‘Now get your hand out of the glove.’
If I could nod my head in this crammed space, I would. Instead, I just start the long process of shimmying my hand out of the glove—until my fingers finally slip free.
My bare hand smacks down on the cold road, right at my cheek.
‘That’s good,’ her voice returns. ‘Now wait. He will come back. just slide your legs and your hand undercover—and wait.’
My breaths shudder through me, too chopped, too shallow. I’m rigid against the snow, the cold, the icy panic that’s too solid in me.
But I listen to her, the figment of my imagination that I grip onto with bullet spitting all around me and the boots of fae smacking down on the road, racing all over the bridge.
I tuck myself under the truck just that bit more, but with the snagging of the backpack, it’s no more than an inch.
I wait.
FIFTEEN
For too long, the strikes of bullets on metal ricochets over the bridge, blended with the screams of humans and the shouts of the fae.
But when the commotion starts to die and the onslaught of gunfire turns into lame spitting, I hear it.
The moans.
The wounded.
Strewn all around the bridge.
My cheek is still pressed to the cold bite of the road, and so the boots marching down the highway cut into my line of sight—followed by the occasional human being dragged to the back of the unit.
Some are captives, runaways and wounded. The fight in them is dwindled, as tattered as their clothes and bodies.
But others, I think, are people from the attack. Those are the ones with more fight in them, flailing and kicking and shouting and clawing as the warriors drag them into slavery.
I watch those boots pass me by, pair after pair, until a set halt on the road—
Right at the edge of the pickup truck.
These boots are angled towards me.
The leather glistens with freshly spilled blood.
If I reach out a trembling hand and touch the crimson smears, the blood might still be warm.
But I don’t reach out.
I watch them glisten, my breath bated, and wait.
A boot shifts back over the snow before, slowly, the fae lowers to one knee.
The breath that escapes me is grated. It mists at my face, almost as cold as the frost icing my cheek.
I don’t know which fae this is, which one has followed my scent or heartbeats to the pickup truck.
Dread sways in my gut, heavy and cold—
Then a hand reaches under the pickup truck, palm-upwards, offered to me.
And I recognise it.
