I was so afraid of what hid in the blackness that I didn’t give myself a moment to think about what it really means to stay with Cliff. This bubble that the two of us exist in will soon be popped by a hundred swords carried by ferocious dark fae, and then I’ll be exposed. Vulnerable, without protection.
As Cliff packs up the map, an icy current sways through my gut, and I think I might need the loo soon.
He makes to move on through the woods, but I dig my heels into the dirt and stay put. He turns to look back at me, a withering stare latching onto my desperate one.
“Take me to your world,” I blurt out.
He blinks away his fleeting confusion before he frowns at me.
“Don’t take me to your army,” I plead, stepping closer to him. “Just take me straight back to your world and keep me safe there.”
His face shutters, then just as quickly, it’s back to stone. “I cannot.”
My shoulders slump, defeat slackening my freckled face. Threading my fingers through my golden hair, I peel it all back from my desperate expression. “Why not, Cliff? Why can’t you do this for me?”
“I have orders,” he says simply, “and I do not make them anymore.”
I tug the rope. “So let me go now.”
“I should,” he says, then a frown knits his brow. “Or perhaps I shouldn’t for the very reason I believe that I should.”
“I should,” I start, fear rising up my chest, “resist what happened between us—both times. I should be free of you and your army. Or don’t you remember what your friends did to me?”
He takes a swift, determined step closer to me, rage blazing amber in his eyes. “I delivered them to death,” he growls.
“You said yourself you can’t protect me when we reach your people,” I argue, the heat in my voice rising up hotter than the flames of the torch. “So what will you do if it happens again? Slaughter more of your people or just turn your cheek knowing you can’t do anything to save me?”
His gaze cuts down to the dirt between us. “You will no longer be my responsibility—my problem,” he corrects.
Tears sting my eyes just as a ribbon of icy fear unravels down my jolting spine.
“So that’s it, then?” I click my jaw. “You’re just going to take me to them, then leave me to fend for myself? I know what happens in those armies,” I add darkly. “Spike told me all about the stories of the whipping post, and what happens to those kuris who fall behind. What if I’m one of them, Cliff? You’ll just let me be beaten and whipped and murdered?”
“Don’t fall behind,” he warns, his head bowed, looking up at me from beneath long and dark lashes. “Don’t talk back. And you will survive.”
“Will I?” I challenge. “That’s the promise of a disgraced fae, is it?”
His face crumples.
Good.
Hurt.
Hurt just as you are hurting me.
“That’s all you are,” I sneer at him. “You’re a grunt. A dishonoured beast. You’re worthless, and that’s why you can’t protect me—you know it, too. That’s why you’re so fucking ashamed of yourself, just as you should be.”
Cliff strides towards me. He closes the distance in a matter of two steps, then snatches my throat. Fingertips dig into the sides of my neck.
Bringing my face to his, my toes barely touching the dirt, he hisses at me, “What can I do for you, Cora-lee? In this world or the next, I have nothing to offer you.”
“Set me free,” I grunt. “Or at least protect me.”
He pauses to inhale long and deep, then steadies his gaze on me. “You must be prepared for our farewells. They will come soon. This,” he adds, looking down at me—at my body, “was only ever temporary.”
I’m about to snarl vicious words back at him through the pain biting at my heart, flooding my eyes with tears, but then I hear it. In the distance, the roll of a thick critter-cloud, their faint skittering and coiling.
A new plan starts to form in my mind, and it all starts with just how loose my tether to him is.
“Fine,” I spit out then, with a jerk, pull out of his hold. I stagger back a few steps. “But don’t blame me if I find safety with another.”
A cry catches in my throat as he lunges for me.
The torch drops to a boulder.
I stumble back, the heel of my plimsoll catching on a rock. I go tumbling back, Cliff following me.
My landing is a thud that I feel all down my aching back. I barely have a moment to catch my winded breath before he’s on me, straddling me, and bringing the wink of a silver blade to my cheek.
I still, wide eyes fixed up at his murderously twisted face.
“Threatening me is not your wisest move,” he growls at me.
Despite the warning bells blaring in the prickles of my skin, I grunt, “It’s served me so well in the past.”
“Be silent!” His shout thunders through the forest, turning the leaves and branches restless. Dropping his voice, he warns me, “If you touch another—so help me, Cora-lee, I will destroy both of you.”
He crouches over me, bringing his mouth to mine where he plants a gentle, chaste kiss.
I shudder a breath.
Against my lips, he murmurs, “And I will save you for last.”
In a blink, he’s pulling off of me, leaving me flat on the forest floor.
He gives me a few moments to catch my hoarse, shattering breaths, but his patience cracks and he hauls me up by the arm.
So that’s it then. My plan has changed from escaping and surviving to simply what skitters ahead—the cloud rolling over the dark skies, headed our way.
Distracted, Cliff tears his glower away from me and sheaths the dagger into his weapons belt, and he picks up the torch. As he turns his back on me, making to head onwards, I glance at the distance the rope has given me, then up at the skies where the critters are drawing nearer.
Their wet, sloppy sounds shudder my skin and sprout goosepimples all over me.
I take my chance just as Cliff steps ahead with the torch rebalanced in his hand.
I bolt ahead, hands raised for the darkness.
Behind me, Cliff curses and I faintly hear the thuds of satchels and the torch dropped. Light extinguishes entirely, and it’s pitch-black all over again.
Skrt, skrt, skrt.
It’s so close—I can almost taste them, like liquorice in the air.
And just as Cliff’s hand snatches a chunk of my hair, my hands reach all the way up with a jump and…
Tentacles latch onto me.
They uncoil from the darkness, snaring around my arms.
Agony is instant. It’s like a thousand fires have been ignited beneath my skin, and they are poisonous flames eating away at the root of my bones.
As quickly as they came, the tentacles slither back up to their cloud and roll away—Cliff’s presence spooking them.
But it’s too late.
I’m already crumpling to the ground.
And just as I hit, I land in arms awaiting me.
5
Cliff catches me before I can hit the dirt. His solid arms lower me to the ground and, with a panicked and fiery look at my arms, his caramel skin pales to washed-out honey.
All I can manage is a whispered moan out of my still lips. The fire is burning my arms from the inside out, like the flames that devour whole villages, but I can’t do anything about it.