in on them and, with steps advancing on the rest of the unit, drive them forward in a huddle.
That cold fear is shifting into something heavy, like a rhino sitting on my chest, and no matter how many times I rub my breastbone, it doesn’t ease.
Samick turns for us—and his face is chiselled ice, his eyes are flaring with lashings of frost.
His advance on me is unfaltering.
I shift onto my feet.
My new boots sink into the soil as I grab my backpack, then sling the straps over my shoulders, all without tearing my gaze from his.
Without hesitation, the second he’s reached me, his hand shoots through the air like a blur of ice, and I’m hauled to his side.
He doesn’t wobble, doesn’t lose a step of balance as, with his other hand, he seizes his satchel.
Around the muscle of his leather-wrapped arm, I see Mika and Arwyn standing, packed, ready to go, and their chins angled up at the head of camp.
I trace their stares.
The deputy is dragging a heavy rope out from the front cart.
I hear it thud to the earth before he hauls it into the middle of camp, but the way he does it reminds me of tug-of-war, with that heave, heave, heave.
That spooled rope must be crazy heavy if even a dark fae needs to really put his back into it.
I’ve seen fae rip car doors off their hinges.
Samick’s arm pushes into me—
And the instinct takes over. Because that’s what it is now. Instinct. He guides me, manoeuvres me. I follow.
It’s all learned and natural.
I’m a shadow stuck to his side as he heads to the peak of camp. All the other warriors do the same, and the guards with the herd of captives.
In rows of one and two, we all make our way to the general and her deputy.
Some move faster with brisk steps, legs cutting through the dying light of campfires, and others jog right by us.
My neck aches as I look back at the captives.
Crowded by the guards, a rope is spooled between them, their wrists fastened, and it’s so horribly like a row of slaves that it churns my stomach.
Then a guard stomps on the embers and flames of the small fire closest—and darkness steals them.
I turn back around, my face twisted.
The warriors have blended into a fast-moving stream—and one by one, they grab the giant spooled black rope on the dirt.
It unspools down the camp, thudding on the earth.
The more warriors that reach it, that grab a handful and move on into the dark, the closer we get.
Samick’s pace is swift, determined, his bootfalls are faithful, but he isn’t rushing like some of the others, the ones who overtook us in the queue.
I stumble to keep up with him.
I jump over slippery rocks and slick slopes of mud—but his grip on my wrist is steel, so I don’t think he’ll let me fall.
As we reach the rope, Arwyn in front of us, Mika and Shark behind, more campfires are doused, dirt kicked over them in passing, in the rush—
Samick grabs onto the rope and moves us into the depths of the blackout.
The last campfire goes out.
Torches are turned down.
And it’s back to total, blinding darkness.
The urgency in the fae doesn’t falter.
Steps are louder than they’ve ever been in the blackout. The pace is quicker, and my legs are starting to ache already.
I didn’t get my rest.
I need my rest to keep pushing on in this never-ending hike.
I must come too close to falling, to stepping on the wrong thing, because Samick’s hand abandons my wrist and before I can even panic, he’s looping his arm around my middle.
The ground is swiped out from under me.
I thud down with a grunt.
Just like he carried me into camp that first time, I’m dangling over his shoulder.
It isn’t comfortable.
Not with his chain armour digging into my ribs and gut.
But then, Samick pushes into a run.
The pummelling of bootfalls comes thundering all around me, and the rain hits—pelting down on us.
I jostle on his shoulder.
Every breath I attempt is jutted out of me.
But I just hold on.
A cross of weapons is slashed across his back—and I grip the straps for balance.
Not like I will fall anyway, not with his hand planted firm on the meat of my thigh, locking me in place.
The drumming song of the warriors running hits the ground as loud as the rain itself, until I can’t tell the sounds apart.
That hail must be close, seconds or minutes away. And we’re out in the open—we’re in a fucking field. An old farm, with troughs left in the overgrowth.
I don’t know where the nearest shelter is—but it’s far enough that the whole fucking unit is racing for it.
I add this to my list of dark fae weaknesses.
Neck shots. Mud. And hail.
Probably won’t come in handy, but it locks away in my mind.
Guess it’s not so different to us.
Humans.
Neck shots, mud, hail.
Any one of those could harm us.
But I once thought these creatures so formidable that they couldn’t be taken down.
Dare clawed through stormy waters beneath a thick sheet of ice. Samick bent a fucking gun with his bare hands. I’ve seen fae battered with bullets and once, around Santa Monica, an actual grenade.
And still, they kept moving, fighting, killing.
I don’t find pleasure in their weaknesses.
I find humanness.
A likeness to us.
Killable means mortal.
It sits hard in my gut—or is that the chain armour digging into me?
A guttural sound rushes through me.
Samick’s grip leaves my thigh, and I gasp with the fright—the horror that comes in a flash that he might abandon me. But then his hand smacks down on my jacket, tightens, and he hauls me off his shoulder.
I should strike the earth, but in the whirl of air around me, mid-fall, the piercing winds and battering rainfall, Samick pulls me against him.
My feet don’t touch the ground.
My eyes widen.
Because my chest is flush against his.
The breath from his nose tickles my cheekbone.
His boots still slam down on the muddy earth, running with the unit, but without breaking pace, he removed me from his shoulder to hold me against him instead.
I don’t understand—
Until the first strike of hail comes.
And it’s like a tree splitting.
The crack is unbearable. It thunders around me, splitting the darkness.
My shout is buried beneath the blast of it.
But the blast doesn’t quieten.
Like trees cracking and splitting all around us, more hail comes—and the sheer sound of it striking the earth is fucking terrifying.
A cry of fright hitches through me.
