Into the darkness, sure, but for what?
To do what?
Whatever it is, I’m just relieved he’s back.
I feel it in the soft sag of my shoulders.
It’s more than his return warning Glass away from me, out of my personal bubble, but that I just feel overall safer with him around.
He steps into our pocket of dusty firelight, and the silky chain-link armour that reaches halfway down his chest is caked in old blood and pieces of flesh.
I didn’t notice that before.
It twists my mouth and, the moment his gaze lands on me, I look down, and his satchel catches my attention.
My lashes flutter once before, slow, my shoulders lift—
I sit up at the sight of it.
Poking out from the gap in the flap, is an antenna. The radio antenna.
The CB.
It’s mine, I know it, because the little dent from a fall I took is right at the tip, and my teeth marks from all the times I’ve bitten down on it, whether I just held it in my bite while I pulled out a map, or I was anxiously chewing on something as I waited for Bee’s voice to come through.
The cold warrior has my radio—which I knew, but it was packed in his satchel,organised.
This fae is too neat and ordered for the radio to be misplaced in his bag.
If the antenna is suddenly sticking out from the edge of the flap, then it’s because he’s taken it out, then put it back without taking the time to repack.
For the first time, I wonder if he uses it. If he contacts Bee, or that fae who kidnapped her…
Dare.
Like he can sense the prickle of curiosity running down my spine, the warrior gives me a dull look before he extends his bloody hand to Glass.
Without a word, she hands over the silky rope.
The moment it’s in his grip, he gives it that familiar single tug, soft on my wrist but firm enough that I know to get up.
So I do.
My gaze lingers over the female as she brings her ungloved hand to her chest, then presses it flat. “Mika.”
Her name.
I didn’t ask for it.
I don’t want it.
She misunderstands me, my lingering look.
I want them all to remain nameless.
I turn my cheek to her, but not before the cold warrior snatches a flaming torch out from the earth.
Keeping my head down, I follow him through the camp. He takes me down the path, but before we can reach the captives, he veers off at the unfinished graves, dug but never filled in.
