“Let’s go,” I say. “Remember to stay alert, not only for creatures but also for the Others, the ones who live outside of the compounds and are the ones who escaped the punishment side of the realm. They are extremely dangerous, and they are not afraid to kill first and then not bother to ask questions. They are feral, deadly, and remorseless.”
“Not going to lie, they sound like my kind of people,” Farren mutters.
“They’re not,” I snap and then wince. “I’m sorry, I just want you to take this seriously. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She smirks, “Aw, I knew you liked me, really.”
I scowl but can’t quite stop the smile from twitching at the corners of my lips.
“Don’t worry, mate, we are listening, and we understand you. We aren’t going to put ourselves or you in any danger by not listening to your warning,” Hades tells me as he gives Farren a raised eyebrow look, and she rolls her eyes playfully.
“Fine, I will behave myself,” she says.
“I don’t believe you, but there are enough of us that we should be able to step in before you get us into some sort of fight,” Khaos says.
Farren opens her mouth with an indignant look on her face and then closes it. “You know what, yeah, that’s probably fair.”
“Well, now that’s been agreed, let’s go,” Storm says.
I nod, and we head off. We’re sticking together as a group. There is strength in numbers, and it would be foolish to split up.
It would be asking for trouble.
Everyone falls silent, and I’m grateful that despite the earlier joviality, everyone is taking the situation seriously.
We’ve been walking for a couple of hours, and I’m reasonably certain that we’re heading in the right direction when the silence is interrupted.
I’m glad.
It’s incredibly difficult to ignore the random spots of cold that keep appearing on my face, and the indistinct muttering that keeps fading in and out.
I miss the academy.
It didn’t happen there, and I thought that I had finally gotten rid of it. Honestly, I thought that my new Ferryman magic had fixed the part of my mind that had been broken by trauma, but clearly that’s not the case.
I know what it means. I’ve lost it. My mind is broken.
I’m not even surprised, after everything, it makes sense.
It’s not so broken that I can’t function, and for the time being, I’m good at hiding it. At some point, I’m going to have to talk to someone about it, but since I have no one to talk to and we’re in the middle of a really important mission, it can wait, and I will carry on ignoring it to the best of my ability.
“Wait!” Loki suddenly exclaims, pulling me out of my thoughts.
We all stop where we are, instantly alert.
“What?” Kill asks, “Did you see something?”
Loki frowns and then shakes his head, “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean stop. We can carry on walking.”
Storm shakes his head in exasperation as we all carry on walking again and asks, “What did you mean then?”
“Well, I just had a thought,” he starts.
“Careful,” Hades mutters, making me smirk.
Loki sticks his middle finger up at Hades and carries on talking, “Haha fucker. No, when we first met Laikynn, he was in the Fae Realm.”
“What?” I ask. Shock colouring my tone. That was not what I was expecting him to say.
