Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
My cold, chapped lips wrap around the mouth of the inhaler.
The breaths I draw in are deep and ragged, like my throat is being dragged down the length of a grater.
I fill my lungs all the way to the pit before the stars in my eyes start to fade.
The coughs haven’t finished with me yet.
I swallow them back as best as I can, but my shoulders jerk with each one catching in my throat.
Moments ago, when the ice fae handed me the inhaler in the depths of the darkness, the coughs that were reaching through me weren’t the worst I’ve had.
I didn’t double over or pass out in the midst of a fit.
But each cough reached all the way down to my diaphragm, a cramp tensing into an iron ball, and my sight started to warp.
Even with the crutch of the inhaler firm in my gloved grip, my head is spinning, my cheeks puffing out with each surge, and my boots are scuffing over the road.
My misbalance is staggering me into the warrior’s side, and it’s not unlike stumbling into a marble statue planted in a museum.
He doesn’t budge.
Doesn’t sway or get pushed off-balance with my uneasy steps.
It’s me who’s knocked around.
And still, I’m on my third kiss of the inhaler, and the coughs haven’t eased.
It’s annoying them.
I’m annoying them.
The fae around me in this unit marching up the highway give an occasional hiss and subdued snarl, huffs coming right after each cough.
But I can’t stop it.
I’m trying.
My mouth is clamped shut, my body sagging against the fight, but I can’t battle them back down.
If the warrior senses it, the annoyance prickling among his kind, then he acts by handing me his waterskin.
It’s total darkness surrounding me, but I feel the slosh of water encased in leather as he pushes it into my gloved hand, and it’s exactly what I imagine a waterbed feels like.
I swap the kiss of the inhaler for the water and sip. Gulping it down wouldn’t be the best idea. One wrong swallow, and I’ll be doubled over with a hacking fit—then who knows what the fae will do to me.
I’m not so sure it’s about how annoying my coughs are, but that the noise fills the darkness when the unit must be silent.
I notice that in the pattern.
Their boots are louder on the road, murmurs rippling through air when the torches are raised.
But then the torches come down, and the noise drops with it.
I am the noise that isn’t welcome in the dark.
And it’s bothering him, too.
I hand back the waterskin, and he swipes it, harsh enough that I flinch.
Blackness shields the glower I aim at him—and it lasts a fraction of a moment before the inhaler is swiped from my grip.
A wince is sharp through the bite of my teeth.
I hold my hand up in the air in front of my face, but there’s no light to see the scratch he’s torn down the meat of my palm.
Intentional, no doubt about it.
Guess I forgot he can see in the dark just fine, can see the looks I shoot at him.
Maybe I didn’t forget and it’s just that I have no control over my instincts that are definitely going to get me killed.
Now, I’m left with the consequence.
The trickle of warm blood that falls from my palm to the sleeve of my jacket.
The sting burns into the flesh, but it was just a nick, a warning, one that cut through the material of my thick glove.
Fingers curling, I make a fist then hug my stinging hand to my chest.
That hoarse, dusty sensation of coughs stirring in my chest lingers.
I keep my breaths short, controlled, like my steps in the dark.
This journey is too long.
The constant walking is getting to me.
Not just hours, it feels like days, nights too, all meshed together in clumps of uncountable time.
Honestly, don’t know how the other humans are doing it. Keeping up with the long strides of the fae, a unit that walks and walks and walks, seems impossible. It’s not like the captives are fed well. Like me, they live on scraps, leftovers.
Maybe it’s the will to survive that has them pushing through exhaustion and hunger.
I would crumble if I were them.
Because they don’t have Bee to keep them going, promises and hopes of a second chance beyond this shitstorm of a life.
But if I’m struggling, then the captives must be on death’s door.
I’m a bit of a hiker, or at least I was, and I guess that is what’s getting me through this hell. But we’ve walked for so long now that I suspect we’ve crossed provinces, but northbound because we seem to be chasing the winter.
The weather shouldn’t be as cold as it is anymore, the snow shouldn’t still be sticking to the ground, but it is, even if it’s only thick about an inch or two.
All this walking, all this time—
Time I can’t count, but I know in my bones it’s been weeks since I’ve seen Bee, weeks since we ran right into that trap on the street.
Weeks that I’ve been in his captivity.
So it doesn’t make sense for the air to still be as chilled as a walk-in-freezer.
