He holds it, harnesses it, and I don’t fucking dare look at anyone but him.
The inkiness of his leathers gleam in the firelight, and in that glare, I see the blood spatter, old and dried, and the dirt smearing him.
His pink upper lip curls over the word, “Stay.”
That command bolts through me, an instinct that even stops my hand from reaching for my bleeding shoulder—a wound that burns deep in my torn flesh.
I swear I’m losing too much blood.
But the warrior pays no attention to the bleeding hole in my shoulder, not a mere glance, before he’s tugging away from me and marching up the camp.
The release of his boot from my middle rises my chest, a ribbon of air flooding into me. My hand moves on instinct to find my chest, and just hold, as though that’ll help the breaths ease in me, as though it’ll soothe that crackling crispness in my lungs.
Those stars still dance, glitter staining my eyes, but I can make out enough to trace the warrior to his steed. He grabs the reins, then marches into the throngs of the camp.
My gaze turns with him, follows him, and my body rolls with his direction, onto my side.
He becomes a silhouette in the murky light and the blurriness of my vision, but it’s an outline I trace to the cusp of the camp.
There’s a chair there, black as ink, a spine that arches way above my own height. It’s a fucking throne. And on it, sits a fae. A female one.
I notice everything about her all at once, her proud posture, smaller than the males around her, but somehow seems taller; the sparkling lilac eyes that switch from me to the cold one; and that she wears a crown of sorts, a tiara but sharper and black and chalky, like it’s made out of coal.
I didn’t need to see the crown to know her authority. Even through the race of my heart, the beats hitting the palm of my hand, still pressed to my chest, and the shuddering breaths that mist the air at my face, I see her well enough to know she’s in charge.
Two warriors flank her, their leathers not unlike the others around camp, better decorated with silver pins running down their arms like seams, and one of those warriors, with the same lilac eyes and chalky hair as the leader, wears a silver crown.
Her eyes flash as Samick drops to a knee before her.
I must’ve been staring at her too long, because now, he isn’t holding the reins tethered to his steed, and—with a swift look around—I find the beastly creature standing calm and patient near a wooden cart.
The cart has a human on it…
An unmoving one who looks shredded.
No other way to say it.
Shredded.
His clothes are torn, his face is scratched and bloody, his hands are ripped. Looks like he’s been shoved through the paces in a fucking blender.
I think he’s dead.
Draped there, he doesn’t move.
Fuck, I hope I’m not next.
My mouth twists with the fresh surge of panic. I swerve my watery stare to the throne—and there, a pair of lilac eyes are fixed on me.
I stiffen.
The crisp cut of her dark hair ends at the angle of her sharp jaw—where a line of scars starts down the length of her narrow neck. They warp at the edge of my sight, worming in my peripherals, but I’m pinned completely by her gaze—and it’s slow to tug away from me, but when it does, it feels like the release of a truck from my body.
My breaths come easier, deeper, but I force them through my flaring nostrils, because it somehow feels more controlled or quieter. Any breath too loud, any sudden cough that’ll strike me, that’s going to end with my head rolling through camp.
If it isn’thimwho slaughters me, it’ll be her. The leader who considers him for a pulsing moment that I feel in my own body, my own heart thumping too hard, too violent.
Everyone watches.
