I should lean my weight back onto the headstone, sit myself down on it and stretch out my leg—but I don’t.
Because it’s a fucking headstone.
So I just fold my arms, rain jacket crinkling in the murmur of the sprawling unit, and shift my weight onto my good leg.
The carts are left on the gravel path, but most of the warriors are spreading out onto the grass.
It feels different this time, sort of tense and prickled with anticipation, almost.
There are stacks of people on the carts, tied up, bound to the wooden slats by rope. There are runaways and new faces. And there are wounded warriors on some of the carts too, propped up against sacks of grain and rice.
The doctor fae moves from one to the next, assessing their conditions, seeing if any of them are worse since leaving the bridge.
I wonder how many times in the dark, with torches down, he checked them over. Because he reaches the cart beyond us, further up the path, curiously stacked with canvas bags and clasped chests decorated with dark and golden swirls.
The warrior slumped against the stacks of chests is dead.
The doctor runs his hands down the warrior’s slack face—then turns to the general.
He shakes his head, slight.
Her face is firm, her mouth slightly moving around a murmured order that propels another into step.
Like the cold warrior, this one wears that chain-link armour over his shoulders, so fine and delicate that it could’ve been weaved by spiders. He wears a matching cufflink that clinks with his bootsteps.
The clink of him is faint through the cemetery, all the way down the path—towards the captives.
My frowned stare is interrupted.
Glass and Shark cut through my line of sight.
Glass sports a hell of a bruise on her bloody temple, and Shark, who follows at her heels, fixes his hungry stare back at the guarded humans, the new faces.
I don’t see Rainforest anywhere.
Might be dead.
Could’ve died in the city, like a few other fae did, or he could be on one of the carts—but I don’t see him on any.
I turn back to the captives—just as the fae with the chain-link cuff snatches up a woman…
Erin.
I mean, the one whoremindsme of Erin.
Connie’s face is twisted, ugly, and she’s quick to hide it behind her hands as she drops to her knees. But she doesn’t try to stop him, the cufflink fae who throws Erin out of the guarded circle…
And before her boots can even firm on the soil, he’s on her, and I blink, and she’s down.
I blinked—and I missed it.
But I fucking heard it.
The violent snap of her neck.
Now, she’s limp on the grass of a grave… and I’m just standing here, staring, becausewhat the fuck?
Really, what was that?
