Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
I didn’t really lie.
I shook my head when he asked if I was hurt, so what? Not like I felt the throbbing of the bone in my shin while I was pinned under his cursed gaze, and all the blood and warriors around were maybe a little distracting.
This fucking guy.
He takes grudges and overreactions to a whole other level.
His grip on the tether is ice, and I mean ice. Frost crisps over the fine, silken threads about an inch from his bleeding fist.
I don’t know what I make the face at exactly, whether it’s the actual fucking frost forming under his grip, or that paint for blood that, honestly, grosses me out.
The cold warrior doesn’t so much as glance at me. That gloss of his cheekbone flickers with the torchlight, and he stares straight ahead at the city.
But the clench of his jaw is his tell.
He’s still pissed about my ‘lie’.
So, he doesn’t acknowledge the faces I make at him and his gross blood, or the huffs that sag me, or the weight shifting off my sore leg every time I forget the ache and try to stand up straight, which is more than I care to admit.
But without my weight on the leg, my shin doesn’t sting—and so I forget.
I’m too sucked in by the organised chaos around me.
Runaways were chased down, and the stragglers are being dragged along the highway to the back of the unit. Their jackets rise against the friction of the road, and when that happens, the screams start—because flesh is dragged over the cold snow, the dislodged gravel, and the coarse asphalt.
My neck cranes to look back at the captives.
New faces are among them.
Those ones are spattered with crimson blood, their eyes are wider and wetter, and they look around like they don’t quite know what to do with themselves.
Not like they can do anything.
Not with the guards reforming the tight circle around them—the guards still standing.
One is dead.
Not sorry for him, he fucking deserved it.
Rot, bitch.
But the others are still kicking.
The one with the chest wound stays at his post. That familiar moss is smeared over his chest.
But the one with the gut-shot is nowhere near the captives or his position with the guards.
I find him on a crate, leaning back against the wall of it, another fae inspecting his wound.
I frown on him, the other fae, the one who’s dressed differently—and I can’t believe I never noticed him before.
Like the others, he wears leathers, but in place of weapons strapped to his person, the thigh-straps dangle with flat pouches, the belt is decorated with syringes and rolls of black bandages…
A doctor of sorts.
Whatever they call a doctor in their world, that’s what this one is.
So the stomach wound is more threatening than the bullet to the chest of the other guard.
And apparently neck shots are very effective.
That might have been good to know back on the frozen lake.
If I’d known…
I could’ve shot Dare then, blasted his neck wide fucking open, and we wouldn’t be in this position.
Emily would be alive for one.
That’s not a thrill for me, but it would make Bee happy.
And then…
What?
We’d just do what we were doing for months on end, chasing our tails around the west coast of Canada, hiding and following, hoping we weren’t found out on the journey to the dark fae’s secret way back to Britain.
Maybe we would’ve ended up like them—the two captives, bound and gagged, being thrown onto the back of a cart.
Those two are runaways. I recognise their faces, even through the blotchy tears.
But the next three to follow are new faces.
My brow furrows at that, some of the new captured people are shielded by the guards, and some are in the carts with the runaways.
Not all runaways are in the carts, either.
Whatever the logic is there, the selection process, I haven’t figured it out.
And it doesn’t matter, because once everything is settled, and the unit is back in formation, the warriors march onwards.
Towards the city.
The one they were always going to destroy.
Not even an onslaught of gunfire stops them.
The winter one keeps the tether in his white-bleeding fist for the march into the city. He doesn’t fasten it to his belt, and so I guess he’ll pass me off to the guards soon—
And I’m right.
He does just that.
The moment the unit is ready to really fuck this city up, to burn what’s left of it to the ground, I’m ditched with the ragtag group of captives in the courtyard area of some glass monster of a building.
I drop onto a concrete step, careful to remember my shin, stretching it out in front of me.
Connie sits beside me.
She doesn’t speak a word.
Her face drops into her bloody hands then, tense, her head lowers more and more, until her fingers are threaded through her hair and stiff against her scalp.
I eye her for a beat, the blood she gets into her hair, the rigidness of her crouched posture, the slight trembling of her spine, as if she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s crying.
The reason for it is a guess in the dark.
It’s not loss.
