That hasn’t happened before.
The people who are killed are the runaways or the new ones we come across, the ones in the cities and towns to be flushed out in the flames, or the ones for fun, like when the warriors are drinking too much in big camp, and they start throwing knives for the joy of it.
Now, it’s random captives, one of the better kept women, plucked out of the group and killed—for what?
The fae on the cart died, the doctor told the general, the general gave an order, and all of that ended up with Not-Erin’s neck being snapped?
Something isn’t adding up there.
My frown flickers to the chain-link guard as he stalks back up the path, then I look down at Connie, on her knees, jolting with her quiet sobs.
No one moves Not-Erin’s body.
It’s crumpled out of my sight, behind the gravestones between us, but I can make out part of her hand and boot.
Was it the cheekbone thing?
She was shot in the face back at the city. But what would that have to do with the warrior who died on the cart?
The question is bumped out of my mind—
The cold warrior nudges his marble solid arm into me, then he spits a curt, cold command, “Sit.”
Still, his cheek is turned to me, stroked with a harshly tensed muscle.
I turn my dazed look on the curve of the old gravestone, but my mind is snagged on Not-Erin, on the snap of her spine that I can still feel cracking through the air.
The cold warrior doesn’t give me time to dwell, not before he snatches me by the arm, harsh, and throws his lethal stare down at me.
My heart slingshots through me, and I tense under the flaring ice of his eyes.
The faint pink of his lips twist around the firmly echoed word, “Sit.”
I don’t want to sit on the headstone.
I don’t want to pretend Not-Erin wasn’t just executed for whatever fucking reason.
But I also don’t want to end up like her.
I cringe back from him, shrugging off his grip, before I shuffle back a limped step for the mossy headstone.
I lower myself onto the edge, slow, then lengthen out my leg.
That throbbing in my shin is quick to turn dull.
The cold one turns to face me, the frost of his gaze sweeping the cemetery before he tugs the satchel strap over his head.
He lets the bag drop to the grass—and he’s quick to follow it, to drop into a crouch, and rifle through his perfectly organised things.
Behind him, Glass and Shark loiter. She perches herself on a taller grave post, swinging her legs in the air, while he sinks to the ground and shuts his eyes, like this is the perfect time and place to catch some Z’s.
I drag my gaze along the unit.
My face is still crumpled with a frown, a blend of exhaustion and moodiness and still clinging onto thewhat the fuckthrumming through me.
But what snares me is that the usual order of camp isn’t happening.
Normally, by now, the captives are quick to start unloading the carts and making fires and gathering laundry loads, and the general is poring over the map, and warriors are kicking off their boots or lying down for a rest.
