So instead, I breathed the cool night air of the forest around us, and tried not to think about whatever freak creatures were probably lurking out in the darkness.
“Whatever you say, Rum,” Xavier sighed as we turned back toward our camp. When I looked at him, his eyes were serious for once. Dark. “All I’m saying is that I’ve known you a while now, and if I thought you were capable of anything truly evil, I would tell you.”
I clenched my jaw, fighting the urge to bite my inner cheek. I couldn’t have formed words even if I wanted to, this conversation was suddenly getting much too personal.
He had taken it well when we explained what happened in those damn caves.
But now he was seeing me. Looking at me—into me. Like the mask I had worn all these years was suddenly yanked from my face.
This was Xavier—one of my only friends in Scarlata. Yet the way he looked at me…
Shame. I felt only shame.
“Let’s get back before Jessiah does something stupid,” I muttered. “The faster we get to sleep, the faster we get moving in the morning.”
It wasn’t like I wanted to get back to Jessiah, but I had to face him at some point. We were stuck in this journey together, awkward tension and massive regrets aside.
Yes, regrets.
I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have let him get close to me. Not again.
He thought he knew me… he thought he saw me… but he only saw part of the truth. He didn’t know how eternally cursed I really was.
“There you are.” Jessiah finished untying the saddle bag from the last horse as we emerged from the forest’s cover. “I was starting to wonder if you two had run off.”
Xavier laughed and stepped in front of me, dropping his collection of wood in the center of our clearing. “And have all the fun without you? I don’t think so, Commander. We’re in this together now.” He looked at me, too. “All of us.”
“Let’s just get tonight over with,” Jessiah sighed, clearly avoiding even glancing in my direction. “Shall we?”
I moved to drop my logs in the same pile as Xavier, who gave me the biggestwhat the fucklook I’d ever seen.
But I was tired of explaining all the reasons Jessiah and I couldn’t be together. I was tired of pretending like I was anything other than fucking toxic.
I was just so damntired.
So a few minutes later, when I curled up on the ground beside the warming fire, my eyes fluttered closed.
And I didn’t even try to fight the sleep that came.
It wasn’t until hours later that I heard Xavier scream.
Chapter 26
Jessiah
“Get up!” Xavier’s voice pierced the silence of the forest. I was on my feet in less than a second, hand on my sword in two. “They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?”
The sun was just starting to break the horizon, creating a soft red glow in the distance among the dark tree trunks. It provided just enough light to see movement in the distance—movement, and the distinct, sleek black and gold of the Pericius guards.
“We need to go,” I said, already throwing my pack onto the back of my horse. Xavier scrambled to do the same beside me. “Now.”
Rummy was slower to get up, but as soon as she stood, she, too, was scrambling, shoving her pack onto her horse and hoisting herself up.
The constant thud of the royal horses was indisputable. We’d been wrong before. They would come after us. Of course they would. They wouldn’t let someone as precious as Rummy out of their grasp when she had been so close.
“Faster! I can’t fly all three of us!” My angel wings sharpened at my words, ready for takeoff. But I held them tightly behind my shoulder blades as I rushed my horse forward.
