Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Rows of stone memorials sprout up from the earth behind us.
No actual bodies are buried under the stone towers with names carved into them, but with the headstones kicked down around the campfire, the memorials feel more like a privacy partition between us and the summit of the camp.
At least, it feels a bit safer to me, like my back is protected from the massacre that happened up there—and the fae who performed it.
Now, a lull has draped over the camp.
The cold one isn’t back yet from the darkness he went off to, and I’m stuck with the others.
Glass is perched on the headstone I was on, but she elbowed me off.
I skuttled to the grass—and there, I’ve stayed.
The rope is coiled around her fist, like a dog’s leash, and I feel just like a pet, parked on the ground, facing the campfire.
The warrior has been gone a while.
Long enough that I drifted off, and when I woke up, all the bodies were gone, and the fires lit, and most of the camp relaxed.
I hate his absence.
I hate when he leaves me to be surrounded by fae who probably want to kill me just for the cheap thrill.
I hug my legs to my chest, watching them over the flames that lash at firewood.
Some warriors sit on the headstones, others have kicked them down to make more space around the campfires, like Glass and Shark did.
A few rest, on their sides or backs, eyes shut, breaths steady in their chests, weapons in their hands.
I watch as holsters are unclasped from thighs, sheaths from biceps, scabbards from spines; boots are kicked off; knives and daggers are wiped at with rags.
But some of the fae have unearthed those purple wine bottles to share with chatty companions—as though nothing happened, as though heads didn’t roll over grass and ribcages weren’t torn open.
The sickly burn chisels into my chest again.
I press my fingertips into my breastbone, hard, and look down the camp at the captives.
A frantic energy frazzles those who are left. Maybe it’s the fear, the trauma of watching that torture show, that has them trembling as they swiftly dart from one duty to another.
Pots of water are boiling, and cookpots simmer over low flames. Bowls are loaded with food I can’t make out through the distance.
I do recognise the soapy water bowls that are being dragged up through the camp, water and soap and rags for the fae to wash themselves.
Every single warrior is stained with blood. Some just smeared. And then the ones like the cold warrior are glossed in it.
But some of the captives are looking a little lost. The new faces. They look around, watch, cry, walk in circles, huddle up, wring their hands together.
A couple of the tattered captives guide them. It’s a silent film of ‘watch me do this’ and ‘then add this to the pot’ and ‘this goes in this basket’. I fill in the blanks, because it’s not like I can hear them from this far away.
They are all the way down there at the bottom of the path, near the gate.
If I had any doubt about them not taking the opportunity to run through the gate, that blood and flesh show stamped it out.
No way are they going to risk it.
No one in their right mind would risk facing down that sort of end.
At least in the streets of towns and cities, the fae are quicker about it. Malicious and callous, sure, and they are blatant about getting a kick out of it—but it isn’t anything like what I saw up there.
I search the faces of the captives, one by one, tattered and new and kept. The group is blended now, no more cliques to divide them into clusters.
Not-Erin is gone, obviously, a sudden and quick end that churns my insides. Because that could happen to me, too.
Any moment, just—bye.
The cold one changes his mind, it’s over for me.
He dies, I die.
The general decides against me here, I’m gone.
Just like that.
No warning, no wrongdoing, no nothing.
I wonder if that’s where her mind is. Connie, sitting with her knees hugged to her chest, her sullen face lifting to the warrior who comes down the path.
There’s nothing more than defeat in those ocean eyes of hers—but it strikes me how boldly she aims her stare at the approaching warrior.
I swerve a frown to him.
Behind me, Glass slips off the headstone and her boots are soft on the grass until they stop at my side.
I don’t look at her, not as the warrior keeps his pace down the gravel path to the captives. The firelight rinses out all the blond in his hair, turns it into a sort of peachy shade like mine. But we look nothing alike, not with the faint rusty hue to his complexion, and the blackness of his eyes.
“E-vah-tay.”
I blink once, twice, then turn a questioning frown up at Glass.
Her crystalline eyes flick down her fine nose at me. The thinness of her lips curl with something of a snarled smirk.
“Evate.” She jerks her chin at the warrior advancing on Connie, but her stare doesn’t waver from me. “Mate.”
For a beat, I just frown at her.
Then, slowly, I lower my furrowed stare to the warrior as he passes the guards without even a nod of acknowledgment—
And heads straight for Connie.
