Chapter 7 East
EAST
In the end, it’s the mate bond that gets me to agree to stick around Thane.
I could say it’s because he knows this world and I don’t.
I could pretend that I could get away from him if he proves to be too dangerous, that he’s the best chance I have to find Rafe.
He seems sure that it was slavers, not soldiers, that were searching Brille Rouge for demons they could sell to fae nobles in Noctavara.
While we could try to find the caravans that house the slavers on their travels, it’s better if we just assume that they’re bringing Rafe to the Gilded Court—both the name for the nobles that serve her, plus the actual gilded structure where Queen Celeste has her seat of power.
And while all of that has a bit of truth to it, I’d be lying if I said that the fledgling bond that’s taken root in my chest doesn’t have the most to do with it.
I didn’t realize until after we were together again that it pulled, it tightened, it stretched as I left him.
I’m just grateful that I don’t have enough of my father’s blood to go up in flames when I walk away from my future mate, though that could be because I’m closely guarding my essence.
Until he gives me his, I won’t give him mine. That should save us from any other quirks—like the mate sickness or the fire—while I figure out if Thane can be my mate… and if I want him to.
Binx doesn’t agree with me and my motives.
It’s clear that he would’ve rather we’d left Thane behind in the clearing.
Since we didn’t, my soul-pet stays perched high on my shoulder, fur bristling at the edges of his shadows, fluffy tail flicking in sharp, irritated swishes that keep brushing the side of my neck.
If Thane so much as shifts too quickly, Binx’s tiny claws dig into the fabric of my dress like he’s preparing to launch himself at the fae again.
Thane, for his part, seems to find that amusing. I doubt he will if I stop holding Binx back with softly muttered warnings to behave, but for now it seems like the ungez is listening and the fae is safe from some scratches and bites.
There hasn’t been another butterfly since I agreed to let Thane lead us in the direction he believes the slavers would’ve gone with Rafe.
I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or not.
If we’re heading the right way, maybe the monarch butterflies don’t need to be a guide.
Maybe they’re wary of Thane, like I should be.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into an Earth butterfly that shouldn’t be in this fae realm.
How did it get here? I know that Duke Haures is careful to keep the veil between Earth and Sombra closed, but with the right spell, it can open.
I’m living proof that shadow walkers exist. I’ve been popping into Brille Rouge and Soleil since I was a young spawn.
The slavers obviously have a way to travel from Noctavara and back.
Could there be a way to travel from the fae realm to the human world?
If there is, I haven’t been able to figure it out just yet. My shadows match our pace as we walk through the Shadowed Woods, but no matter how much I try to create a portal to go anywhere but here, it’s like I’m blocked again.
I wasn’t going to leave yet. Not without Rafe. Still, when I do find him, I’ll need to find my way home again, and I only hope that I’ll be able to.
For now, I focus on hoping that Rafe is okay, and that I’m not walking into a trap by following Thane so easily…
The fae bandit walks a few steps ahead of Binx and me, cloak dragging like darkness behind him, as he turns his head just enough to glance over his shoulder. He’s been doing that every few minutes, as though making sure I haven’t vanished on him, but this is the first time he speaks up.
“You’re quiet,” he tells ne.
“I’m thinking,” I reply automatically.
His lips quirk up in a sly grin. “Let me guess. You were thinking when you ran into a snare, too.”
My jaw clenches. I open my mouth to snap something back—something sharp and satisfying—and the bond tugs, low and steady, like something’s hooked inside of my navel.
I shudder out a breath, deciding not to waste another by retorting. “Never mind.”
“If you say. But, you know, you don’t have to bristle every time I speak. I’m only teasing.”
If that’s what he wants to call it. “I don’t bristle.”
“You do,” he says simply, and that—his calm certainty that he’s right—makes me want to bristle harder.
The dark forest floor is soft beneath my boots, damp and springy, nothing like ash.
It gives without crumbling, and that should be comforting, but it isn’t.
It’s too alive. The trees here don’t just exist. They loom.
The silver moon overhead helps me see where I’m going, but the way it enhances the soft glow of Thane’s golden skin is even more distracting.
Add that to the grin tugging on his lips, and I have to work to hide my scowl.
So I force my gaze away from his shoulders, from the elegant tilt of his pointed ear beneath the hood of his cloak, from the way the fabric of that cloak sways around his legs like he’s the one who’s made of shadows… I force my attention away from Thane, looking down at the path instead.
