Rust lifts his finger—and points it right at me.
I shrink back, eyes wide.
But my breath hollows out when the bone of my shoulder blade presses against stone.
My head whips to the side, neck fast to ache, and I look up at the stone wall.
Arwyn has crept up behind me, a tower of hard features.
I stare up at him, frozen, but he doesn’t bother with a single glance down at me. His stare is latched onto Rust—
Just as he takes a step forward.
The gravel crunches under his boots. That accusatory finger drops, but his shout returns.
Whatever the cold one says in response, I don’t know, but his voice is calmer, icier and it sends chills prickling down my spine.
Rust doesn’t have the same reaction.
In a sudden step closer, the slam of his boot on the path, the rise of his voice tears through the air, like claws through silk.
The words twist, harsh and grinding, a language that isn’t built for human throats. There’s nothing soft in it, nothing that can be mimicked. It’s a storm of syllables I can’t make sense of.
Again, the cold warrior answers. Each word is a shard of restrained ice.
All around us, the fae are closing in.
Their faces are lit by the shifting flames, severe and sharp. Their eyes glimmer—some with heat, some with hunger, some with the gleam of entertainment. A few lean closer, murmuring in that same strange tongue. One of them laughs softly, another mutters a name that sounds like smoke.
I spot Mika now standing on a headstone, her hair a curtain of glass that catches every hue of the firelight.
Unlike the others, there’s not a shred of entertainment to read on her, no amusement curling her mouth. Her face is tight with concern.
At the base of the headstone she stands on, Shark has his arms folded, and lips slightly parted, enough that I can see the sharpness of his off-white teeth.
Samick shifts in front of me.
It swerves my stare to him, then down to his hand as he passes back the tether—into Arwyn’s hand.
Arwyn takes it without a word and steps back, tugging me along with him.
My steps are heavy, unwilling.
The silent glare I aim at Samick’s back is nothing short of begging. I don’t know this other fae, and I sure as fuck don’t want to be tugged into the rows of headstones with him.
But then the hum of a blade hisses through the camp—
I stumble around.
My hip grazes the stone of an angel statue, just as my gaze finds Rust, drawing out a sword from the scabbard strapped down his spine.
The blade glints, that same strange material as the general’s diadem, black chalk—but this one gleams obsidian dusted with ruby powder.
And in the same breath, Samick has drawn his own sword, shorter and narrower, from the sheath strapped to his thigh.
The length of the blade draws out with a hiss, as clear as glass, frost etched down the edge.
They face one another.
