“Eat.”
“A whole pheasant?”
“We’ll leave when you’re finished.”
I reached for the meat with shaking hands. Foodfelt wrong when Rheya might be starving somewhere. But I pushed myself to eat, tearing off strips numbly.
“You screamed in your sleep.”
Mist coiled restlessly around his shoulders.
My throat tightened. Had I called for Rheya? Begged Vaeris to save her? “I had a nightmare.”
“About your sister.”
I studied his face, weighing whether to deny it.
“You kept saying her name. You clawed at me,” he said, rolling up his sleeve. Long, red marks crisscrossed his skin. “If you’d had a blade, you’d have cut me open.”
I bit back a sharper retort. “Then heal yourself.”
“Do you have nightmares often?” he asked quietly.
“No, that’s…I’ve never done that before.”
I forced down the rest of the pheasant. My stomach coiled with each bite, too full of nerves to enjoy it now. When I’d swallowed the last of it, Kairos beckoned me upright.
“Come. I want to get home before nightfall.”
And then what? I’m thrown into a cage?
He waved his hand and mist seeped over the embers, snuffing out the fire.
I stood, brushing ash from my palms.
Kairos led me through the forest, severing vines across our path. Monstrous trees twisted upward, their branches knit together so tightly the sunlight barely made it through. I’d never seen so much life. Such savage beauty.
Not unlike the fae in front of me. Hunter…soldier…none of those titles quite fit. Who was he? Why had the king condemned him to eternity in servitude?
Should I ask?
My palms sweated despite the cool air. Pushing him foranswers was dangerous, but I was tired of stumbling blind through a world I didn’t understand.
“Kairos?”
Kairos glanced over his shoulder.
“Back there…when you jumped over the fellcat. I saw something.” I walked behind him, trying to sound casual. “Wings.”
He grunted. “I’m from Caelir.”
So he was descended from a race of winged fae. The most secretive of all realms, their people lived on islands in the sky.
“What’s it like there?”
“Brutal. Hot.”
I stepped over a felled tree. “That’s not what the stories say.”