My voice croaks, “Mate…”
Connie doesn’t unfold herself from the grass. Her knees are stuck to her chin, arms tight around her shins, and her tired stare traces the warriors slowing advance.
Beside me, Glass lowers to a crouch and rests her forearms on her knees. Her gaze is hooked across the camp at the captives.
“The woman—” Glass pauses to bend her neck, making a hacking sound at the back of her throat, one that sounds too like bones cracking. “—was mate.”
The shock stills me.
For a beat, I just stare at her bent neck, the crassness of it, the openness of finding no shame in her lack of sorrow, and the soft grin on her pale lips.
Then it sinks in.
The one whose neck was broken, Not-Erin, was a mate… and so is Connie.
My mind trips, a boot snagged on a rock, and I can feel the creases etching into my face.
The hoarseness of my voice speaks of sobs and screams and the choking grip of the cold one, “What’s a mate?”
Glass straightens her neck and blinks down at me, her brow all creased. “The one.” Her hand, wrapped in the end of my tether, presses to her chest—to her heart-space. “One.”
My mouth parts, then shuts, then parts.
Her hand lowers, eyes glittering as she watches my mind unravel, the creases fading from my face.
Opposite us, through the flames, a feral stare dances with the gleam of the fire. Shark watches us, closely, listening in. But he says nothing.
I should say nothing, too.
I shouldn’t speak to her.
But the question spills out of me, “If she’s a mate, why was she killed?”
For weeks, I’ve been quiet. I haven’t talked to them, only to the cold one, and only when I’ve had to.
Getting chatty with these fae is the last thing I should be doing—for my own survival.
But then, shouldn’t I know why she was killed, so I can avoid it for myself?
That thought, at least, justifies the prickle of curiosity in me.
Glass drops down all the way, her bottom thudding to the grass. She drapes her arms over her knees. “He died.”
The curve of her hip grazes mine, she’s so close.
My insides constrict, ice quick to worm through me. I shift aside, leaning away from her.
“On cart, he died.” Apparently, she has no idea that I’m recoiling from her, she just goes on like I’m not about to crawl out of my own skin to create some distance. “Mate killed. If kuri, mate kept.”
Her words don’t sink in.
“Not you. You not kept.”
She’s way too fucking close to me, and all I can hear is the hammering of my heartbeat thrumming in my ears.
Then—
“Mika.”
A shudder sends prickles all over my flesh.
Somehow, both a shout and a whisper, carries on the frosty prickles of the air and whirls around us.
It’s an unnatural sound, the hiss of a breeze, the whistle of a wind, but it was so very fucking clearly his voice.
Glass leans away from me before jumping up onto her boots and taking a deliberate step back.
The cold warrior marches through the camp, boots crunching the gravel, and his white eyes glare at Glass over my head.
My shoulders curve inwards, and I somehow sink further into the earth.
I swear, I swear up and down, he did something to his voice, like he threw it across the camp and turned it into a sharp hiss, and distorted it, and kept it quiet enough that only the ones at this campfire could hear it.
And I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how anyone can do that, fae or not.
All the curiosity is stamped out with Glass’s second backstep, the one that snags on the tether—and jerks my wrist from my lap.
Her fist is coiled in so much rope that it looks like a black silk boxing glove.
She whirls her wrist, around and around, and the more she does, the more rope unribbons from her.
I trace her gaze back to the cold one as he turns off the path, onto the grass.
Beneath his bootsteps, the blades of grass frost over.
The leather that coats the muscles of his legs is spattered in blood, but it’s dry now.
He’s been gone for so long that the bands strapped to his thighs and arms are lined with weapons stained with dark blood, no longer fresh and crimson and shiny.
Wherever he went off to, it wasn’t to wash, like so many of the warriors have started doing with soapy water and rags.
Each time he leaves me with Shark and Glass—and Rainforest, when he was alive, but since I haven’t seen him after the attack on the bridge, I’m certain he’s dead—I have no idea where he goes.
Into the darkness, sure, but for what?
To do what?
Whatever it is, I’m just relieved he’s back.
I feel it in the soft sag of my shoulders.
It’s more than his return warning Glass away from me, out of my personal bubble, but that I just feel overall safer with him around.
He steps into our pocket of dusty firelight, and the silky chain-link armour that reaches halfway down his chest is caked in old blood and pieces of flesh.
I didn’t notice that before.