I keep my head down.
Still, he towers over me. He hasn’t stepped back yet. Maybe he won’t. Maybe they don’t have the same concept of personal space—or, more likely, he doesn’t give a fuck about mine.
I give in where he doesn’t.
My boot slides back across the foliage, rustling dead, crisp leaves frozen through winter.
I put a step of distance between us.
The warrior watches me closely, his head tilted an inch to the side, hardly at all, but that same touch of curiosity I saw on him before.
Maybe he wants me to run so he gets a good chase, a little thrill, a sick game he can indulge in.
That’s not a game I would win.
I disappoint him.
My teeth grit as I peel the strap off my wounded shoulder first, then the other, before the bag hits the forest floor.
Like my wrists, the relief is instant, a crashing wave over a rocky shore, but sore, too.
So much weight released from my aching body, I can’t stop the sigh from escaping me, and my shoulders sag with the liberation.
My chin tucks to the side as I eye the thick trunk, whose roots curdle over the frosted foliage. The dominant tree among thinner, younger ones.
Before I can do anything, move for the tree or look at the fae for reassurance, he commands me, “Go.”
I do.
Without a glance at him, I advance on the thick trunk—but I’m slow. I move with a gait, a limp that extends far beyond the tense muscles of my legs and reaches up my spine to my shoulders and wraps around my thumping head.
The chill of his gaze follows me until I’m around the other side of the trunk, so wide that I could hide behind it with another person and still be shielded.
The sweatpants slide down to my ankles easily.
It’s the leggings that put up a fight.
I don’t know how long ago it was that the dark fae trapped us in the street and I wet myself, but I do know the material of the leggings has dried to that stage of laundry, that doubt ofis it damp or is it cold?
Maybe both.
And so, the fabric sticks to my skin, snags on my inner thighs, as I wrestle myself free of them.
My body works against me.
I try to squat, but every bone in my back screams the moment when I do, so I shift my not-hurt shoulder to lean on the rugged trunk and slide down.
The rustle of my jacket follows me down into a leaning squat—and the groan that hums in me is constant.
I do my business.
But I haven’t eaten or drank any water in a while, so there isn’t much to release before I’m wiping with cold leaves, then tugging up the damp, clingy leggings.
The sweatpants come up as easily as they glided down, but the smell of urine lifts from them like a punch to the face.
My nose crinkles.
I fucking stink.
