I should be alert. Tense. Rigid against the hood.
But I’m sinking, down and down, until my butt thuds to the road, and I’m a ragdoll tossed aside.
The warrior turns a look on me as he slips the inhaler into the crevice of his sleeve.
My frown is fleeting.
He rises up, and up, and all the way to his full height, and I crane my neck to look up at him. The grill of the car presses into my scalp.
It doesn’t stop him from turning on me.
No matter how limp I am, how small I make myself, or now, how little of a threat I pose, he advances like he’s about to gut me.
My backpack presses against my spine, digging into the bones with a sharpness that should wince me.
But I just grunt as the fae snatches me by the wrist, then hauls me to my feet.
I stagger into him, but not before he’s already turned on his heels, and stormed to the hairless, grey steed waiting at the edge of darkness.
He grabs the steed by the reins, then steers us both into the blackout.
Stars dance around us the whole way—or maybe that’s just me.
THREE
The blackout feels thicker than it has since it first came. The touch of it against my skin comes with more pressure now that I’m alone in it.
That’s what I am.
Even with the firm, locked grip of the fae’s hand fisted on my wrist, and the steady clop, clop, clop of the steed’s steps, I’m alone in this darkness.
In all the time since the blackout started, I’ve never really been on my own, not more than a few moments to sneak off to relieve myself, and even then, I made quick work of it the more exposed we were, and that time I saw the deformed cactus, and I ran my ass back to the group as fast as I could.
There’s no torchlight to lead my way, either.
I can’t see a fucking thing, not a whisper of a light, not a flicker of flesh, nothing but pure black blindness.
There’s something disorientating about it.
My steps are untrusting; heavy and staggered. My free hand is outstretched in front of me, gloved fingers spreading and searching for a barrier that I might be dragged into.
And I’m slow.
Slower than the fae tolerates.
An annoyed hiss strikes at me in the dark, and before I can flinch against it, the grip tenses on my wrist and I’m yanked a few steps forward.
His pace is impossible.
My boots scuff over mush and ice and snow and gravel, a shifting terrain beneath me, and I can’t see where my next step should land.
I have one guidance.
Him.
Not even the hooves of the steed clopping on the road can guide me, not in such dense darkness where sound is distorted, and it’s like it comes from all directions.
The fae drags me with him, but his grip is a bracelet of stone pressing into the bones of my wrist. My flesh tugs and pulls, but his fist just tightens impossibly, and it feels like my bones might splinter.
