Chapter Twenty-Seven DARE
TWENTY-SEVEN
DARE
A fist punches through ice.
In the dark, a marble statue is emerging from the depths of a frozen lake, dripping with icy water, droplets raining down a stormy face.
Dare pulls himself onto the edge of the ice in one fluid move. Crouched, his leathers glisten like freshly spilled ink, the same deep hue of the soaked hair falling into his face.
Long lashes lift and reveal a smouldering stare. One blue eye, pale, not unlike the ice around him, and run through with a jagged scar; the other eye, gilded, a pot of liquid gold.
His dual stare drops to the ice.
His tongue drags over his upper teeth, then dig extra hard into a sharp canine. A bead of blood swells, then rolls down his tongue.
Dare reaches out a wet, pale hand for a bullet hole in the ice, a perfect circle. He presses his fingertip into it, firm.
A tension shudders through him.
When he saw that gun aimed his way, he expected bullets to strike him, not the ice.
Whatever human came to Bee’s aid chose to strike the ice and hoped the water would finish the job.
All he saw of that human was crystalline eyes.
A bitterness twists his mouth.
He slides his gaze to the spread of darkness all around. The shots came from over by that boat. The human hid behind it and waited for her moment.
Dare has a strong suspicion he knows exactly who that human is.
Tesni.
Bee’s little friend.
A sister of the soul, the one he was warned about. If he had known she was so slippery, he might have taken her first.
Bee’s soul sister…
That is leverage.
Yes, Dare decides, I should have taken Tesni first.
Steal the leverage, the target will follow.
Trap the leverage, the target is lured.
Now, he’s lost Bee to the darkness.
The resurgence of rage in him takes a moment to wrestle. Deep breaths swell his chest.
He finds calm in knowing that Bee won’t have gotten far, and it will be all too easy to track her again.
But now a fresh problem has presented itself.
He needs to capture the human, Tesni, in order to control Bee. To capture them both when they are both slippery, smart, and sneaky, then to maintain that capture—that’s the challenge.
Dare mulls on it, his mouth still pressed too tight, as he pushes up from his crouch.
When he finds them…
It would be all too easy to kill Tesni. Remove her from the equation. But without Tesni, can he keep Bee in line, can he keep her imprisoned for the length of the journey?
The questions lull in his mind when, standing on the ice, the breeze drifts by—and carries the scents with it.
Bee’s scent, he recognises first, and strongest.
He lifts his nose and inhales the other two scents from further away—and he starts for the source, the boat.
The two scents are tangled over there, and the closer he gets, the thicker they get.
Tesni was not alone. There was another human.
His brow furrows. He drags his gaze over the length of the toppled boat, along to the frosted treeline.
Three scents weave together in that direction.
Bee, Tesni—and who?
Maybe a spare, insignificant companion of theirs. Maybe another dear friend.
They went through the treeline, no doubt in Dare’s mind. It is a certainty that they escaped into the woods after the water engulfed him.
The rage resurges in him, too quick, too sudden, an instinct daring to take over. He growls against it, a twist of his mouth, a twitch in his muscles.
The urges reach all the way down to his bare hands, clenching at his sides, the urges of what he aches to do to them…
Once he finds them.
And yet, he’s not drawn to the treeline.
To track them down, to chase them, means to follow their scent…
But Dare hears a different song calling to him.
Fate.
He knows her when he feels her.
A lure like no other.
The touch of gods, of Fate and Mother, reaching through the realms, through the veils, and breathing that faint whisper of a song on the wings of the winds.
No.
That is what it tells him.
Not that way.
Dare turns his cheek to the woods and looks up the path, beyond the lake.
Yes.
The song touches him, ghosted fingertips along the flesh of his heart. He tenses against it. No matter how many times he has felt that touch, heard the song, he goes rigid against it.
But he knows better than to question it.
Fate is the one who guides him, but Fate is a child of Mother, and Mother is all.
He has not yet been steered wrong.
Dare abandons the treeline, the scents carrying in the other direction, and he takes the path that calls to him.
