The prison that gave me a bed I haven’t had in so long, that showered and sheltered me.
I don’t think about the other things that happened in there.
I shut that out before the memory can flash longer than a second in my mind.
With Samick able to somehow sense what I’m feeling, and that I don’t even know myself what I feel, it’s best to just let the shock fade—then figure out what the fuck that was if I ever get a moment to myself.
My eyes shut tight, wrinkled, as though to clamp down on the rushing thoughts, and as I open them again, all I see is the growing red gleam of torchlight illuminating a line through the blackout.
We march towards it.
Bootsteps in rhythm.
But the ground is uneven.
It jerks and slants beneath my boots.
Even with the torchlight, it’s hard to see through the shadows wisping at my ankles. But as I stare down at the earth—what used to be soil and grass—I see ice.
Not the kind that frosts over a lake, or the slippery kind that glazes roads. This ice is a whole new terrain.
It has grip, it has a deep grey hue like smoky quartz, and it’s rough.
I move slow—we all do.
Much slower than our race to the prison.
The hail didn’t melt or even settle on the earth as scattered hunks of ice. It…
I don’t know what it did.
I can’t even imagine how a hailstorm turned the ground into a fucking icy terrain that doesn’t look at all temporary, like I’ve been transported to Antarctica or some shit.
I fling a baffled look at Samick, as though I’ll find an answer with him.
But his profile is stone.
Chin lifted, the lettuce green of his eyes is aimed at the unit advancing on us—and when I drop my gaze to the rope, to my finger hooked around it, I see that he holds it, too.
His hand is fisted around it, firm.
But the rope is tethered to his belt, so he shouldn’t need to hold onto it.
Yet he does.
Something is off.
The other fae, Rust, could be close by.
The icy terrain—it might mean bad news.
The other unit—maybe they shouldn’t be here.
Maybe this isn’t their route.
Or it isn’t ours.
This is the unit that abandoned camp and fled to shelter in the hailstorm.
