The general snaps a command that strikes down the unit. As if she’s taken an axe to the warriors, groups start to split off from the first clearing and move through the treelines.
The cold warrior wrenches a flaming torch out of the soil before he takes me deeper into the forest.
With each step, the pressure of exhaustion is pulling down on me, heavier and heavier.
I strain to keep my eyes open, focus to steady my steps—but my grip is slipping, and I wonder if the backhand and my hitting the ground had anything to do with this.
I doubt it.
I don’t need another reason beyond walking and walking and walking, in the freezing cold, on a stomach so empty it’s churning acid.
There’s food in my backpack.
I blink on the startled reminder—and my mouth floods.
Didn’t realise how hungry I am.
Now, it’s all I can feel.
That nauseating burn up my chest to my throat, and I wonder if I’ll puke bile before the fae can even deposit me somewhere to tie me up and forget about me.
Maybe I can eat then, when I’m fastened to a cart’s hook or a tree.
But… maybe not.
He might not feed me.
He didn’t last time.
What will happen if I just dig out the tins and packets from my bag, and start chomping away at my supplies?
I don’t know…
I don’t know if I’mallowed.
Strange thing to wonder.
A child seeking the permission of adults to have a sweet. Only I’m a captive human surrounding by dark fae I never knew existed before the blackout.
Yeah, I’ll be leaving the backpack where it is, thudding softly against the small of my spine with each step I take all the way to a far clearing.
This one is about four metres in diameter, more space than the ones we passed through, but that’s only because of the mammoth of a tree on the other side, split and blackened, as though struck by lightning. It looks like it’s crashed into the younger trees around it, and now it’s a pile of four stacked and scattered.
The branches weave together with still-white snow dusted all over waxy greenery.
The snow is powder-like around the clearing, so different to the slush we left behind, as though we trekked further up north to chase the harsh winter, to escape sleet and find true snow.
I turn my cheek to it and look as the warrior slips his hand away from my bicep.
He side-steps in front of me, moving with the slinking muscles of a tiger prowling through the forest, and the tether between us forces me to follow him deeper into the clearing.
The moment we’re through the trees, and my boots are flat on the snowy foliage, the clearing is overwhelmed by a rolling wave of fae.
Emerging from the treelines, they invade the small clearing, drop their satchels, brush off snow and foliage from fallen logs, drag tangled branches to the centre for firewood I guess, unearth boulders and soft plots of soil to drop down onto, and rip into their waterskins.
The tug of the silky rope drags me along, pulling on the torn flesh of my wrists.
I throw a look back at the female fae, whose glass eyes watch us go, but she doesn’t follow.