The path—or what passes for one.
Thane doesn’t follow trails the way a demon would; except, perhaps, for a Sombran hunter like Dagon or Nox.
He doesn’t pick the clearest route or the straightest line.
He moves like he’s seeing something I can’t, like the forest is a map only he can read.
Sometimes he veers left without warning.
Sometimes he pauses and listens, head cocked, amber eyes narrowing at nothing.
Every time he does, my body reacts. I feel heat pooling down in the lower part of my belly, watching him closely as though I can’t resist the pull. It’s the mate bond again, I know it is, and considering this is the worst possible moment for me to feel so very drawn to a stranger, I hate it.
I also… don’t.
Crud.
Hours into our walk—and not that much longer after I realized they were missing— a trio of monarch butterflies appear, fluttering in and out of view like I can’t be sure if they’re real or if I’m seeing things.
Sometimes they dart ahead, bright against the dark. Sometimes they vanish completely.
Sometimes one lingers near my hair, close enough that I can feel the brush of air from its wings against my pointed ear, my cheek.
Thane notices every time with a narrowing of his gaze.
He doesn’t comment on the butterflies again—not directly—but I catch him glancing at them with a tightness around his mouth that wasn’t there before when he was enjoying himself teasing me.
“What?” I ask finally, after the third time he looks like he’s swallowed something pointy and sharp.
His eyes slide over to me. “I can’t tell if you’re following them or if the queen’s butterflies are chasing after you.”
My shadows curl around my boots, more transparent than they usually are. They don’t gather. They don’t listen. They just… exist, thin and frustrated, like a limb I can’t fully use.
I glance down at them and grit my teeth.
“Can you stop saying ‘queen’ like that?” I mutter. “It makes it sound like these are her pets, like Binx. Like she’s… everywhere.”
Thane’s mouth curves faintly. It’s not quite a smile, though I can’t miss the slightly mocking edge to it. “Who says that she isn’t?”
Oh, I don’t like the way he said that. I don’t like that at all.
Sensing my sudden unease, Binx shifts on my shoulder, pressing his small body against my throat. His white eyes glow brighter in the dim. Protective.
I stroke his shadow-fur with my fingertips until he settles, but I don’t take my gaze off Thane.
“If Queen Celeste doesn’t allow shadow magic,” I say carefully, “then why do I still have any of mine at all?”
Weak they might be, but my shadows are still here. That gives me hope that I can use them again—until the fae dashes them.
Thane slows just enough that his cloak stops swaying. He turns more fully, walking backward for a few steps while he studies me as though really seeing me for the first time.
“You’re not fae,” he says, gaze settling on my horns again, a sure marker that I’m at least part demon. “You’re not bound to her laws in the same way the rest of us are.”
“So I can use my shadows.”
His gaze drops to the thin curl of darkness at my feet. “In theory.”
My jaw tightens. “In reality, she won’t let me.”
Thane’s eyes sharpen. “You feel it.”
Yeah. In ways I can’t quite describe to someone who isn’t made up of shadows like I am, yeah. I feel it. “I’m not stupid,” I tell him.
He huffs a laugh, quick and quiet. “No. You’re brave, Alana of Sombra.”
Maybe, but I’m definitely in trouble again.
Whether or not she has any idea what happened to a demon stolen by slavers from her realm, something tells me that—if I want to leave Noctavara after following the monarch butterfly into her realm—I’ll have to face Queen Celeste eventually.
Is that why the butterflies are here? The queen’s butterflies…
are they making sure I reach the monarch of this realm?
I don’t know, though my instincts tell me that I do.
I open my mouth to ask Thane how much of a death wish it is for an immortal halfling to request an audience with the queen of this realm when Thane stops walking backward and turns again, slipping seamlessly ahead of me as if the conversation is done.
Not for me it isn’t. And while I hold off on asking him about the queen, I have another question on my mind.
“Where exactly are we going?” I demand, louder than I mean to. Luckily, the woods swallow the sound so that only the three of us hear it.
Thane doesn’t look back. “East.”
I glance around. “Sorry, but that means nothing to me.”
“It will.” He dares a peek over his shoulder at me.
