“Okay?” Beaufort asks me.
“This place gives me the creeps,” I say.
“What did you expect it to be like, Kitten?” Dray says with amusement. “Unicorns and butterflies?”
“I don’t know. It’s just so …” I shudder.
“That’s what this place does to you,” Thorne says, his dark eyes even darker out here, like the abyss itself. “It sucks the hope out of you. You need to keep your wits about you or it will drive you insane.”
“Yeah, think happy thoughts, Little Kitten. Thoughts like sitting on my face.”
As we continue our march across this barren land, I wonder if that’s going to be possible. The hopeless nature of this place encroaches on my mind. Dark thoughts creep into my head. My skin turns cold. My heart thumps in my throat.
I chew on my cheek, trying to keep my thoughts light and happy so the dank gloominess of this place doesn’t infiltrate my mind.
But there’s one thing I keep coming back to.
“I don’t understand how the Madame is working with the demons,” I mutter out loud.
“Because she’s as evil as they are,” Beaufort states.
“No, I understand that. I mean on a practical level. They don’t appear to be able to talk. Can they think? Can they communicate?”
“I’m not sure anyone’s studied them that closely, Kitten,” Dray says, finding my hand.
The face Beaufort turns towards his friend is unimpressed. “Scholars have tried,” Beaufort tells him and me, “The demons are not like us–”
“You don’t say!” Dray scoffs.
Beaufort ignores that comment and continues.
“What we do know is that they have some kind of hive brain and their actions seem innate.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, wishing my education in Slate had moved beyond farming and woodwork skills and provided some actual knowledge of the world.
“It’s like they’re pre-programmed.” I frown, still not understanding. “You ever watch ants hard at work or bees?” he asks me.
“Of course.”
“They seem to know what they’re doing, right? Collecting pollen from flowers, or bringing back material to the nest. But they don’t have brains like us. Their behavior is innate. It’s pre-programmed.”
“Then who programmed them?”
“Some people think it’s the gods or the stars, others the nature of the universe.”
“And what are demons programmed to do?”
“Kill,” Dray says, swinging our hands together like that isn’t the darkest comment ever.
“They seem to thrive on death and destruction. I mean, look at this place,” Beaufort says, sweeping his hand across the desolate landscape, shuddering as he does. “Look what they’ve done to this place. It’s like they’ve sucked the sunlight away.”
I shudder too, and Dray pulls me closer, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.
“Enough miserable talk,” he says, “let’s’ talk about something more uplifting, like how damn good Kitten looked in that dress.”
Drays spend the next fifteen minutes monologuing about just that. I’m not sure any of the rest of us are truly listening though. We’re all watching the sky and the horizon for any signs of movement. The only motion we register is the battering of the bitter wind across the barren landscape, lifting dust into the air and bending the few tree stumps that pock the earth.
At one point, Beaufort stops us and takes out his map, studying the details.