I wrap my legs around Samick, and if I wasn’t so panicked by the sudden battering of ice rocks from the sky, I would make a mental note of this feeling too much like latching onto a marble statue.
I throw my arms around his neck.
“Head down.”
That’s the only thing he says, and it feels like a command crafted from snowflakes and frost, lacing at my ear.
I drop my head and feel the pressure of his armour digging into my brow.
His hand comes down on my braid—fingers splayed, as if meant to be a barrier…
As if to take the brunt of hail that might come down on me.
My breaths shudder like they are being chopped on exit.
I stay latched on, tight.
Then I hear it.
Amongst the violence of the earth cracking, the pounding bootfalls, the piercing winds, there’s a strangled cry from the darkness.
Someone got hit.
Not a heartbeat after, a pair of bootsteps go beating right past us.
My face twists.
I have the fleeting thought of a warrior running to his fallen mate.
But there’s no way to know in the dark and the panic, in the rain and the rush.
If there are more shouts, more struck kuris, I wouldn’t know. The noise is too great, the cracks like thunder all around.
And I can’t see a fucking thing.
My arms loop that bit tighter around Samick’s neck. My thighs clench more, ankles locking, and all I can think is, I’m not letting go, not until the hail stops, not until we’re under shelter.
But these rocks coming from the sky might pierce through roofs and cars—I don’t know.
I’ve never known hail to sound so violent.
It only gets worse.
The run goes on for so long that the hail storming down on us brings shouts and cries from all over the darkness. All over the unit.
Fae and humans alike are struck—and both shout with the pain.
It cringes me.
But Samick’s hand doesn’t leave my head.
Maybe it’s been struck, his knuckles bruised and bashed in and bloodied, and I have no idea.
Maybe he can do something with the ice, stop it from touching us, because he can do that thing with frost on his fingers when his rage climbs.
My attention is split—
Samick’s body suddenly tenses against mine. He throws his cheek to my temple, almost crushing me with the pressure, and I hear a crack.
But then, at the exact same moment, there’s the crushing sound of bone breaking.
My teeth bare against the hollow shout that’s gravelled, like it’s dragged over stone. It’s a sound that can only come from a fae, from their throats, not from a human.
It sounds just an arm’s reach from me.
Like if I let go of Samick and grabbed at the air over his shoulder, I would touch the mangled, screaming face of a fae.
But that’s where Mika should be.
That’s where she grabbed the rope, the one that leads the warriors through the storm together. Maybe it stops them getting separated—and that, I wonder, might mean they can’t see so well in the storm of rain and hail and distorted winds.
The shouting fae behind Samick draws in a commotion.
Darkness makes it hard to know what’s going on, but it sounds like someone rushes to her aid.
Samick doesn’t.
He keeps running with the unit, in formation, all the way to the distant sound of…
Metal.
Like metal jangling.
The sound is too light to be the chain armour of the warriors. Those threads of metal are slight but dense, and they sound heavier than whatever that noise is up ahead.
Then it comes again, louder, or we’re just getting closer to it—
And the sound steals me back in time, it drops me into memories of jumping fences when I was young.
A chain fence.
Fae at the tip of the rope are ripping a fence apart. And steps are unfaltering. The run rushes ahead—and when I dip with Samick, like he’s ducking for a quick moment, I suspect I’m right.
The run is short from the fence to the loud groan of what sounds like a solid metal door.
Something strikes the metal, like boots, and the crashing bellow that comes with it jolts me.
Samick’s hand on my head tenses, as if… as if to reassure me—but all that does is push my head down more, too much, and my neck is straining.
Everything shifts.
It feels different.
Sound isn’t spread out in the darkness anymore. It’s echoing, like it comes down a tunnel or a hallway.
The rain doesn’t belt me anymore, doesn’t batter my rain jacket or soak my already drenched sweatpants.
I hear the rain still pelting the earth, but as though I’m undercover, it can’t touch me.
And the hail…
It’s out there, still. And it’s here, too. Smacking down on the roof of wherever we are.
Now, it’s nothing like trees splitting.
Now, it’s metal crashing into metal, it’s the impact of a fucking explosive, like cannons are being fired down on us.
But the hail doesn’t come through the roof of this shelter.
Samick’s hand relaxes on my head, then slips away. For a beat, his hand rests on my waist—and holds. Then he tugs me off of him.
I unwrap my limbs from his solid body, but I do it unwillingly.
His hand firms on my waist, as if to give me that bit of guidance, reassurance maybe, and he peels me off of him until my boots come down on concrete.
My heartrate isn’t as stable as the hard floor.
Samick takes my wrist and leads me deeper into this cold shelter, but my chest is jutting with the panic of being caught out in the storm.
He follows the unit, the rope lined through the warriors, and we walk the concrete floor for a few minutes until there’s a pause that stops us.
More metal clatters.
More doors booted in.
A gate wrangled.
Those are my guesses, and I don’t want to ask, not with the unit suddenly nonverbal—but not quiet. Not with the moans of the injured, the thick coughs rumbling down the corridor, and the bootsteps echoing off the walls.
Another strike of metal clangs down my bones, another passageway revealed—and the unit moves again.
Samick leads me—and a few steps in, torches are lifted.
Samick’s hand might have protected my head from being crushed by hail, but the rainfall still ran down my face. It’s all over my eyes and I wipe at them with my drenched gloved hands.
It’s pointless, but I do it anyway.
By the time the whole unit is packed into the tight space, and Samick has guided me over to the wall, the filmy residue of water is blinked out of my eyes—
And I look around our shelter.
My heart sinks.
Not a place I ever thought I’d be.
Not a place I ever wanted to go.
But apparently the only shelter out in the middle of nowhere is a fucking prison.