“This is merely a favor to be paid. If you’ll only calm down, I can end it quite painlessly.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, Bo didn’t want to die.
So he said, “Fuck you and your ‘going gentle into the night’ bullshit,” twisting against the branches as they caught at his hood and twisted at his hair. He clawed at the one at his neck, fingers slipping between skin and wood as he struggled to keep it from tightening.
“Quickly,” said a second voice. “I can only dampen our presence so much. And make it clean. For Everil’s sake.”
“Everilis going to fucking kill you.” Bo couldn’t jerk free, anxiety building at the sense of walls closing in and coming quicker. He bared his teeth at the dryad, dragging up all the fury in his squishy mortal body, harnessing the screaming soft terror of a creature caught in a web. “Everil! Fuck, Everil!”
The dryad said nothing, only watched as Bo struggled. Silent as the branches swarmed over Bo, tearing his skin and growing slick with blood. The bastard lookedboredwhen the branch around Bo’s neck tightened, crushing his fingers. They’d break before he died.
All of it to the laughing voice to the unseen fae and, “Poor creature. It actually thinks he’ll come. I’ve been his friend for generations of your kind, human. You’ve known him for mere minutes. Your embarrassment of a bond won’t reach him if I don’t wish it.”
“I like Declan better.” Hissed words, and probably the shittiest last ones he could’ve made. Anything else that might’ve been said was stolen by the crushing grip on his throat.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
Not in the middle of the fucking podunk woods, a fake alien landing site in shouting distance, with two nameless shithead entities breaking him down and taking his fucking voice. The scent of blood, the taste of it, thick as fright and just as present, turned the world hazy gray and purple.
Somewhere, someone crashed through the woods. Too far, and not Everil, couldn’t be, not with the magic that voice boasted about.
Fangs, teasingly clicked towards Bo’s fingers. The playful kelpie, stallion and river both, violence made huge and nickering with amusement. A game, one that left his jacket ruined and skin without a scrape.
Had a fucking kelpie nuzzle his hair and never tasted blood or death. Didn’t feel the sharp pull of torn skin. Bo’d been able to breathe for the first time in a long time, laughing and crying and calling Everil a cheeky goddamn punk.
Everil would’ve come. He would’ve, if he knew.
Dryad fucker needed to stop. Bo wanted that more than he wanted anything else at that moment. (Except Everil, who wasn’t coming.) Wanted and wanted andwanted, an all-encompassing ache tonot die.
The world went cold, then hot. The depths of summer, there in the cold autumn woods. Heat, mid-year and humid, the kind of wet that clung, put a wheeze in the lungs, and stole strength from bone. The looming hand of the fucking Reaper, stripped of flesh and picked clean in the high noon sunshine, burning under Bo’s skin, and–
The air warped, and that frantic, clutching heat wentout. Expanded lightning quick; the only fucking way Bo could clock it. Shapeless, nearly invisible, just the shimmering haze of heat.
Around him, branches twisted and shuddered. Bark peeled away, burnt, while the wood underneath opened, spotted with what looked like sores, hollowing out and blackening. Withering. Fucking crumbling around Bo, a shower of heat-softened wood. Fell to ash.
Bo gasped, drinking deep lungfuls of air as the pressure gave around him. He sagged against the net, still woven tight and holding firm. His head fucking swam with oxygen and magic,magic, threatening to drag him into an undertow of his own making.
It was almost enough.
Almost.
The questing branches were broken, retreating. But there was still thatfuckingnet behind him. And the dryad’s look of apologetic disinterest was gone. Those green eyes went hard.
“That was unwise,” the dryad hissed. The broken branches split down the center, spears of wood twisting in the air.
Bo’s hands shook with pain and fear. He had no fucking clue how to do the thing with magic again. At least he and Everil made their peace that morning.
Fuck it. May as well go down being a shit.
“Poor creature,” Bo rasped. “Thinking I give a fuck.”
The dryad reached for Bo, so fucking close, those branches curved like scorpion tails poised to strike. Bo, for all his hissing and spitting and fierce words, hid a whimper behind bared teeth.
His mom’d always said the dryads would hurt him if they took him. He didn’t want–
Cold water dripping from broken tree limbs, each drop giving life to the parched mouth below. Lush earth and safety, cool shade, new growth under thinning snow.
Everilslammedinto Bo, tearing through the woven net like paper, frost spiraling over every branch he touched. Everil, fucking gorgeous, pulling Bo against him, and Bo’s knees nearly gave as he breathed in relief sweeter than air.
