Shaking my head sadly, I gesture towards her. “You’re practically healed already. You’ll be okay. But we can’t lead a monster right to the only safe haven left in this realm.” A harsh breath escapes and I deflate along with it. “And I don’t want you to have to watch it drain me.”
After what happened to her brother, I don’t bother entertaining the idea that she would walk away from seeing something like that and still be okay. And yeah, I like to pretend it’s just because she loves me and doesn’t want me to die, but thehowis more important in this case.
Lifting the tattered remains of her shirt, she inspects her stomach with a frown. The only signs that anything happened are faint pink scars, already fading, and the shadows of some bruises.
Brow furrowed, she meets my eye. “Why did it funnel all of the energy I used on it back into me? And why isn’t it eating you?”
The changeling moved on from toying with me to crouching, running her fingers through the grass with a neutral expression. Matching Cambria’s expression, I take a step closer to her as we turn our rapt attention onto the suddenly content creature.
A squirrel leaps from one branch to another, the changeling jumping to her feet preternaturally fast and catching it before it ever lands. With a quick spray of blood, she tears it apart, devouring it in a gruesome display.
And seconds later, her form shimmers, morphing from the blonde fae into the small, brown squirrel.
Cambria grips my wrist, but I’m just grossly fascinated now that it isn’t actively trying to kill me. “Hungry wolves.”
“What are you talking about?” Cambria whispers, not wanting to draw its notice, though if it’s bound by the deal as much as I am, she’s the safest living being here.
“Wild animals will leave you well enough alone most days, but when they get desperate? Hunger can drive anyone feral when it morphs into starvation. But after that need’s been sated, they go back to leaving you well enough alone.”
“But it’s not a wild animal,” she argues. “It cantalk.Bind itself by the same rules as a fae.”
Replaying everything in my head, I toss out a theory. “They’re just mirrors.” Before she can argue, I rush to defend my thought process. “No form of their own, they change into whatever they consume. And by the story Achlys told us of one appearing in her son’s form and begging in his voice, it sounds like it was just parroting back its victim’s last words.” I swallow. “It only repeated the last word I said, I don’t think it was actually attempting to trick me into binding myself.”
It starts scurrying back over to us and blinks, just waiting for something. Cambria eyes it cautiously. “So because I fed it, but it channeled all of that energy back to me, it was hungry again? Why’d it even try to help me?”
Listening to my gut, I crouch down and extend a hand, palm up. The squirrel wastes no time running up my arm and onto my shoulder, hopping onto my head and curling up. An ill-timed chuckle bubbles out of my throat before I can stop it, and Cambria looks at me like I’ve gone nuts.
Which just has me snickering again. I’m still far too slap-happy after days out here trying to heal the hard way with barely any food, and now that I’m dealing with the adrenaline crash from nearly dying, it’s hitting me hard.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about how I was complaining that I didn’t want to be a main character, so the powers that be sent me an animal sidekick and a princess to save.”
She snorts, starting towards the river since we’ve wasted so much time already and I fall into step beside her. “Not really a princess, remember?”
“Sorry, chosen one. Lost savior. Monster hunter; whatever you want to call it.”
She rolls her eyes, but they ultimately end up on the changeling dozing in my hair. “If you’re right, it looks like the whole ‘warden to the bloodthirsty plague’ was just a fancy way of saying zookeeper.”
We start easing down the bank and into the water. I’d love it if we had a raft or something, but as slow as the current is, I’m not worried about drowning. And honestly, it would just make us far more noticeable to anyone that glances this way from afar.
“Probably why it tried to help you.” We start drifting, treading water to stay afloat and letting the water do the majority of the work rather than outright swimming. “Your abilities are unique to your line supposedly, right? So it would have recognized it as the same sort of energy it used to receive from your parents and realized you weren’t food, but thebringerof food.”
She pivots to face me, coasting backward. “That makes a weird amount of sense. Okay, so what about you? You bound yourself to it, and it fed off of a squirrel instead of using you as an easy-access energy source to keep on tap.”
Mulling it over for a bit, I discard a few ideas before settling on one that feels right. “They’re symbiotic, not parasites, I think. The old fae used to kill them and the land reacted, so they decided they had to imprison them instead, right? Then that means they offer something to Faerie. I just don’t understand why they would’ve been attacking people so much that it came to that if it was symbiotic.”
Cambria runs her tongue over her dry lips, the bright silver of her irises catching the light. “So we think of them like any native animal. If something fucks with their habitat or food source, they’re forced to new places and destroy the delicate balance of the ecosystem.” Her eyes turn hard. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Nothing the fae touch in Faerie is beautiful; only the things they leave alone. I wouldn’t put it past any of them to have been trying to expand their territories and driven the changelings out of their home.”
There’s a curve in the river and a sudden dip, dropping us off of a short waterfall. We come up sputtering and I swipe water from my eyes as frantic chittering demands attention. Scrambling for the surface and dipping under, I rush over to scoop up the struggling changeling, setting him on my shoulder. It scrambles up onto my head, nails scratching at my scalp as it trembles.
Gently, I stroke a soothing hand over its sopping wet fur. “Sorry, buddy, I didn’t see it coming either.”
It’s still keyed up and trembling, and I’ve no doubt it’d launch itself at the bank if it thought it could make it. Cambria swims closer, not reaching out to touch it, but near enough that I can see the wheels turning in her head.
She makes soothing shushing sounds before humming, not putting an ounce of compulsive power into it. But as it starts to calm down, she starts singing the words, keeping her voice down so that we don’t draw attention to ourselves. She puts her own spin onHanging by a Moment,and before long, she stretches out on her back to float, just gazing up at the clear sky as she gets lost in herself.
By the shifting of tiny feet tangling in my hair, it’s clear that itwantsto leap over and use her as a raft, drawn to her presence, but the deal has the changeling getting a small jolt every time it almost makes the leap like it can read its intention. I never expected to pity a man-eating squirrel, yet here I am, wishing he could climb my girlfriend like a tree.
I’m not even sure what to refer to it as, but it’s already getting confusing and I’m going to have to figure out some sort of gender neutral name sooner or later. Though admittedly, I don’t think the changeling much cares if I switch between, that’s my own hangup.
