Chapter 6 Tell Them That I’m Coming
TELL THEM THAT I’M COMING
There’s a pause as I ask myself whether or not I should ask him.
The woods hum around us, quiet yet watchful.
I have the feeling that someone—or something—is lurking near, and as though Thane agrees, he bends quickly, his cloak fanning out behind him.
Grabbing his sword, he gives it a quick look before putting it back in its sheathe.
Straightening again, Thane’s expression shifts. It’s not the easy smile he seems to flash habitually. Not the bandit’s charm from before. Oh, no. This is something sharper, more searching, and I rub my fingers together.
Binx scampers up my skirts, darting around my front. Once he hits my shoulder, he resumes his perch, growling softly at the fae.
Thane raises his eyebrows at me. “So you followed the butterfly,” he says.
It’s not a question. It’s a gentle rebuke, and he reminds me of the way my mother begins a conversation before she lectures me.
I react the same way: I stiffen. “It was there, and I thought—”
“They usually are,” he replies, cutting me off.
His gaze flicks over to the monarch drifting lazily nearby that seems to have appeared out of nowhere again.
Its wings almost shimmer beneath the moonlight.
“That doesn’t mean you should chase them.
Not when you don’t know how dangerous the Shadowed Woods can be. ”
Part of me wants to tell Thane that I was raised in Nuit, a village at the edge of the shadows.
When I was four months old, I was abducted and hidden in the shadows on the orders of a mad demon king.
The glowing white butterflies in Sombra have always protected me, and the monarch butterflies brought me here in the first place.
So I got caught in the snare trap. I’m sure, between Binx and me, I would’ve gotten down… eventually.
I scowl. My shadows aren’t thickening enough that I feel confident I can create a portal, but my annoyance has them flickering around my boots. Binx rubs his fluffy cheek against mine. The orange-and-black winged butterfly flaps closer, settling on my right horn.
Thane’s lips come together, not quite a frown but almost. “I see.”
I shake my head. The butterfly flutters upward, then nestles on the top of my hair. I leave it, and when Binx lifts a paw, prepared to stretch up and bat the nearest wing, I murmur ‘no’ under my breath.
Thane moves easily, gracefully, coming to stand at my other side, amber eyes taking in the butterfly crown.
“You followed the queen’s butterflies,” he points out. “From your realm?”
From Brille Rouge, actually, but he doesn’t need to know the details. And queen’s butterflies… that must be how he refers to the monarch butterflies in his fae language, and how I’m somehow translating it. “Yes.”
His head tilts slightly. “I wonder why you would. What are you doing in Noctavara? The butterflies invited you, but you came. Humor me, Alana of Sombra. Why are you here?”
Should I tell him? My brain says I shouldn’t. My heart—my essence—says that I shouldn’t hide this from my mate. My gut says I should tell him the truth and see how he reacts to—
“Rafe,” I admit, ignoring how Binx is chittering again, my soul-pet warning me against trusting the fae bandit too quickly. “I’ve come here because your soldiers took him from me and I’ve come to get him back.”
Another swish. Another move. Suddenly, Thane is on my other side, staring at my profile. “Your lover?”
Lover? I scoff out a laugh, even if I’m secretly pleased that Thane would come to that conclusion. Sure, he sounds more curious than jealous, but that’s better than him not caring at all.
“No,” I tell him. “Rafe is… he’s like my kin.
A brother to me. He’s Sombran, too, but he was visiting a different demon realm when soldiers from this world stole him.
They’d come for a clan of demonesses, but he protected them with a shadow barrier, leaving him to be the only one dragged into Noctavara. ”
So far, at least. I only hope that, once Rafe was in this world, the soldiers didn’t go back for Katrin and her fellow seamstresses.
“So he has shadow magic?” asks Thane. “This Rafe of yours?”
“Sombra is a world of shadows. If you’re part demon or demoness, we all do to some degree. It’s how we survive.”
“And that’s how you made it to Noctavara.”
“Only because the butterflies opened the path for me,” I remind him, nodding to draw his attention to the butterfly that hasn’t left my hair yet. “Is that how you found me just now?”
In Nuit, all anyone had to do was follow the glowing white butterflies to track me down. And now, in Noctavara, it seems like it’s these strange Earth butterflies that keep appearing—
“No.”
Oh. Wait. It’s the bond, isn’t it? He knows—
“I didn’t have to follow the queen’s butterflies when I know the Shadowed Woods better than anyone,” explains Thane. “I knew which way you ran off to. I know the traps.”
