Samick leads me—and a few steps in, torches are lifted.
Samick’s hand might have protected my head from being crushed by hail, but the rainfall still ran down my face. It’s all over my eyes and I wipe at them with my drenched gloved hands.
It’s pointless, but I do it anyway.
By the time the whole unit is packed into the tight space, and Samick has guided me over to the wall, the filmy residue of water is blinked out of my eyes—
And I look around our shelter.
My heart sinks.
Not a place I ever thought I’d be.
Not a place I ever wanted to go.
But apparently the only shelter out in the middle of nowhere is a fucking prison.
THREE
Torchlights reflect off the concrete walls and onto the stark, twisted faces of the fae.
I’m reminded of their strange blood.
Thick, black sludges of tar rolling down cheeks, over shoulders, streaming down faces and napes.
A lot of them were hit.
A lot.
Over by the opposite wall, there’s a fae with a ribbed scar twisting his mouth—a perpetual snarl I’ve noticed around camp. A trail of black blood spills from a gaping cut on his shoulder, like a fucking axe-wound.
Beside him, an orange-tinted fae—skin and face and eyes and hair, all orange—holds a spillage of black blood on his forearm, as though he blocked a chunk of hail from striking him on the head out there, took the hit to his arm instead.
If I’d done that, my entire arm would have been shattered or blasted off.
There are more wounded.
Everywhere I look.
So many more.
Gashes, flesh torn, wide open, bones visible, some cracked, others protruding from the flesh.
It’s brutal.
Almost half the warriors huddled and crammed into the concrete corridor look hurt. Faces bloodied, shoulders fractured, fae who lean on just one leg, some who even sink down walls to sit and hold their boots—as though, within the leather, bones are crushed.
The humans are worse.
The limp ones are discarded on the floor by the entrance, and the others moan through the pain of battered faces and cracked skulls and broken hands.
My stomach worms.
I look at Samick.
His cheekbone gleams with the rainfall, that same gloss over his pink mouth.
Drenched, his soft blond hair sticks to his temple, and I think of a lovely sculpture caught in the rain.