His bootsteps come soft, silent, on the snowy trail that turns into a road, all the way to a town, and once he reaches it and fills his lungs with a deep breath, he senses that it is occupied already.
The scent of his kind lingers in the air, faint, but rich with metal and leather and blood.
Flames haven’t touched the buildings here, not yet. Blazes don’t eat away at the stone—but there is a dark fae unit here, somewhere.
That is Fate’s plan.
She lures him to that unit, to his folk.
The question of why only touches his mind for a fleeting moment, quicker than the snowflake that lands on his lips before his tongue swipes it away.
That rage carries with him. Flames funnelling through his veins, it carries with him all the way into the heart of the town.
He lifts his chin and lets the scented air reach his nose. He tastes it, a tapestry weaved with sweat and blood and tears…
Humans are nearby.
But not his.
Not the humans he’s after.
Still, the urge to hunt down at least one… to channel some of that rage fuelling him…
No.
Fate’s answer.
It comes in a shudder that rinses through him, an instinctual reaction of repulsion.
His teeth bare before he turns his gaze around the road—then settles on a narrow street.
Before he can consider it, he simply knows it is the way, and he’s storming down the street, splintering onto more, taking another road, another street, another turn, until he’s at the far end of the town, then hiking further out, beyond the streets, the roads, the buildings, and he’s at the cusp of a snowy field that ends where the icy mountains begin.
That’s where he finds the unit.
Just beyond a wide road that separates nature from the town, the camp is set up.
Black tents, descending in size to the middle of the snowy field, then the camp continues into smaller throngs of fae sitting around simmering fires, and it all ends with a group of kuris under guard at the tail of the camp.
Dare considers the kuris from a distance, the gleam of his gaze flickering from face to face.
Working through their duties, the kuris are as uninteresting as they are in his own camp. Hand-scrubbing leathers and armours, stirring pots as tall as their hips, preparing the meals for the camp. There is no answer to be found in the faces of the kuris, no glaring reason fate called him here.
None are familiar to him.
None are Bee or her human friend, Tesni.
Dare turns his cheek to them and considers the faces of the warriors.
He keeps to the shadows of the lane, sheathed in a darkness that melts around him, caresses down his shoulders.
Some faces are familiar.
Two fae down at the rear campfire, the lowest of ranks, are young—and he recalls them, fleetingly, from a town back home.
But they are insignificant.
So he looks further up the camp—at the tip of the hierarchy, where tables are set out, maps sprawled over them, a post stuck into the ground, whips and daggers placed neatly along a table, and a black chair that looms high and overlooks the camp.
There, the general stands with her second-in-command, reading the map, a map that Dare knows will show the exact perimeters of this unit’s borders, where their patrols and fires must start and end.
Dare has one such copy of his own unit’s map in the satchel Daxeel gave him. It’s his way back to his unit.
The general hasn’t noticed him yet.
But some fae, closer to the lane, sense him, sense an intruder, find a new scent in the layers of the air.
Gazes turn, speckled around the camp, frowns aim his way, and chins lift. Those two young ones at the last campfire reach for their weapons at their belts.
Still, Dare scans the unit, searching for the reason he was lured here.
More fae realise his presence.
The longer he stands here, the more his scent is noticeable, and the more of his brothers will realise his presence.
Dare moves best when he is swift, a spectre. But he stands in the mouth of the lane, sheathed in a darkness that each fae there can see through as clearly as a glass window, and—
There.
The answer.
Green eyes so sharp and cold that they are blades of frosted grass.
Dare locks onto that familiar face, a face sculpted from ice and marble—then his own face splits with a grin.
Samick.
Dare steps out of the lane and jumps the barrier to the main road separating them.
Brow pinched, Samick pushes up from the log he was slouched on. The crimson flames dance shadows along his leathers, wrapped around him like a second skin—but a striking contrast; that deep black hue against the marble pallor of his complexion.
A stroke of ice against the glows of campfires, Samick starts for Dare, the faint, curious furrow of his brow darkened by the shadows of the flames.
Samick does not return the smile.