THREE
Amy
Cardio.
Definitely, definitely cardio.
Was it my fault that I was kept inside the house almost at all times and that there was literally no way for me to try to 'shape up' my body?
No. But even so, when Drake had been dragging me through the woods, his long-legged pace unrelenting, his own breathing even and easy, I had been huffing for air.
My lungs had felt like they were in a grip that just kept squeezing tighter.
My heart, well, a part of me was worried it might explode from beating so hard and fast.
It had been, whether it was logical or not, embarrassing when he stopped and had to teach me how to even out my breathing.
The pace after our short break was nowhere near as punishing, just a brisk walk. A brisk walk through the freezing woods in a foot of snow, but a brisk walk all the same.
Even so though, around the time that night finally started to fall, I was aching in places I didn't realize could even hurt.
Every single muscle in my legs, thighs, butt, back, and midsection was screaming with every step I took.
My feet hurt as well, and while the good construction of my shoes seemed to have prevented blisters, each step was a stabbing sensation.
So maybe cardio and that other thing humans did - weight training.
Maybe then I could do a hike without being in crippling pain.
Drake didn't seem likewise afflicted, his steps and pace even, no tension hinting at pain.
That being said, he was kept in shape doing long, grueling hours of manual labor or he risked a beating.
Sometimes he got a beating even if he did the work exactly as demanded because my father's guards were terrible and simply liked inflicting pain.
So his much bigger, much more chiseled body was used to being tested.
That was why I clamped my lips together hard enough to make my jaw hurt and just kept pressing on.
If he wasn't going to complain, neither was I.
I watched his back as he stepped to the edge of a steep hill, seeming to work to gauge if we could make it down without tumbling or not.
He really was a giant of a man.
While most of my family and the guards were tall, not many were quite as massive, and none were the solidly muscled sort of fit that he was.
That, in my very limited experience both in The Green and in the human realm, was just not how most men were built.
Except for maybe the humans who exercised excessively or the fae, like Drake, who were put to manual labor.
Inexplicably, I felt myself rather affected by it. I always had. In fact, I was suddenly glad it was winter because the heavy coat he had on at least kept those distracting muscles of his from view.
"Amethyst," his voice called, soft but firm at the same time, as though he had maybe called me more than once and I hadn't heard. You know, because I was thinking about his freaking muscles for some idiotic reason.
I jerked back, shaking my head, seeing his hand extended toward me. "Amy," I corrected, giving him a smile. "I think being on the run from our captors calls for nicknames, don't you?"
"Amy," he repeated, but doing it differently than the humans would.
Where they would say A-me, he said Ammy.
I found I liked his way much better. He raised a brow when I still didn't take his outstretched hand, making a strange surge of insecurity flood my system as I forced the oddly numb limb to raise and slid my much smaller hand into his massive, strong, work-hardened one.
I bet if I didn't have the gloves on, I would find his palm rough, calloused, and the top scarred as well as his fingers.
What the hell?
What was wrong with me?
First his muscles.
Then his fingers.
It was the nerves, I was sure. Or, at least, I was trying to convince myself of that.
"Honey, you need some food or something?" he asked, brows furrowing more. I guess my face must have been confused, because he went on, "You seem out of it."
Maybe I did need food.
That would possibly explain why my brain was running away with itself when every thought should have been focused on escape and survival.
The fact of the matter was, Drake wasn't going to be with me forever and I needed to keep an eye for threats.
I wasn't sure where his land was, but I knew we were likely to come upon that before we would come upon the human realm.
I needed to focus on what food sources were available in the wintertime.
I knew there wouldn't be much, but maybe there were some mushrooms. Mushrooms would get me days if I ate them sparingly.
And nuts. There were usually a few hanging around if you looked up in the trees.
That, though, would require hitting them out of the trees or, you know, climbing up into them. I was pretty sure I would have no skills at either task.
But, as the humans always say, desperate times call for desperate measures.
I would do what I had to do to survive, to get free, to make a life for myself that didn't have me constantly living in fear of what mood my mother might be in, in what way she might inflict it upon me simply for existing, for being in her eyesight, for, maybe, reminding her of how young she used to be, how she used to be able to use that to her advantage.
She was beautiful even now, but in an icy way, in a way that said she was about as warm as a handful of snow, that said her heart was a frozen-over forest, nothing but mangled trees and frigid bodies overcome by the low temperatures.
I had something she never would.
And she wanted to destroy that.
It had been her life's mission.
To chill the warm out of my heart, to make me a hollowed-out shell much like herself.
After all, she could use me better if my only motive in life was the same as hers - to use others to make my life better.
It was how she had justified marrying my father, how she had betrayed her own sister in doing so, how she had ripped my brother and sister from their mother before they could even know who she was, then raise them as her own.
It was how she wrung any last shred of good from my father that may have been left after he had been cursed.
Which, to be fair, couldn't have been much.
But she stole that. Because she could. Because she liked the power.
Because it never occurred to her to care what those around her might want.
Which was why I was in the middle of The Green - a place I had only toed the edges of all my life - cold, tired, scared, and, apparently, half-delusional since I was not thinking of the aforementioned coldness, tiredness, or fear, but was instead focused on things like Drake's darn muscles.
Of all things.
"Sorry," I said, shaking my head, trying to clear it. "I think I'm just a little, ah, overwhelmed with all of this is all," I admitted, it being as close to the truth as possible. "I've always known this day would come, but I guess it was somehow sudden at the same time. If that makes sense."
"Figure it makes sense since you picked the literal worst time of the year to make your escape, so something definitely pushed you into it."
"I didn't prepare enough," I added, thinking about the bags that had been slamming into my sides the entire run, making the skin beneath feel bruised and sensitive now that I could think of something other than suffocating with my own weak lungs.
"How could you? That mother of yours kept you locked up in that house for ninety-percent of your life. I hardly ever saw you outdoors, let alone free enough to learn things like survival skills."
"It's not an excuse," I told him with a helpless shrug, somewhat uncharacteristically down on myself. "I was a coward. I could have at least tried."
"A coward?" he repeated, brows drawn low, making my attention go to his deep eyes, eyes with unusual flecks of red around the irises, something I was sure I had never seen before, was just as sure I would never see again.
It must have been part of his lineage. Maybe only the Draca had eyes like that.
I wouldn't know. No one would. Drake was the only living one anyone had seen in generations.
"A coward would never leave, Amy. A coward would sit up in her tower, taking whatever shit her mother threw at her, thanking her for flinging it in the first place. "
"Drake, I--"
"You packed bags, got into ridiculous human clothes, snuck out of that prison you had been kept in, came to my barn, freed me, and then ran away.
Cowards don't do that. That is the shit of the stories I was told as a boy.
That is the shit of legends. You're like one of those childhood heroes the young ones in my tribe were raised on. "
He spoke more like a human than the fae I had known. He was more blunt, more crass. He used foul language you didn't often hear from the types of fae my parents associated with. Though, to be fair, you did hear the guards speaking like that when they knew they wouldn't be overheard by my mother.
I wondered, maybe for the first time, what his kind were like.
The Draca. I guess it never occurred to me to think of them since fae for generations had been convinced they were the things of myth, stories the more dominant fae told their own offspring about as bedtime stories.
But here was Drake, supposedly the last of his kind, talking of his kin as though they were - or had been - a thriving community.