My other marked men head out of the trailer with me on foot. Technically we’ve been ordered to rest after the long hours we put into evacuating the city over the past two days. We’ll recover better in the shadows. But too much uncomfortable energy is wriggling under my skin for me to want to lounge around and ignore the problems literally looming over us.
The second my feet hit the ground with a faint pang of old pain, Falkor scuttles out from under the trailer and winds around one of my ankles. He gives a warbled arf and peers up at me with his puppyish eyes.
Hail’s lips curl in distaste. “That thing is still clinging to you?”
I thought the shadowkind creature that seems to have adopted me got bored of my company, but apparently he just had other temporary business to take care of.
“He’s allowed to cling.” I bend down to give Falkor a scratch under his chin, which results in the entire back half of hisserpentine body wagging behind his two paws. “That’s a good boy.”
“And here I thought it was bad having to share your attention with this lug.” Hail’s gaze slides to Raze. He keeps his tone dry, but the basilisk shifter growls at him anyway.
“You both need to behave,” I tell them, moving to rubbing the puppy-snake’s neck. “Maybe then I’ll call you two good boys.”
Oh. From the flare of hot-cocoa desire that floods me at my remark, both of them approve of that idea quite a lot.
Mirage spins around on the patchy grass with a swirl of his tail. “But you’re the good-est of all girls.”
Hmm, it does feel tingly-nice when someone says that. I grin at him. “Thank you!”
My gaze slides toward the mass of darkness in the near distance. “It doesn’t feel right to be standing around when the rift could vomit up more shadows at any moment, does it?”
Raze slides his arm around me. “We won’t be able to help anyone if we run ourselves totally ragged. That goes for you too.”
“I know. I just?—”
As we spoke, Falkor unwound from my leg. He’s squirming off toward a grasshopper jumping between patches of grass when a knee-high, ridged spidery creature comes scrambling from around the side of the trailer.
The warped shadowkind lets out a whistly sort of shriek at the sight of my self-appointed pet and launches itself forward.
I yelp, but Falkor manages to wriggle away even faster. He shoots between my feet and coils behind my heels, quivering.
The armored spider jerks to a halt a few paces away from me. Its legs twitch. Its feet dig into the dirt beneath them, scraping back and forth in little hitches.
Raze has tensed to pounce. “Is it still looking to attack?”
The emotions spiking off the creature taste as prickly as horseradish, with a searing thread of aggression windingthrough. My own emotions surge up with the urge to blast it away.
I catch myself, remembering how our bonds wobbled when I lashed out defensively yesterday. I deflected that other attack in a more peaceful way. “Wait. Maybe I can…”
I summon all the sympathy and affection I drew on before.
No matter how creepy this crawly thing looks, it’s a shadowkind just like me. It didn’t ask to be here or to be so confused.
Even while it simmers with fierceness, it’s trying to meld itself with the ground.
“We’ll help you find a place,” I tell it, holding out my hands. “If you want to belong here, there has to be a way to make it happen.”
A teal glow spills out from my hands. It washes over the creature.
The hitching of its many feet stills. It sinks down on the dirt and stretches out its legs as if it’s decided it’d rather sunbathe than skirmish.
The acidic emotions that were jabbing into me smooth out into a gentle lemon cream.
Around it, my men are gaping.
Hail chokes on a laugh. “I hope you’re not making offers you’re going to go back on.”
I raise my chin. “I’m not. Any being that wants to live here should be able to. We’ll figure it out. We just… we just have to make sure thatherestays here and doesn’t become some warped part of the shadow realm.”
