Worrying my bottom lip, I reach inside my bag and pull out the jar containing the fat rat I found tucked inside my Nabber this morning.
Cook was so pleased when I caught the vermin that she promised me a pile of honey buns, despite her busy, pre-ball schedule.
The birds stop chattering and a silence consumes the woods; the air seeming to hold its breath. My sacrificial offering pushes his nose through an air hole, whiskers twitching.
The hairs on the back of my neck lift ...
I glance up to see a dark shape using the shadows of ancient tree trunks like a pathway to approach.
Shay.
He moves fast, a dusky flicker stopping only when he draws near enough that I can sense the void of his body. Feel his pull to be less ...empty.
It always makes me picture a vacant lung trying to inflate.
Kai may be right about these creatures, but my experience with Shay is much different. I don’t see him as a weapon or something fierce and deadly. I see him as my lonely, skittish friend.
A smile teases the corner of my lips as he hovers, the shadow about his head folding back like black smoke yielding to the wind. A face emerges, not dissimilar to the blanched skull of a dog long dead.
His forehead is wide and flat, eyes inky balls set in too-big sockets. His nose is a pallid hook, mouth a toothy slash barely covered by lips the color of milk.
Most would balk at his unveiled appearance, but I’ve seen too many monsters in my nightmares for his face to frighten me.
His lips curl up in a jagged smile, exposing an abundance of serrated teeth. Gaze stabbing at the jar, that smile falls, and he makes a sound I recognize—like a tambourine is clogging his throat.
Hunger.
Nodding, I grip the lid. “All for you, Shay. But”—I look to the bluebells—”I was wondering ...”
Shay regards the plant, then me, head tilted to the side. A long moment slips by before he turns and drifts toward them as if snagged by the hands of a gentle breeze.
My heart trips over a foray of ecstatic beats.
He curls over the precious flowers, stare sliding sideways, eyes clinging to me.
I nod and lower to a crouch, arms banding around my knees to cage my welling excitement.
Shay regards the blooms again.
His ivory, fleshless fingers emerge from his cloak of dense vapor, teasing the air with cautious, clawed strokes. His digits clink together as he reaches for the flowers, and I smile when he grasps the curved stems.
The flowers turn brown, then shrivel until nothing is left but a small bundle of straw-like husks.
My smile fades, lungs empty.
Dead ...just like that.
Shay hisses and snatches his hand away, head whipping to the side, sooty gaze seeming to plead with me.
The sadness in those eyes is a bitter, unnecessary poison. I don’t need to see his sorrow. I can feel it in the atmosphere; see it in the fading of the forest’s jewel-toned luster.
Kai was right about one thing: Shayisa predator, but I doubt my friend enjoys what he has to do to survive, bar the brief satisfaction of sustenance.
“It’s okay,” I say, tone gentle, offering a warm smile I hope touches my eyes. “They weren’t important.”
He looks at the husks again, and I’m reminded of Rhordyn. Of the way he regarded me before he left for the East—like I’m the sum of his own self-loathing.
I hate you.