Unless we are moving north. But that’s just a guess. There is only one absolute.
Canada is fucking huge.
Like beyond-my-comprehension massive.
Before, with Bee, she took charge of mapping out our stops, our distances, our travels, everything.
I was a part of that, I pulled my weight, but… I know now that I never would have been able to keep my mind right in this blackout without her.
I would have panicked at the wrong moment, gotten myself turned around in the dark, or worse, in the forest…
And then I’d be gone.
People vanished all the time in the Before.
National parks lost a whole load of people year after year, all around the world.
That really strikes me.
This tether that cuts into the flesh of my wrist, scratches and tugs at my bruised, raw skin, might be the only thing keeping me safe.
Safe from the other fae.
Safe from wandering off, a misstep down the edge of the road beneath my boots, a slip down a hill, getting turned around at an abandoned car—and that would be it.
Gone.
Vanished.
The shudder that strikes me is too violent.
I reach out for the cold warrior in the dark—a hand feeling around the obscurity in front of me, angled to the left.
Then I feel it.
His fingers, light on my gloved ones.
The breath that releases from me is curt.
I needed that, to know that he’s there, that he hasn’t wandered off and left me behind to die.
Just a heartbeat’s moment, our fingertips pressed together, before his hand is gone, and though I can’t see him right there beside me, I sense the silent snarl he’s aiming my way.
I touch my hand to my mouth, a silent gesture for the return of the inhaler, then hold out my palm upwards.
It’s all practiced now.
Weeks, and he has learned my gestures, just as I have learned the meaning behind each tug of the tether, learned to feel the air shift with the chill of his dark looks.
So it’s only a moment before the familiar curved plastic of the inhaler presses into my hand, returned to me.
I shake it first, a way to track how much of the medicine is left.
And now I know, not much.
I hope he knows that.
I hope he realises what I’m saying with the shake and the look his way, where I only see darkness.
I’m frugal with it now, just one breath from the inhaler before I hand it back to him with a whisper, so soft and quiet, but I’m sure it travels to fae ears in the dark, “Almost empty.”
He snatches it from my hand.
No words come from him.
No answer.
The inhaler is just another way he keeps me with him, keeps me from running off. That should reassure me, at least a little, that he’ll replace it, find another for me to suck more life out of.
Just another tether.
But even if he didn’t keep it with him, the inhaler on his person, in his pocket, I wouldn’t run.
Not out here.
I’m not taking on these national parks, drenched in pure blackness, alone. That’s a horror movie, just the thought of it.
Now I’m going to have nightmares about being lost in the dark again. Those are some of the worst kinds. Wake up drenched in a cold sweat, and the grogginess lingers for hours.
The nightmare hangover.
I can’t afford to be groggy out here.
One boot in front of the other, over and over and over—and really, these boots are not for the snow. The seams are fastened tight, but there must be a gap or two, a thread that’s coming undone, because there’s a slight wet patch starting to spread over my sock.
That’s… not good.
That’s a problem.
I lift my chin, as if to look at the warrior on the other side of my tether.
The hard muscle of his arm occasionally brushes my shoulder, but that’s from my own misstep, or the moments he’s guiding me around objects I can’t see.
I could speak, tell him my sock is getting wet.
Out in the snow, in this weather, that’s something that needs fixing.
But I don’t find the courage, the foolishness, to speak. I risked too much already by telling him about the inhaler running out.
If he knows that I’m looking at him, searching the blackout for any hint of his features, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He could be staring back at me right now, those glacier eyes angled down at my frown, and I wouldn’t know.
I hate that.
I hate the blindness.
I hate the quiet.
I hate the fae.
I hate the trek.
I really fucking hate the wet sock.
The frustration in me is rising. And it is ice.
I tense against it, my jaw tight in the dark as I turn my cheek to the chilly feel of the warrior.
There is no response from him. No tug of the tether, as if to let me know he’s bothered by me, which he’s making a habit of in this eternal trek. There’s no curt sigh that tells me I’m getting on his icy nerves, no move to stop on the road to change out my sock, no nothing.
And so, I hate him the most.
I hope a pothole is covered with snow, and he steps in it, mid-lean, and it breaks his fucking shin.
Agh.
Fuck.
The tug of the tether.
It yanks my wrist, hard, and I stumble into his solid arm.
The glare I lift up at him is shrouded in darkness.