The wall. Isa. Arms separating from shoulders, legs sliced off above the knee…
He glanced back at me, hand on the iron. With his other hand he gestured me through.
My gaze sharpened on him. I didn’t move. “What’s on the other side?”
“My home.”
If that was true, it was poorly guarded. “I could climb over your fence.”
He let out a one-note laugh. “I thought you’d realized by now the height of a wall doesn’t make much difference.”
My fingers twitched. I itched again to take out my knife.
His eyes flicked down. He’d seen it. He didn’t move. “You could stay out here, but once this gate shuts, you can’t change your mind.”
He knew he had me—wounded, confused prey. He was taunting me, had been for some time. I hated it, and him. That feeling broiled inside me as I limped forward, each step sending a spear up my back. He held the way open for me as I limped under his arm and through the iron gate, into the shadow of his home.
I camethrough the gate and stepped into wildness.
My kingdom was one of bare plains and parched flora. Everything that grew was in spite of the acid rains, including the people. And because I had never seen or been told of anything else, I couldn’t imagine anything else existed.
The clouds had moved to allow the moonlight to shine. Around me, the trees grew huge and ancient and gnarled. Not like ours—these were as wide around as a single turret on our walls. The bark was dark and adorned with markings like the patterns I’d seen on my captor’s cloak. In the moonlight, they were limned in silver. Thick vines and ivy—I only knew what those were because of fairy tales and picture books—coiled around the bark.
Mist clung to the forest floor, swirling and shifting past my feet. The air was humid and heavy with the scent of damp earth and something sweet and fragrant. When the wind rustled the canopy, a faint sound like I’d never heard before drifted through the branches, almost like children’s laughter.
But the most striking thing of all couldn’t be seen, smelled, or heard. It could only be felt.
As soon as I stepped through that gate, the air changed. It pulsed against my skin like needles. My hands went out, and as the moon’s light played over my palms, the air seemed to spark away from my skin.
This was not my kingdom. It was not even my realm.
The gate squealed as it shut and clanged behind us. The sound felt permanent, irrevocable. Icily familiar.
He stepped up beside me. Metal glinted at his hand; a sword. “Stay closer to me. This place is nothing of what you expect.”
I couldn’t imagine limping through the night. As much as I didn’t want to speak to him, I said, “How much further?”
I felt his attention shift to me, though I didn’t see his face move. “Take a step forward.”
“Why?”
“Do it.”
I took one step, braced for pain. But my body moved with buttery ease, and not a part of me complained.
Impossible.
I turned to him—and froze.
He looked different. Not entirely, not worlds apart, but enough that the sight was shocking. He had the shape of a man and the same cut-glass cheeks and jaw, the same knot in his nose and turn to his lips, but his eyes…
The irises were hazel and the pupils were black, but the innermost circle of the iris was pure, carmine red. His skin was dusky with yellow-green undertones. His hair, black before, now had a blue-black hue and seemed somehow wilder.
Like the air, something about him resisted description. He was a foot taller than me, not slender and not hulking, not a terror and not innocuous. His presence seemed to hover in the liminal space a wild animal possessed. Poised, still, but always ready, always prepared for violence.
“You see,” he said, starting forward. “Nothing of what you expect.”
Now I did slip out my knife. At the wood-on-cloth sound of it sliding from my belt, he let out a low chuckle but didn’t stop walking. Didn’t look back.
