“Just … stuff.” I pull the strap out of his hold.
He smiles up at me, all genuine and sincere and too good for this new dark world. “We’re not allowed to carry stuff with us.”
“Well no one took it off me, so…” I trail off with a huffy shrug. “Besides, it’s just for my time of the month.”
Unconvinced, he glances at the bag before he peels away from me and gestures for me to follow him. “We’ll put you on deliveries,” he says, and I haven’t the slightest idea what he means.
He marches over to a fire pit. I shadow him, sticking close to his heels, a new protective clutch of the hands gripped tight around the straps of my bag.
We merge into a circle of three other kuris. They keep their gazes down as I approach, as though each of them fights the furious urge to gawk at me.
On the fire pit, a tall grey pot boils a peculiar-looking soup; something of an orange-tinted red.
“We mix what we have,” Gerard answers my puzzled face.
My nose crinkles at the thought of tomato and pumpkin soup all blended together. But then my stomach gurgles and I realise, I’d eat just about anything right now. All that vomiting that Cliff made me do really emptied my tummy.
Gerard delivers a deflating blow, “And we eat last … if there’s anything left.”
A craving hits me, hard. If I can’t eat, I need a cigarette. If I can’t see Cliff, I need to get away from this camp, sit on my own, and wallow in a cloud of smoke.
“What about the loo?” I ask.
Gerard gestures to the grassy hill behind the beige tent. “Don’t wander off,” he warns me. “Guards are up there, and they are always watching.”
With that threat hanging over me, I leave the kuris behind and hike uphill. I don’t pass anyone on my way—everyone is too busy down there to be bothered about relieving themselves or stealing away a few quiet moments.
But that’s just what I do. I park myself just beyond the edge of the thick blackness, feeling foreign stares prickle into the back of my head. Guards, watching me. But I don’t care.
I fish into my shoulder bag and draw out a cigarette. No one stops me as I light it and slump over, bringing my chin to rest on my knees. At my huddled, odd angle, I smoke and watch the camp below.
My gaze is quick to find Cliff.
He is in the same spot as earlier. Only now, he sits with his back to me, in a growing circle of other dark fae. Apparently his return is creating some buzz among his people as more wander over to join his group.
He doesn’t know I’m watching him. Or if he does, he avoids it. His back faces me all the way down to the butt of the cigarette.
I flick it away from myself before I push up from the grassy hill. The gnawing feeling of sobs rises in my chest before I can leave the dark. So I spare a few more moments for the tears.
After that, I brush myself off and come down the hill. The wooden bowls are being filled with soup and Gerard did say I was on delivery duty. I plan on taking up that duty—because it will lead me right to Cliff.
11
“Ok, you take these up to the head of camp, and you work your way down from there, until they have all received their meals,” Gerard says, pushing two wooden bowls of steamy soup into my hands. “Don’t worry about the tents,” he adds. “Michel delivers to those.”
I trace his gesture to the long, blond-haired guy expertly balancing four bowls on his arms and two in his palms. Either he’s been here a long while now, or he was a waiter in his previous life.
Gerard told me to go up to the head of the camp, but that isn’t where Cliff is. So I snub his order and as I march up to the dark fae side, I angle to the right and move around the campfires with more confidence than the rest of the kuris carry with them.
I reach his circle in a few moments and, instantly, the fae sense my nearing presence. A ripple of intrigue runs over them and, one-by-one, they each look up at me.
Cliff is the only one to not look at me as I approach.
Distractedly, I hand off a bowl to the fae sitting nearest to him. Then I stand beside him, clutching his bowl in my sweaty hands, waiting for him to look at me.
Sitting on a boulder, he keeps his gaze down and focused on the knife he sharpens.
Taking my chances, I scoot myself into the wedge between Cliff and his neighbour fae.
I hand him the bowl—and he stills.
Hunched over his knife, those familiar shadows cut into his jawline. His amber eyes shift, restless, to the bowl I hold out for him.
“Look at me,” I hiss at him, my voice a venomous hush.
But the dark fae in the circle hear me just fine. A ribbon of tension unravels around me and, as I glance around at them, I see narrowed eyes and curling lips and stiff muscles.
I turn back to Cliff. “Here.” I push the bowl into his hands. “I’m your slave now—I’ll bring you meals, clean up after you, serve you. Just like you wanted, right?”
He says nothing and silently sets the bowl on the ground beside his boot. Still, he won’t look at me.
“Cliff.” I push his arm. It tenses under my touch. “You forced me to live and you won’t talk to me? What the hell is that?”
“It has changed now,” he says quietly, looking down at his knife. He resumes his work, running the sharpener over its edge. “It is hollow.”
“Hollow?” I choke, disbelief clinging to my slack face. “We both know that’s not true—”
Finally, he does look at me, and the anger blazing in his ember eyes startles me silent. “How many ways must a human be put right?” he asks, all ice and hatred. “I do not want you, Cora. You are nothing but another kuri to me.”
A fierce blush climbs over my cheekbones. “You kissed me.”
He scoffs something cruel. “I am no litalf,” he tells me. “I can lie. And that lie was an easy one.”
I boot out before I can even think about what I’m doing, and his soup bowl goes splattering all over the place.
“Eat dirt, Cliff,” I spit at him and push up from the rock.
I storm off, unfeeling to the gazes glued to me—
And utterly unaware of the dark fae guards coming for me.
12
A meaty hand lands on my shoulder. Suddenly, the grip yanks me back and I stumble my spine into something solid.
Stunned, I push forward and spin around, my hand coming out on instinct.
Fuck you, Cliff.
That’s all that’s on my mind before I strike him clean across the cheek.
Then my wild eyes land on—my heart sinks—a snarling dark fae stranger. One of the kuri guards, I suspect since he wears lesser armour than the others of his kind.
But no matter his status, it is well above mine in this camp, and I just done fucked up. I hit him. I slapped a fucking dark fae in his own camp.
Oh, fucking, no.
Cliff and I aren’t alone anymore. It isn't just the two of us to fuck and fight—and kiss, and embrace...
Now, we are with his people. Might as well be in his world.
And what I just did, by the looks on the faces all turned towards me, was a huggeeeee no-no.
“I’m sor—” I start, but never get the full half-assed apology out.