The others, seven of them, are women. I see one as young as her early twenties, another in her forties maybe. But each of thehumansnotin that core group of tattered clothes and calloused hands are women.
It furrows my brow and coils something ugly in my gut—because they look better kept.
Not well kept, just… better.
I don’t want to think about that.
I don’t want the sick feeling in my belly growing.
So I consider the guards.
Still, they surround us, but their attention is on the burning town. Like the rest of the dark fae, they watch—and there’s a serenity easing through the band of warriors, a calm that can be found on their faces.
I flick my gaze to the cold warrior.
Against the backdrop of the trees, he is a brushstroke of ice and ink.
The fae around him are washed in the glow of the blaze, but he stands further back, at the edge of the shadows between two trees, untouched by the warmth.
There’s something unnatural about him.
Where the female with translucent hair is perched on a boulder, and a dark-haired male leans against the tree, and both watch the blaze, the cold one is standing, still, motionless.
He watches the blaze like the others, but alone he’s dispassionate. I see no hunger brightening his eyes, no fever alighting him.
He just stands, stiff as a statue, wholly unnatural, and a blank face angled toward the burning town.
It’s the first moment I’ve seen him without rage or purpose, without his steed’s throat in his hand, without a mutinous stareaimed down at me, without that ice of his curling around him like live tendrils.
I wonder, fleetingly, if this is himrelaxed.
An unfeeling statue in a winter garden.
But a murderous one.
Blood stains his cheekbones, a few smears running down his jawline, as though a bloody hand tried to grab at him.
He found a human in the town.
No doubt about it.
Those bloody marks are fresh.
Maybe that’s the reason for his current calm.
He found his peace in another’s death. That peace holds until the blaze starts to settle and the buildings are fading to ash and rubble.
The smoke is still billowing up into the darkness above when, at the peak of the hill, the general moves for her horse.
Horse.
If it can be called that.
The movement of the general ripples through the unit. Bags are slung over shoulders, bloody hands are wiped down thighs, the quiet of the walk softens the murmurs into whispers.
I shift onto one side and plant my hands on the mushy road. Aches spring through me, like I’m struck by lightning, and a guttural sound traps in my chest.
Across the road, the cold warrior’s gaze latches onto me, as if he heard me.
