I blink, once, twice—
Then deflate with a breath.
Yeah, my head is seriously fucked up.
It takes me seconds, long and weighted seconds, to realise that the human man is moving things around, that his head isn’t actually floating around the cart.
He’s hunched over in a way that makes my own back hurt, in a way that would have a physiotherapist cringing, and he stacks firewood. Bags of it, plastic-wrapped, and precut.
I turn my back on him.
The thudding of the cart annoys me, rattles against my back, but I ignore and search for the cold one.
Been a while since I saw him, and he was down at the guarded circle, taking his serve of the meals that he missed out on when he was disposing of his steed.
Now, he’s at the head of camp.
Where the throne once was, the general stands, proud. The cold warrior towers over her in height alone, but his weight is leaned back onto one boot and his chin slightly tucked.
Samick.
My mouth curls.
I hate that he has a name.
I don’t quite know why I hate that, I just do.
For him to have a name… it means that he has an identity, a life—friends and family, even, passions and hatreds…
Just toacknowledgethat feels like I’m humanising him in some twisted way, and I get that same disgusted curl in my chest as when I watched the fae share smiles and laughter.
I want them nameless.
Him, most of all.
The darkness of my stare simmers.
The light of the fires is dimming, extinguished one by one, but the remaining flames flicker warmth over his profile.
His eyes are untouched by the warmth, they are icicles in the low light, aimed at the general.
Their conversation doesn’t look all that friendly.
The general might be smaller than him, smaller and thinner, but she is still packed with muscle, and the way she considers him, a lifted chin and upright gaze, it carries a sense of superiority, like she’s somehow still looking down on him.
Threads of dark reddish hair are braided to her scalp in a way I’ve never seen before, something that—at first glance—looks like a slick-back. But the longer I stare, the better I make out the slightness of those braids going from her hairline to her crown, where the ends are all bunched in some kind of knot.
She wears her authority in the black crown pinned to her head over that ugly-as-fuck hairstyle.
Then, she gives a mere jerk of her pointed chin—and the cold warrior dips his head, curt, before he pushes away from her.
He turns on his heels…
And starts for me.
I throw my gaze away before our stares can lock. But I feel his advance, his stare.
My shoulders curve inwards, tense, the sting of the wound burning at my flesh, reaching deep into the surface of bone.
