She holds up a hand to cut him off. “We don’t have time to sit here and do nothing. We have a serious problem.” Her tone is unyielding, so different from the female I first met. She looks at me. “Luca and I saw an osseris in the forest.”
The air is snatched from my lungs at the word, at the unwelcome reminder of its talons scraping along my antlers, at its foul breath along my neck, at the bones protruding from its chest and pressing into my back.
Luca sits on the couch and begins to unlace his boots. “Most likely hunting for information to report back to the witch controlling it.”
Or to the High King.
“It’s a good thing you weren’t here,” Ivan admits.
Asmo turns and heads toward the bedrooms. “We need to leave. Now,” he calls as he leaves us in his wake, his hands still covered in dried blood.
“Where the hell are we supposed to go?” I ask, looking from Ivan to Luca.
“There’s another house I know of,” Luca says as he laces his boots back up. “Gather your things. We leave in five minutes.”
I hobble to my bedroom and shove my belongings into my bag. It doesn’t even take an entire minute to pack everything. Asmo emerges from his bedroom, Cally limp in his arms, his own bag of clothes hanging from the crook of his elbow.
Ivan forms a portal big enough for three of us to step through at a time—Asmo, Cally, and I go first.
Our new home sits at the peak of a small mountain in the woods and looks almost identical to the old one, with warm wood siding and gray stacked stone columns on the front porch. A warm, red front door beckons us inside.
Luca gets to work on forming the protectivebarrier as the rest of us survey the cabin. I run into a chair as I enter the cramped living area. I back up, only to jostle a small end table. The space is crammed with furniture—overstuffed chairs and cabinets and a plaid couch running beneath a small window that barely lets any light in.
“It’s going to be a tight fit,” Ivan mutters before crossing the room in four strides.
Holly returns from inspecting the bedrooms and drops her bag on the couch, disrupting the thick layer of dust that has amassed with the cabin’s disuse. “I’ll take the living room this time, Ivan. You and Luca can take the room with two beds.” She glances at Cally in Asmo’s arms and says, “There’s a primary bedroom and another small bedroom down the hall.”
Asmo disappears down the hallway, Ivan close behind him. I sag against the armchair. I’m ready to fall into bed and sleep for a year.
“Ivan will take care of her,” Holly says reassuringly. “She’ll be back to it in no time.”
My throat tightens when I think about my best friend. About what she’s been through—what she’s still going through.
“Guess it’s you and me, princess,” Asmo says as he returns to the living room. He grabs my bag from the chair and disappears down the hallway once more.
I follow him, limping with every other step. “What do you mean?”
He enters the primary bedroom, the bed taking up nearly the entire space. He sets our bags on a dresser crammed underneath a window. “Cally needs the separate bedroom. Ivan has to apply the extract every hour, and you need to sleep,” he says, pulling the blankets from the bed and shaking the dust from them. “Ready for our sleepover?”
I muster the energy to roll my eyes. “That’s not happening. You’re going to sleep on the floor.”
“Oh, am I? Scared to sleep with the big bad prince?” he asks with a smirk.
I chuckle and lean against the wall, watching him shake out the pillows. “You don’t scare me, Asmo.” I resist the urge to squirm under the intensity of his gaze, now fixated entirely on me, not the pillows.
“Really?”
“No. You never have,” I answer. It’s the truth. Of all the emotionsI’ve experienced with Asmo, fear has never been one. Unless, of course, you count being scared that he’ll betray me, like Marik and Cora did.
He turns away from me with a quiet exhale. He tosses a pillow and blanket to the floor, making a sad version of a makeshift bed. He grabs a change of clothes from his bag and shuffles past me. Before he leaves the bedroom, he stops at the door. “You absolutely terrify me.”
He shuts the door behind him. I peel my clothes off and collapse into bed, his words echoing inside my head as I drift to sleep.
Chapter 14
MAE
Three days later,Asmo and I return to Bouldercrest with Holly, all of us dressed appropriately this time. Snow falls heavily, wrapping the forest in its cold embrace.