Then, as though he’s taken pity on the outsider, he says, “East will leads us to the edge of the Shadowed Woods. There’s a road beyond it, out of reach of the other bandits and beasts in the woods.
You’ll find traders. Inns. Maybe even the slavers who have your demon.
If not, we’ll take the road until it ends. ”
“At the Gilded Court?”
“At the Court,” he agrees.
It’s a plan. That’s what I needed. I’m not just walking around aimlessly, hoping I’ll stumble on Rafe. I have a purpose, and no matter what, I’ll do it.
Rafe…
I keep seeing him in my mind’s eye: his pale hair, his purple eyes, that grin of his when he’s being his charming and ridiculous self, and the earnestness he can’t hide when he’s trying so hard to be taken seriously as a male and not a halfling spawn.
And then, because I can’t stop myself, I see him creating the protective barrier made of his shadows, shielding Katrin and the other demonesses, before being put in chains and dragged by soldiers… slavers… fae who captured him all because I left him alone in Brille Rouge for too long…
Guilt is a bitter thing. It sits in my throat and makes everything else taste wrong. Binx chuffs, letting me know he’s right there with me. With a small, shaky smile, I swallow roughly and keep on moving.
Thane walks without any obvious effort, but neither is he rushing.
He keeps a pace I can follow, and that—as tiny as it is—does something to my chest. He could lose me easily, changing his mind about helping me, but he doesn’t—and I don’t know what to think about that other than maybe he senses the fledgling bond between us, too.
And every time I think that, he opens his mouth and says something that reminds me that he’s just the cocky guide I didn’t ask for.
“Keep moving,” he says as I slow a little, gaze on his back because, well, I can’t stop myself. “And stay right behind me when we cross streams.”
There’s been at least a demon’s length between us as we walked. I figured he was avoiding the butterflies, but now I’m not so sure. “Why?”
“Because the banks are soft.”
Okay. “And?”
“And I don’t want to yank you out of the mud,” he says. “Again.”
I glower. “Once,” I tell him. “That happened once.” And I have dark mud all over my boots as a reminder to be careful where I’m walking in this strange world.
Thane’s mouth twitches, though he doesn’t say anything else. Still, it’s the closest thing to a smile he’s given me since he told me where we were headed, and I can’t deny that the bond deep in my chest almost pulses.
Binx nips my ear hard enough to make me hiss, forgetting the mate bond for a moment.
“Fine,” I mutter, rubbing my ear even though I’m grateful that, through my bond with my soul-pet, Binx gave me just the sort of distraction I could use. Rafe, I tell myself. Focus on Rafe, not the fae. “Fine. I’m moving.”
And if I can’t resist the urge to shove Thane in the mud next time, well… that can’t be helped, can it?
He gets lucky. For the rest of the eve, I’m on my best behavior because I start to get tired; while full-blooded demons need only a few hours of rest a night, halflings take after our human parents in that regard.
I’m desperate to take a break, though I don’t tell him so.
Instead, staying close to Thane, we keep on walking until the light shining down on us shifts.
It’s subtle at first. The moon is still overhead, silver and sharp, but the shadows beneath the trees deepen. The air cools, though it’s more of a breeze against my overheated skin. It grows heavier, though, and it isn’t long before Thane slows.
I stop automatically, even though he doesn’t tell me to. I’ll take any excuse for a small break.
While I bend low, flicking some of the dried mud off of my right boot, he listens.
That catches my attention. As he shifts slightly, cocking his head, everything in me goes tight. Binx goes still on my shoulder, ears pricked, body taut. And the butterflies… they’re gone.
I wait.
Then, faintly, there’s a sound. A rustle, low and distant, but audible. I think… I think something’s moving through the trees. Something big enough to shift branches, but careful enough that it doesn’t snap them.
My heart jumps, then pounds. I reach for Binx who nuzzles against my trembling fingers.
Thane doesn’t draw his sword. Not yet. He just angles his head, gaze fixed into the dark between the tree trunks.
After a long moment, the sound fades. Thane exhales, slow and quiet.
Turning to me, he asks, “You hear that?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“Good,” he says before turning away. “That means you’ll hear it next time sooner.”
I gulp. “Next time?” Scurrying forward, clutching his arm while purposely blocking any essence exchange between us, I repeat, “Next time?”
His mouth curves again. “And that’s if the Shadowed Woods gives you any warning.”
Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.