Chapter 7
VALANCE
The stairs were steep and treacherous. We worked our way down slowly, taking care with each step. One slip and a plummet to the rocky terrain far below would spell the end of us.
“Careful here,” Kormac said, offering to take my hand on the bottom step.
The stairs ended halfway down the cliff face, becoming a ledge wide enough for us to cross in single file. Another wooden sign pointed out the next set of stairs were to be found further along.
I took his hand, let him perform his protective duty—a burden laid at his feet. Truth be told, his callused hands were comforting after the events of the morning.
Such death. Such sadness. Those poor people. And just a pebble in an ocean. Villages throughout the land suffered. Needless death. Needless suffering of innocents on both sides.
Was that true, though? Any unseelie aligned creature was the enemy, regardless of their standing.
They weren’t innocent, not like the people of Whistoning.
They were the innocent ones. That repugnant unseelie side wanted to kill, to break seelie.
And now they held the upper hand, sweeping the lands so much faster than I could have imagined.
The power of iron, the might of unseelie.
Enough to bring down the seelie court for good.
After the latest twist, did I care?
I care for revenge…
I care for Kormac’s cock…
Danu. Those were two raw truths.
It’s always the little people who pay for war… Kormac’s words swirled in my mind.
This human, this creature. He tainted me. He polluted me. He tried to twist my feelings and my thinking. Him and the soul bond.
Pushing Kormac’s voice out of my head, I focused on the road ahead.
Goodness, these wastes were vast, expansive beyond imagination.
Heatwaves rippled from every surface, shimmering the line of the white horizon.
A cursed place, a desert of death. But also a place of hope and blazing sunlight.
Yes. If we got to the other part of the old woman on the other side, then we were one step closer to answers.
Not if, but when. We would survive this hell. We would endure the heat in all its relentlessness. Sunburnt skin, weary feet, and dry throats were a small price to pay.
We followed the ledge, Kormac in the front position once again. I studied his back, thinking of the muscles working within that leather armor. Sweating, toned, bigger than mine. Masculine and powerful, a body built from labor and hard living. An incredible body. A body I wanted to see again.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, my eyes moving down to his buttocks, drinking him in.
Against my better judgment, I wanted him in this moment.
However he wanted to do it, however brutal he wanted to be.
No words or feelings or confusion or hate.
Simply skin on skin, pounding away sorrow, so I didn’t have to think for those moments he skewered me on the end of his cock.
Would he want to if I suggested it?
He paused, his head slightly angled as if to watch me from the corner of his eye.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
I saw him wet his lips. “Nothing.”
Did you hear my thought? Did you feel it?
“Are you thirsty?” I asked. We’d just had some water, but this arid place dried the throat quickly. “Danu, this air is chalk.”
He carried on walking, saying nothing.
Had he felt my thoughts through our bond? And what in Danu’s name was I doing? Maybe once I may have suggested sex, before everything fell apart, when I held all the cards. When times were fun, and I was still me, and my friends were alive.
When you hurt him…
I watched him some more, hugging the chalk wall of the cliff on my left. Purposefully not looking down to my right.
Why him? What was it about this ordinary human that bound him to me and this great becoming in the north? His strength? His skills that made him an excellent candidate for my protector? What did the stars say about us?
He was anything but ordinary, though. Even without the soul bond, I admitted it. A man who survived, who fought for what he believed in. A man who loved his friends as much as I loved mine.
A man sparking tiny seeds of confusion I blamed on strange magic.
“Not much further now,” he said. “I can see the stairs.”
“That’s good.” I didn’t look where he pointed, my eyes fixed to his back.
“Are you okay back there?”
“Hot.”
“Thought you’d be used to that.”
“This isn’t the type of heat I’m used to.”
A slight turn of his head again. “I can see why.” The dark hairs on his arms were matted and damp with sweat. Beads of moisture glistened in the sunlight, diamonds across his olive skin.
“Kormac?”
“Yes?”
“I want to say something.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how. I don’t why.”
“Then don’t,” he said.
I ran my palm against the chalk, my mind muddled. What did I want to say to him? This was as much of a surprise to me as it was him.
Sorry… You want to say sorry?
For what?
So many things.
The magic talking. The wretched magic talking. What happened to Prince Valance, the feared nightmare of the unseelie? The whispers of my vicious reputation? I wanted him back, not this broken mess, somehow finding a sliver of sympathy for things I shouldn’t.
All in good time…
…but the human…
Kormac slowed down. “Do you see these?”
I frowned, pulled out of myself again. “Sorry?”
He stopped completely now. “These holes in the chalk. Burrows. What do you think they are?”
Like most things of late, I’d failed to notice. With lightning speed, he whipped his hand away from the wall. He spun and pulled mine away, too.
“Don’t touch the cliff, Valance.”
“Goodness,” I breathed. “What’s wrong?”
The burrows covered this part of the wall like holes in Spring cheeses.
Wait…
“I forgot about these,” he said.
“Chalk Snake burrows,” we both spoke at the same time.
I saw him pale. “I hate snakes.”
Curse him for sounding so… so adorable. “It depends on the situation. There are some lovely snakes in Faerie, some true beauties.”
“Are there?” he said, his nose wrinkling.
I laughed ever so lightly.
“You laughed,” he said.
“I… I suppose I did. Why did you point that out?”
He stared at me, shrugged. “Beats me. Anyway, watch your step. Chalk Snakes are incredibly venomous.”
“I know.”
“I was warned to avoid this place when I set off with… with Ren.” He paled again.
Ren… My curser…
His friend I ended…
“It is good you were warned,” I said. “Shall we carry on?”
He nodded.
He suffers loss the same as me…
A white snake with scarlet eyes lashed out from a burrow, missing Kormac’s face by inches. It hissed, recoiled, and lunged at him again. He darted forward out of its trajectory, crashing into me. I stumbled backward, losing my balance, landing on my backside with a grunt.
Another snake from a lower burrow sprang at my face. I pushed backward, avoiding a bite.
“Valance!” Kormac cried, staggering forward to help me up.
A third serpent struck at him, fangs landing on his armor.
“By Danu!” I cried, such a scene sending agonizing pulses down our bond.
He lost his footing, grabbing hold of the wall, fingers on the edge of a burrow.
An accident…
More snakes. Coming for him, for me. Fangs tried to break my sturdy elven armor. I unsheathed a small blade from the straps at my chest. Drove it into the head of a snake attached to my arm.
It soon let go.
I threw the same blade at a snake springing straight for the human’s head. He hadn’t noticed, and the blade hit the slithering bastard with flawless timing.
I may not be so lucky again.
“We have to run!” I cried, clambering to my feet.
Kormac avoided another snake from a lower burrow. He kicked it, sending it hurtling to the ground below.
He started to run amid the hisses. Had he been bitten? There was no sign of blood yet. Hopefully, fangs missed his skin, no poison in his veins. I’d find out within the hour. Chalk Snake venom-induced violent vomiting, the toxin striking its killing blow any time within sixty minutes.
With no antidote to hand, a bite would be fatal.
“I—”
Before Kormac could finish, part of the ledge crumbled under his boots, cracks fissuring their way to me. I backed off, kicking up puffs of chalky dust, ducking another snake.
And then the part of the ledge the human occupied gave way.
And Kormac fell.