I perch my hands on my hips. “You’re the reason I was hanging upside down like that?”
“I said I know the traps, Alana, not that I’m responsible for them. Or, at least, the one that had your skirts down by your ears.”
Because that’s so much better. And I really needed that reminder that he very well could’ve seen my cunt and my rear before he cut me down…
“So there’s more,” I’m guessing. “Traps, that is.”
“Plenty.”
Great.
“That’s why, if you stay with me,” he adds, his lilt almost seductive in his promise, “I’ll guarantee you’ll make it to the Court alive.”
Stay with him? Where did that come from? “Why would I do that?”
I wait for him to tell me that I’m his mate so of course I have to stay with him. If not that, then he’ll explain why a fae bandit who can’t rob me when all I have is a bitey Binx is interested in… what? Helping me?
And the Court? Why does he think I’m going to the Court?
I get the answer to that last one first.
“It’s very simple. If the soldiers retrieved your Rafe from a demon realm, they brought him to Noctavara for one purpose only. They’ll pass him on to either one of the nobles in the Gilded Court or sell him to wandering slavers at their first opportune moment.”
I gulp. “Slavers?”
Thane nods. “I mentioned it before. Odds are they were slavers who took him. Soldiers are usually stationed throughout Noctavara. They wouldn’t dare risk the queen’s wrath by leaving. But slavers… they would, and they’d be forgiven if they brought their finds to the queen.”
“Is that what they’ll do with Rafe?”
“It’s fair to say. Sooner or later, everyone goes before Queen Celeste as she reigns over the Gilded Court, whether they’re in chains or not. For him to build a shadow barrier… does he have a lover?”
This time, I nearly choke. When Thane says ‘lover’ like that, I know he means ‘mate’, and the truth is that Rafe hasn’t bonded with any demoness yet.
However, that just means he hasn’t found one to accept his essence while giving him hers.
When it comes to the physical act of mating, of finding pleasure with any demoness that might accept his cock, that’s not something that we talk about now that we’re fully mature halflings with no sexual interest in each other.
“If he doesn’t?”
“Then he’ll fetch a lot of gold from the slavers if they bring him to the Gilded Court. Even if the queen isn’t interested, there are plenty of nobles who would be. Outsiders aren’t welcome here,” he murmurs softly, “but that doesn’t mean that can’t be used.”
I don’t even want to think about what Thane means by that. “I’ll stop them. I’ll save Rafe.”
I have to.
“And I’ll help you.”
What? No. “You don’t have to do that.”
“There’s quite a lot I don’t have to do, Alana, but that’s what makes me such a roguish bandit. Consider me your escort, no gold required.”
“Until you sell me to the slavers and get all the gold they’re willing to give you.”
That would explain it—
“I can promise you that the slavers won’t pay for a shadow-wielding demoness.
Anything they want from you, they’ll just take, and there isn’t any soul in Noctavara who will stop them.
Except me.” Thane’s gaze slides past me, into the dark between the trees.
“Besides, if I wanted to sell you,” he says mildly, “I wouldn’t be standing here talking.
I’d already have chains on your wrists.”
My blood runs cold. “I appreciate your offer, but I think I’ll go alone.” Binx nips my ear. “With Binx,” I correct.
Thane gives my ungez an appraising look. He must be remembering the way that Binx attacked him, but all that does is tell him that, of the two of us, Binx is more dangerous than a shadowless halfling.
His next words confirm it: “The two of you can go alone. You’ll just die together.”
“We won’t—”
He lifts a hand, palm up.
“You don’t have to trust me, Alana of Sombra.” He nods at my soul-pet. “Binx. You just have to trust this: you won’t reach the Gilded Court without me. Not with horns. Not with shadows twisting around your feet.” He jerks his chin up. “Not with a queen’s butterfly nesting on your head.”
I hate to admit that he has a point; more than a few, really.
On more than one occasion while Rafe and I were traveling in other realms, he had to come between me and a male who decided they wanted to claim me without wooing me.
Between his shadow barriers and my portals, we always escaped before anything could happen, but now I’m alone with Binx, and my shadows aren’t working.
Even though I can’t trust this fae, he is my mate. Whether he knows that now or not, a part of me instinctively wants to believe I should be able to trust him.
He’s already proved he knows what he’s talking about.
There are obviously traps in the Shadowed Woods.
Bandits. If it’s anything like the edge of shadows back home, there are monsters and beasts and I have to survive them all if I want to find Rafe, and that’s nothing compared to what will happen if I do track down the slavers.