“Careful,” I whispered back. “Or I might actually think you’re on my side.”
“I’m not, but I don’t have to be a dick about it,” he said, straightening. “Feel free to flirt with me more, though, and maybe I can show off some of my other rope tying skills.” Darius jerked his chin at the path. “Let’s go.”
I glanced at Ace to find Teo tying the final knot around Ace's wrists.
“We match.” I lifted my wrists.
Ace glared in response. Fair enough. We weren’t any closer to escaping. Part of me wanted to kick and scream and defy these hunters, but the other part of me knew that path could lead to Nala or Ace dying. I’d most likely suffer some painful injuries, too, but I’d live. Above all else, I was a survivor.
The youth who lived on the streets of Wast never truly left. I was still that girl on the inside.
Darius paused and studied Ace. The other men slowly turned to follow his gaze.
“What?” Ace snarled.
“I could swear your ears were pointed earlier.” Darius leaned forward and squinted. When Ace’s ears didn’t morph in front of him, he poked the air between them with a finger before turning to his companions. “Didn’t you guys see pointed ears?”
The other men shrugged, and Darius turned to me, a question in his gaze.
Like I’d tell him anything. “His ears haven’t changed.”
Darius scowled and jerked his chin out at the path. “Phaaning phaantasia playing head games with me, no doubt. The sooner we get back to base and hand you two off, the better.”
I bit back the urge to let out a big sigh of relief. It would be premature, anyway. We might’ve avoided them realizing Ace’s true nature, but we still had to face whatever waited for us at the end of this path.
We kept walking and if we passed any checkpoints, I didn’t see them. There must’ve been sentries in the trees and if that was true, they were very good. Too good.
Unease clawed up my spine.
We finally approached a tall wood fence with two hunters standing outside the closed gate. How many hunters were there? How did they find each other to form this group? I had yet to recognize anyone, and although Wast was big and I grew up on the streets, I refused to believe I’d somehow missed seeing a small army of hunters until now.
Darius and the two hunters guarding the large, gated entrance spoke in hushed tones.
“Can you make out what they’re saying?” I asked.
“Yes, I miraculously developed super-powered hearing,” Ace said, tone flat.
Seriously? “A no would’ve sufficed.”
Ace was really in a bad mood. Of course, I understood why, and I even appreciated how my act of complacency added to it, but he needed to snap out of it soon. We both needed level heads to figure a way out of this.
Metal and wood groaned as the gate swung open to reveal a small town of wood cabins.
“What the phaan...” Ace’s head snapped back.
At least I wasn’t the only one surprised to find another complete village I had no idea existed. We walked through the gates. More metal groaned and wood creaked as the gate closed behind us. Okay, maybe using words like town or village was a little ambitious. But there were six small cabins, three on each side of the hard-packed dirt trail that ran down the centre to end at another, larger cabin. Someone had built ladders along the interior side of the high wood fence surrounding the buildings—easy to get out, hard to get in.
“I guess that’s where we’re heading?” Although I said the words out loud, I wasn’t really speaking to anyone, nor did I expect an answer. We walked down the path, and no one came out to gawk at us. No children ran across our path or screeched in the distance. This place felt nothing like Perga.
“This isn’t a town,” I muttered.
Ace looked over at me and nodded. “It’s a military base.”
“Where are all the fighters?”
“I can answer that, love,” Darius piped up, dropped back to walk beside me. “I believe we have you to thank for taking out a number of our hunting numbers.”
I’d been attacked by mysterious groups of rogue hunters so often I’d begun to lose count. The first time Nala took a poisoned arrow for me, a wound she still hadn’t fully recovered from. The second time was when I tracked the group to try to find them and I was shot with a poisoned arrow. It made me sick and messed with my immortal healing long enough for me to fear I faced my own mortality.