Erin is over there, on the other side of the spread-out group (no cliques this time among the captives, not since everyone is shaken and battered), and she’s holding a folded scarf to her face. So it’s not like Erin died or anything—and I think her and Connie are somewhat close.
They’re usually together whenever I watch the captives in camp.
I mean, Erin’s face is definitely fucked up.
But that’s not why Connie cries.
Others sit all around, some on the steps, others on the ground, and the newer faces are fringed with doubt before, slowly, they slump down.
The guards are weary around us.
Down two, there are enough gaps around us that some new idiot might make a run for it—and they might just get a head start of about a step or two, since the fatigue is weighing on the guards.
They must have hunted their cold black hearts out chasing the runaways.
But they took losses, too.
I wonder how many the fae lost in that fight.
I don’t know the faces of them all to be able to tell which ones are gone, but over the time I’ve spent with the unit, I recognise the ones that matter.
The ones on the steeds up the road, who follow the flames that eat through the city, as if checking that they don’t cross some invisible perimeter. Three are missing from the two dozen of them.
So that’s four confirmed dead fae so far.
And honestly, I’m impressed.
Like, really fucking awestruck.
It took a lot of humans to do that. A lot. But knowledge, too. Like, someone at least in that massive group, had military experience, or was super observant of the fae for a while, at least long enough—and close enough—to realise their weakness.
Their necks.
But so many others were hit elsewhere.
The injured fae on the carts watch, moody, as the warriors bring destruction to the city, like they want nothing more than to join them.
The flames eat through the buildings, an unnatural swiftness to the fire spreading before moving on from the ash it leaves behind, and I’m getting a bit worried that those buildings are going to collapse, the debris that remains falling down on us—
And I’ll be crushed by concrete and steel.
That can’t be my end.
Not here, not like that. Not after everything.
Not like them, the humans being flushed out in the blaze.
I wonder if they’re connected to the people who shot at us on the bridge or if they were just another group hiding out, or a bunch of individuals taking their chances in the city.
I don’t feel for them as they’re cut down.
I don’t feel for the newly captured humans with us who whimper and weep behind me.
I don’t quite feel anything, really.
I’m numb, watching the fights, watching the captures.
And I’m numb, still, when it’s all over and the unit marches through the streets that slope up and up at a gradual incline.
Then we stop.
The unit does what it always does—watches their grid burn.
The flames never go beyond that section.
The blaze eats through buildings like they are nothing more than paper and cardboard. Ash flitters in the air with the thick billowing smoke.
A while passes before another stream of smoke appears; thick and tumbling over the rising crimson light in the distance.
Another fire.
Another grid.
Another part of the city—another fae unit.
The warriors around me are disturbed. Some turn to watch the blaze, others spare it short glances here and there.
Ships passing in the night.
Warships.
These warships pass in the cities, in the darkness.
I watch the second blaze for a while, way down the riverbank, out of the city, in the boroughs.
When the light from the fire starts to fade, the cold warrior comes back for me.
Connie tucks her head down and slides a step back. Captives cringe away from his advance.
But the cold one doesn’t give a shit about them, doesn’t so much as glance at them, as he snatches the tether into his literally frosted grip.
I watch, curious, as he threads the rope to his belt—then it hangs between us.
His annoyance sticks around.
He doesn’t even look at me as he turns on his heels and, with a harsh jerk of the rope, staggers me to meet his pace back to the middle of the unit.
I struggle with the brisk walk.
My shin aches more and more with each limped step—but that doesn’t slow him down.
Why would it?
It’s not going to slow the unit down either.
Don’t have a choice in it, I push through the sharp pains shooting down my shin with each hobbled step.
I look forward to the camp.
I might not be able to track time anymore, since Bee is gone and she kept the notebook with the tally of twelve-hour sections on pages and pages, but my body works off a clock I don’t understand. One I can’t quite read. But I feel it.
Weeks with this unit.
It’s the same every time.
After the fire of a human settlement, the unit makes camp—the good camp, not the short one.
The good camp is longer. More food dished out, and since the cold one is feeding me more from his share, I get to eat more.
I also get longer rests.
So that’s what is coming as the unit leaves the burning city behind and, through darkness, we walk…
and walk…
and walk.