Not like it’s a problem anymore.
Any animal in confinement, in slaughterhouses or on those crammed farms, will be dead, just like the humans.
Most of us are gone, and the ones like me who are still surviving don’t have much of a chance.
Bee can make all the promises and deals she wants, whatever hope she can grip onto in the dark, it doesn’t reach me.
I’m not delusional.
But I’m smart enough to keep small and quiet by the cart, to not fight my restraints or kick against the fae that walk by, much too close to my boots.
And I stay very fucking still the moment I seehim—emerging from the darkness across the camp.
Dirt and blood still stain his leathers, but with a fresh black glisten. Takes my sluggish mind too long to realise it’s the steed’s blood.
I wonder if he was off burying the corpse or just moving it away from camp.
Whatever he was doing, he was doing it alone.
Now, he’s a looming silhouette of inky leathers and striking marble skin emerging from blackness.
There is no softness in this warrior.
There’s a tension in his sharp jaw, one that slashes a muscle down his cheek, and reaches down his body, a body chiselled from solid stone.
I cringe back into the cart.
The wood presses hard against the back of my skull, but I push myself even harder against it, as though I can fall through the cart and disappear from the purposeful steps of this warrior.
I don’t disappear.
He advances undeterred, until his boots stop at the soles of mine, and he’s looking down at me, shadows lashing up his face.
I drop my gaze to his legs.
But the moment I do, he slowly drops to one knee in front of me.
Still, he’s taller. A towering statue crouched at my boots, looking down on me.
I don’t lift my gaze.
So he forces it up.
A wince cuts through me, sharp, as he snatches me by the chin. The cold bite of his fingertips digs into my cheeks, forces my lips apart, and he angles my face to align with his.
The moan that catches in my throat is unwilling.
The warrior looks down his fine nose at me.
The faint green of his eyes hooks me with a silent violence.
I don’t dare move.
I hardly breathe.
Pale strands of hair, not ice, not yellow, but a pearly blond, fall into his face. He lifts his free hand to his chest, then flattens it.
“Samick.”
