I shouldn’t speak to her.
But the question spills out of me, “If she’s a mate, why was she killed?”
For weeks, I’ve been quiet. I haven’t talked to them, only to the cold one, and only when I’ve had to.
Getting chatty with these fae is the last thing I should be doing—for my own survival.
But then, shouldn’t I know why she was killed, so I can avoid it for myself?
That thought, at least, justifies the prickle of curiosity in me.
Glass drops down all the way, her bottom thudding to the grass. She drapes her arms over her knees. “He died.”
The curve of her hip grazes mine, she’s so close.
My insides constrict, ice quick to worm through me. I shift aside, leaning away from her.
“On cart, he died.” Apparently, she has no idea that I’m recoiling from her, she just goes on like I’m not about to crawl out of my own skin to create some distance. “Mate killed. If kuri, mate kept.”
Her words don’t sink in.
“Not you. You not kept.”
She’s way too fucking close to me, and all I can hear is the hammering of my heartbeat thrumming in my ears.
Then—
“Mika.”
A shudder sends prickles all over my flesh.
Somehow, both a shout and a whisper, carries on the frosty prickles of the air and whirls around us.
It’s an unnatural sound, the hiss of a breeze, the whistle of a wind, but it was so very fucking clearlyhisvoice.
Glass leans away from me before jumping up onto her boots and taking a deliberate step back.
The cold warrior marches through the camp, boots crunching the gravel, and his white eyes glare at Glass over my head.
My shoulders curve inwards, and I somehow sink further into the earth.
I swear, I swear up and down, he did something to his voice, like he threw it across the camp and turned it into a sharp hiss,and distorted it, and kept it quiet enough that only the ones at this campfire could hear it.
And I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how anyone can do that, fae or not.
All the curiosity is stamped out with Glass’s second backstep, the one that snags on the tether—and jerks my wrist from my lap.
Her fist is coiled in so much rope that it looks like a black silk boxing glove.
She whirls her wrist, around and around, and the more she does, the more rope unribbons from her.
I trace her gaze back to the cold one as he turns off the path, onto the grass.
Beneath his bootsteps, the blades of grass frost over. The leather that coats the muscles of his legs is spattered in blood, but it’s dry now. He’s been gone for so long that the bands strapped to his thighs and arms are lined with weapons stained with dark blood, no longer fresh and crimson and shiny.
Wherever he went off to, it wasn’t to wash, like so many of the warriors have started doing with soapy water and rags.
Each time he leaves me with Shark and Glass—and Rainforest, when he was alive, but since I haven’t seen him after the attack on the bridge, I’m certain he’s dead—I have no idea where he goes.
