But it does.
It’s Samick that’s the constant.
The one I feel safest with.
I used to flinch and sneer and recoil from his touch. Now, his fingertips graze over my palm in the dark, taking the inhaler back, and my heart doesn’t miss a beat.
My breaths come easier now.
Sometimes, I think I confuse the tightness in my chest for that iron dread weighing me down and whatever that plague did tome. And, I wonder why, when Samick touches the air with that chill inherent in him, it eases the constriction of my lungs.
The wonder is pushed out of my mind when a murmur rushes through the unit.
It sounds like a grumble of barbed curses—and in front of me, Mika tuts her tongue.
A second later, the rope tightens on my wrist with a tug to the left.
The ground shifts beneath my boots.
The slickness of wet asphalt turns into an uneven, muddy terrain.
My face crumples, and my steps kick that bit higher just from the effort of tugging my squelching boots out from the mud before they can sink.
I’m not the only one put out by the turn off the road.
There’s a sigh somewhere in the dark. And a huff. And an annoyed hiss.
And I guess that means this is another unexpected turn, one of the detours this unit has had to make in the dark over the past week (I guess a week, but I’m counting time by camps and cramps, so it might not be reliable).
I don’t know why we need to take these detours.
It’s always too dark to see.
But this is the third time it’s happened in this trek alone, the unit grumbling to a pause, then taking a sharp turn off-path, off-road, like we suddenly have to go the long way.
No one tells me shit.
So my ignorance holds as firm as the blackout.
And it doesn’t take long for the mood of the unit to sour.
Turns out that even fae can’t trek through the mud without their boots sploshing.
Not nearly as noisy as me, or the humans way at the back of the unit.
But I hear them. That squelching. Boots being peeled off the mud, then slapping down on a fresh patch.
It’s another surprise, another vulnerability I’ve learned about the fae now that I’m living with them.
My list of dark fae weaknesses went from one to two.
Neck shots.
And mud.
Not that any of this is helpful, since the mud might be the end of me, too.
The aches in my legs are worsening, digging deeper into the muscle of my knees, and I’m wobbling with every other forced step.
