Chapter 20
TWENTY
There is a whirlpool of warriors sucking into the gravel path.
The rope is firm in the cold one’s fist, so tight that his knuckles flame with angry blotches.
Swift, he weaves us around the abandoned, dug graves and headstones.
The tension doesn’t radiate off of him, it’s bolted into him, like his muscles have hardened to steel beneath his bloodied leathers.
I stick to his heels, closer than I should, a tripping hazard, but with the obvious tension firming his muscles down his back, I’m a mouse sticking to the skirting of a wall.
The closer we get to the whirlpool of fae, the less strength the torch has against the growing gleam of campfires.
The warrior lowers it until the flames are out, and he follows the trail to the path. It’s only when we step onto the gravel that I can see around the solid muscle of his arm, and through the whirlpool of moving warriors.
Two fae stand firm in the centre of the commotion. Their grins are bright, eyes glittering as they’re dragged into fast hugs, and hands are coming down on their shoulders and backs and heads.
Unease flitters through me.
I haven’t seen either of those fae before.
I don’t recognise every single one here, some look more alike than others and I can’t always tell them apart, but those two—
They are new… or returned.
My heart sinks to my squirming gut.
Strays.
The reminder is a pit thumping to my stomach, pulling down on my insides.
Just the word in my head steals me back to the rawness of survival, searching for safehouses, throwing bleach over our trails, hiding from the worst of the fae.
Separated from their units, those who wander the lands in their return journeys to their fellow warriors, are always the worst kind.
As though he can feel the fear trickling through me, the cold one turns his chin to his shoulder. His lashes are low over the pale gleam of his eyes—and the paler they are, the worse everything is.
The look he spares me is swift and fleeting, then he’s marching up the path—
Headed right for them.
Those old instincts flare to life.
The bones of my legs go stiff, and they drag and scuff under me, unwilling.
‘Go the other way,’ I want to beg him.
Strays are always bad news. But maybe that’s only out there, in the wild blackout, not in captivity within the unit, not under his protection.
But if that’s the case, and I’m totally safe, then why are his leathers tightened over his tense body, why did he bother giving me a warning to keep my mouth shut and do what he says, why is his grip on the tether so tight?
I cast a look down at his fist.
And my lashes flutter.
Before, it was just a firm grip on a rope, with only enough spooled between us that it forces me to stick close.
Now, the length is shortened a few fistfuls or so, but his grip… It’s ice.
Literally, ice.
Laces of frost are gliding along the silky threads.
I throw a startled look at him.
But he is totally indifferent to it.
Of all the warriors in this unit, of all the fae I’ve watched through binoculars and tracked from a distance, he’s the only one like this.
He is cold, he is ice, he is frost.
Different.
And he’s the only one of that kind I’ve ever seen.
Until now.
The tall, broad-shouldered fae in the middle of the path, one of the strays, the one with porcelain hair to match his milky complexion, who turns away from the hands coming down on his shoulders, the warmth of the greetings all around him—that fae is cold.
Ice.
Frost.
He and the cold one…
I think they are the same in their difference.
But where the cold one’s eyes are either white or green or somewhere in-between, this new guy has stones for eyes, like they’ve been popped into his skull.
Those sun-bleached pebbles slide our way.
He looks at the cold one for just a moment before he moves straight for us. His advance draws him away from the other stray swallowed up by the cheers, the wine bottles passing from hand to hand, the one-armed embraces—
Like these warriors are people too, with friendships and lives and connections outside of our fucking genocide.
I see it in the almost relieved grin from the stone fae, I hear it in the way he speaks his name, “Samick.”
It’s reciprocated.
“Arwyn,” the cold one murmurs before they collide in an embrace.
For a long moment, I stay tucked behind him, waiting out the embrace. It’s an odd thing to see.
Males in this world, in the Before, rarely hugged. If they did, it lasted a second before it quickly started to dissolve with boring deflection jokes that would have me rolling my eyes.
But among these warriors, it seems to be an open sort of custom, or an act that comes without shame.
It surprises me, more than it should.
Maybe I just expected more of the toxic part of maleness when it comes to these brutal dark fae warriors, and a lot less hugging.
The cold one’s voice is a murmur, a language that feels like needles spiking up from tar, like barbed wire whipping at me.
I look up at him, at the back of his head, blood crisping some strands at his nape, and—
The other warrior latches his gaze onto me.
My shoulders bolt, a deer in the headlights.
Still, he stares.
His skin has a matte sheen, like granite polished in a light drizzle. His stone eyes bore into me, then drop to the rope fastened to my wrist.
This Arwyn speaks, but I don’t know what he says. I just know it’s about me, and it draws them apart from each other.
The cold one turns a lightly furrowed look on me.
I shrink even further into myself.
The cold one states, firm, in English. “Bargain.” Then, tugging the rope once, he adds, “Dare.”
Arwyn lifts his chin, face tight, then—after a heartbeat—nods.
His stone eyes are firm on me.
A frown is tugging on my brow.
Why is this guy so fucking interested in me?
I mean, obviously I know humans aren’t tethered to a single warrior in this unit, then dragged across the continent, protected.
But I do know that I don’t like the lingering look he runs over me, head to toe, or that he and the cold one keep speaking in that wretched excuse for a language.
I stand here for a while, dropping my stare to my boots—my new ones.
In all the commotion, I didn’t quite register the boots. I mean, yeah, I changed into them, but I didn’t really process the fact that the warrior went out of his way, probably in the city, to get boots that won’t have me slipping and staggering all over the slushy, wet roads.
It's better for him that I have the right shoes, that the grips are right.
I must’ve been far more annoying than I realised—and I knew I was annoying him often in the dark between my staggering and coughing and rumbling belly and exhausted huffs.
That last one appears now.
The huff that swells my cheeks, and I turn a longing look up at the campfire we left.
It’s further up and tucked close to the pillars, too far away to feel the heat, but close enough that I can watch flames dance.
Glass crouches at it, hands splayed against the hot air, her face moody—and her sharp gaze cuts aside at the male warrior standing behind her.
One of the strays.
I frown up at the path. One is still there, enjoying all the attention of his return.
So there were three strays, not two.
That one up there at our campfire, standing over Glass, I didn’t see.
Something niggles in my mind at the sight of him, something like rage and terror.
This warrior is fire and rubies and tree bark and rust. But there’s something else in him that I can’t quite put my finger on, something that worms my insides.
I consider him, the warmth of the flames casting crimson light all over him, deepening that rusty hue of his.
I blink, and I see Ramona.
Her face flashes in my mind.
I flinch against the intrusion, a startled blink and she’s gone, and I’m left staring at the stray warrior, the warmth of his complexion flickering under the siege of the campfire.
Again, my brain snags on it.
A sense of familiarity.
Have I tracked this one before? Have I looked through binoculars and seen him from a distance?
No.
It’s much more than that.
He turns a look over at us, at the cold one—but then those rubies he has for eyes drift to me.
Like mine, his gaze snags.
He blinks, as if stunned.
My brow furrows, my head tilts.
There’s a gnawing in me, a mutter, a whisper, it tells me to run, to hide, to remember her.
Ramona…
Dread fills me; cold, heavy dread spilling through my veins.
The breath I utter is a whimper.
The sound of it draws in the stares of the two warriors in front of me, but only Samick tenses—
He traces my hooked gaze to the rusty warrior.
I look at him now, and I remember. I recognise the flare of fire in his eyes.
He killed Ramona.