I haven’t seen either of those fae before.
I don’t recognise every single one here, some look more alike than others and I can’t always tell them apart, but those two—
They are new… or returned.
My heart sinks to my squirming gut.
Strays.
The reminder is a pit thumping to my stomach, pulling down on my insides.
Just the word in my head steals me back to the rawness of survival, searching for safehouses, throwing bleach over our trails, hiding from the worst of the fae.
Separated from their units, those who wander the lands in their return journeys to their fellow warriors, are always the worst kind.
As though he can feel the fear trickling through me, the cold one turns his chin to his shoulder. His lashes are low over the pale gleam of his eyes—and the paler they are, the worse everything is.
The look he spares me is swift and fleeting, then he’s marching up the path—
Headed right for them.
Those old instincts flare to life.
The bones of my legs go stiff, and they drag and scuff under me, unwilling.
‘Go the other way,’ I want to beg him.
Strays are always bad news. But maybe that’s only out there, in the wild blackout, not in captivity within the unit, not under his protection.
But if that’s the case, and I’m totally safe, then why are his leathers tightened over his tense body, why did he bother givingme a warning to keep my mouth shut and do what he says, why is his grip on the tether so tight?
I cast a look down at his fist.
And my lashes flutter.
Before, it was just a firm grip on a rope, with only enough spooled between us that it forces me to stick close.
Now, the length is shortened a few fistfuls or so, but his grip… It’s ice.
Literally, ice.
Laces of frost are gliding along the silky threads.
I throw a startled look at him.
But he is totally indifferent to it.
Of all the warriors in this unit, of all the fae I’ve watched through binoculars and tracked from a distance, he’s the only one like this.
He is cold, he is ice, he is frost.
Different.
And he’s the only one of that kind I’ve ever seen.
Until now.
The tall, broad-shouldered fae in the middle of the path, one of the strays, the one with porcelain hair to match his milky complexion, who turns away from the hands coming down on his shoulders, the warmth of the greetings all around him—that fae is cold.
