I’m not a person anymore. I’m just prey he hasn’t finished toying with yet.
The tears turn into heaving sobs that wrack my chest. The pain is blinding, but I can’t stop. I can’t do anything except cry, stumble, and wish I’d never heard of the Dell. Wish I’d never wanted to hunt a fae. Wish I’d never looked at those antlers and imagined them on my wall.
The dizziness is getting worse. It comes in waves. The ground tilts beneath me. I keep losing time. One moment I’m walking, the next I’m stumbling, and I can’t remember the steps in between.
My body is shutting down, piece by piece, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
And him … the fae, the monster … he just keeps walking, towing me along, toward whatever destination exists in his head.
He stops and turns toward me. For a moment I think he’s going to hit me again. Instead, he looks at me, studying me withthose gold eyes, fingers curled around my arm, and waits until my sobs taper into hiccups, then into shaky breaths, and then into silence.
I’m empty. Hollowed out. The tears have taken everything with them, and what’s left is exhaustion, and pain, and the terrifying reality of what my life has become.
He starts walking again. I follow.
At some point, I start watching him instead of the forest. The back of his head. The antlers. The bare skin of his throat where the collar used to sit.
The wounds at his throat look different than they did this morning. They’re still marked with dark bruising, but the swelling has gone down. The places that were weeping and bloody are starting to crust over.
I blink, frowning, and look closer.
It’s not only his throat. The gray-green of his skin is patchy, flaking and peeling away. There are streaks along his arms where the color has faded entirely, revealing paler skin beneath. The antlers, too. Were they always that rough and uneven? I don’t think they were.
He’schanging. Whatever the Dell did to him, the modifications my father ordered, they’re coming undone.
We stop at a narrow stream. The water runs clear and cold over smooth stones, and the sound of it is torture. I would salivate if I had any water left in my body, but my mouth is bone dry.
He crouches at the water’s edge and drinks from cupped hands. I stand where he left me, swaying, my eyes fixed on his throat as he drinks, and swallows, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
Water. It’s right there. Cool and clean and everything my cracked lips and swollen tongue have been screaming for. Butthe idea of moving is terrifying. My legs are shaking so badly I don’t trust them to hold me. If I try to kneel, I might not get up. And if I try to drink without his permission?—
He straightens and turns to look at me.
The gold of his eyes is brighter than it was. I noticed it in the hollow, right after the collar broke, but it’s stronger now. And his face … the angles seem sharper than before. More defined. Almost as though he’s coming into focus.
He studies me for a moment, and I wonder what he sees. A filthy, tear-streaked girl barely staying upright? Prey that’s not worth the effort of killing? A tool that he used to break the collar?
Then he moves toward me and I flinch before I can stop myself. All he does is grab my arm—the same bruised spot,alwaysthe same spot—and pulls me toward the stream.
“Drink.”
One word. A command.
I drop to my knees at the water’s edge. The cold hits my hands first, shocking enough to make me gasp. I cup water in my shaking palms and bring it to my mouth. The first swallow hurts and my bruised throat protests, but I don’t care. I drink until my stomach hurts. Drink until I’m gasping. Drink until water spills down my chin and soaks into my clothes.
When I’m done, I’m shaking harder than before, but my head is clearer, and the gray edges of my vision have pulled back.
He hauls me to my feet, and sets off again.
An hour later, maybe more, maybe less, he pauses at the top of a low rise.
I stop beside him, breathing hard, grateful for a moment’s rest. My eyes drift over him without really meaning to. The set of his shoulders. The line of his spine. The way he holds himself, coiled and ready, a breath away from violence.
AsI watch, his hand lifts and his fingers brush the base of one antler. He presses against the place where bone meets scalp, and his jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.
The antlers look worse than they did earlier. The flaking has spread. Whole patches of bone look rough and pitted now. At the base where they meld into his skull, the color has darkened, and cracks are forming.
They’re falling apart.
