“It’d be easier for you to ascend the path when using my chair with me,” Timur suggested.
“Probably, but that’d mean I’d have to sit on your lap again.” I winced.
“What’s wrong with sitting on my lap?” The way he asked it made me pause.
It didn’t sound like an innocent question coming from someone who had no dick and no idea how to use one. His voice had dropped, making it sound almost…suggestive? Like a man who was very much aware of the consequences when inviting to host a woman’s ass on his lap.
But he couldn’t be, could he?
Shadow fae didn’t have any sexual organs until they went into their mating fever, a state of madness that demanded fucking and breeding. Timur clearly wasn’t suffering from it because if he had been, he wouldn’t be able to speak as calmly as he did. He would hardly be able to speak at all from what I’d heard about the mating fever.
But then, Timur wasn’t exactly a shadow fae, was he? He certainly didn’t look like one. A shiver rippled down my spine when I thought about his red eye and the spine tail.
“I’ll walk,” I said resolutely.
“Suit yourself,” he agreed, much to my relief. “But you’ll have to walk ahead of me so I can see you.”
“Why?”
“You are my most precious possession, Joy Vessel. And there are plenty of those who’d snatch you from me if given a chance.”
“Precious? Right,” I huffed under my breath. “I literally cost my weight in gold, don’t I?”
Stomping ahead, I tripped and nearly lost my balance. The spine whip swept out from under Timur’s cloak and caught me around my waist. I stopped with my arms up to avoid touching the creepy thing.
“And of course,” Timur added, dryly. “The last thing we need is for you to fall off the path and break your neck.”
The path was wide but steep and uneven. And it was long, endlessly long. I tried to keep my steps steady while feeling Timur’s mismatched eyes on me.
What was he?
I thought about his perfect fae features merging with the grotesque white skeleton in a form that seemed to be an amalgamation stopped midway. A transformation that froze before fully leaving one form and becoming the other.
If that was true, then which form did he start with? Was he a fae turning into a monster? Or a monster turning into a fae?
Or was it something else entirely?
I tripped and immediately raised my arms.
“I’m fine! I’m up. Just keep your tail away from me.” I scrambled to my feet quickly.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the white spinal column with spikes move back and away from me. That part of him was especially hard to accept. An involuntary shudder crossed my shoulders as I narrowly avoided being touched by it again.
At least with the sun down, the heat had receded too. A fresh breeze blew from the ocean, cooling my strained muscles. But I hadn’t eaten anything since before the auction. I’d been surviving on a few sips of water. My legs shook from exhaustion.My lungs burned. My head felt fuzzy already, and we’d barely come a quarter of the way.
After a few more shaky steps, I pressed my hands on my knees, bending down to catch my breath.
“My offer for a ride still stands,” Timur announced calmly behind me.
The prospect of close proximity to him made my skin crawl, but not exactly from repulsion. I found his appearance disturbing rather than disgusting. But trepidation didn’t make crawling onto his lap any more appealing.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, pushing myself up the path again.
I blew a lock of my hair away from my face and wiped sweat from my forehead with my forearm. Sweat trickled down my back too. I took my sweater off and tied it around my waist.
“I can make it,” I said in an upbeat voice.
Propping my hands on my hips, I glanced up the path ahead of us. There was not a single fae on it this evening. Some of the Ashgate dwellers were still asleep at this hour. Others used the hanging bridges or their shadow magic to travel between the caves. This path was mostly for the camels and other magic-less beings like me.
