A dark fae camp.
An icy feeling shoots through me.
The dread weighing me down is instant.
My legs are suddenly heavier, my boots filled with sand, and I tug my leaning body the other way.
I fall back—away from the camp he’s dragging me to.
The warrior hisses a sharp, icy sound, like a blade drawn, and he turns on me with glaring green eyes.
I stagger under the assault of his gaze.
A breath cuts through me, sharp, and I flinch—
But it does little good.
He snatches me by the waist, then hoists me off my feet.
I drop onto his solid shoulder, hard enough that a grunt punches through me.
The air is shoved out of me.
Not a heartbeat after, his hand smacks down on the back of my thigh and holds, firm. With that alone, he grips me in place.
I turn into a limp noodle.
Suddenly, all that urge to flee, the instincts to run in the opposite direction, it freezes with my cold insides, and I’m just limp, staring wide-eyed at the ground.
Draped, I can only watch the heel of his boots kick over the road, and the sharp silverish hooves of the steed walking alongside him.
The road is discoloured beneath the glare of the firelight before he steps over a guardrail, and my view shifts to hard, frosty grass.
For a long moment, grass and dirt are all I see, the heels of his boots kicking into my sight with every swift step he takes, the gentle thudding of that creature steed… but I hear it.
The camp.
Them.
There’s that undercurrent of sound, of clanging and rustling and murmuring and fires crackling and boots shifting; noises that weave together to make the constant.
But then…
Laughter.
The sound of it tenses me, turns my bones rigid, that inhuman guttural, cutting, harsh sound.
My teeth grit, pure tension bolted through me, head to toe, and I’m hardly aware of the curling of my fingers, grabbing onto the back of the warrior’s leathers, as though holding onto him will, what,saveme?
If he feels it, he does nothing about it.
Just like I’m sure he feels the violent pounding of my heartbeat against the solid muscles of his back—and still takes me into the den of his fellow beasts.
Rigidness keeps me in its iron grip, but I turn my cheek to press against his leathers—and I see them.
He carries me into the camp, and I haven’t gone unnoticed.
The stares of fae, of dark fucking fae, are latched onto me.
