Not like that.
Sure, I’ve had a few scraps on a night out here and there, mostly in my twenties and fuelled by booze, but never has a man—amale—just smacked me clear across the face.
If any man ever did do this, I think I would’ve been struck with the shock for a moment, maybe a few moments, before I brought a glass bottle down on his head, or bit his fucking nose off.
This…
This is different.
The fear has kneaded so deep into me that I think I’m losing myself, like I’m fading, of weak body, but weaker mind.
I was something else before the blackout.
I was someone else.
I was cocky, rude, a fighter, definitely arrogant, and protective, I was powered by adrenaline and rage, I was angry and loud when I had to be, but I was also quiet and watchful, observant of those around me.
All of that has muted around them.
The dark fae.
I’m a mouse, now.
No, not a mouse.
A rat.
Because I will chew my way through others to find my own escape, my own safety.
Is that who I always was?
Does it matter when, at the end of it all, my hands are bound together and the tether tugs, jerking me back to this cold, harsh reality?
The look I lift to the warrior is watery, I know it, and I know I must look as pathetic as I feel.
The frost of his eyes has settled, but not yet fully returned to the green, and he considers me, runs me over from cheekbone to cheekbone—then he tugs away from the treeline.
His pace into the flow of the unit draws me along with him—and the female warrior walks with us, just on the other side of me.
Her sharp chin bobs with her steps, and her gaze stays straight ahead at the backs of her comrades.
That white hair of hers, strands have that faint edge of translucence, are in tousled braids along her scalp, dishevelled and marked with ash and soot.
But no blood.
She didn’t find people in the town.
I don’t feel any safer with her on my right, and not with the cold warrior on my left, and not with the heavy-handed guard way at the back with the captives.
That’s the only predictable part of my new reality. How fucking unsafe I am.
EIGHT
This walk isn’t as long as the last one.
It’s a few hours before the fae on those grey steeds turn off at a gravel road. Since leaving the burning town behind, the blackout has been thick, but I don’t need sight to tell the shift of terrain under my boots.
And again, hours later, when I’m sagging and swaying with pure exhaustion, the gravel thickens to foliage, and when I’m on the verge of passing out, it hardens to packed dirt.
