I might not be able to track time anymore, since Bee is gone and she kept the notebook with the tally of twelve-hour sections on pages and pages, but my body works off a clock I don’t understand. One I can’t quite read. But I feel it.
Weekswith this unit.
It’s the same every time.
After the fire of a human settlement, the unit makes camp—the good camp, not the short one.
The good camp is longer. More food dished out, and since the cold one is feeding me more from his share, I get to eat more.
I also get longer rests.
So that’s what is coming as the unit leaves the burning city behind and, through darkness, we walk…
and walk…
and walk.
SEVENTEEN
Finally.
That word thrums in my mind, it hums down my aching bones, stings my shin with relief, and I even huff a breath ofthank-fuck-for-that, when the torches are lifted.
Problem is… when the torchlight sprawls out over grass, it takes me a single heartbeat to realise that this is no meadow.
Are these brutes taking the piss?
It’s not like I ever held these warriors in high regard or anything, but even for my low opinion of them, this is a whole new level of messed up.
My brows are pinned up with the shock of it and my mouth curls into some kind of pucker.
Torchlight bounces off the wrought-iron gate arching ahead and illuminates the faded metal letters bolted with rust. But it’s the field of headstones beyond the gate that tells me that I’m being led into a cemetery.
Steeds march through the gates, as though this is just another place, another field, another sprawling area of land to make camp on, not a fucking graveyard.
Leading the way, the crowned female holds her head high. Her fiery hair ropes down her back and brushes over the greyish complexion of her steed.
That disgust sinks further into my features, and I’m sure if any fae glanced at me right now, they might smack the attitude right off me.
But I’m of no interest as the unit narrows to march through the gate and deeper into the cemetery.
No hesitation, no shame in them, fae splinter off-path and walk on the frosty grass.
That isn’t right.
Beneath the grass are the graves, the bodies, the skeletons of the dead. And they trample them.
But of course the fae don’t give a fuck about that. Theymakethe dead.
Maybe I’m just being silly. I’ve done worse than trample a grave. Sometimes our safehouses would have bodies in them, especially when we took cover in hospitals, and hey, I moved them if I needed to and no one else would. I’ve pushed a corpse out of a three-story window—for my own comfort.
So, yeah, I’m overreacting…
It’s just, I’ve always had a thing about cemeteries.
I’m sort of spooked by them, sort of intimidated, always respectful, and a little creeped out. A mix of too many feelings.
Back home, when I was younger, and we used to sneak out to drink with guys too old to be hanging around teenagers, a lot of the time the groups would end up wanting to go to cemeteries.
