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“I’m going to take a nap,” Wren announced, wrapping his arms around my waist.

Once more, I was given no time to object or react before he’d made his next disorientating move. I couldn’t keep up.

He rested his cheek on the crook of my shoulder, face turned outwards, and wriggled back far enough so that he could lean his chest against me with a great deal more of his weight than I expected. “Wake me up when we get to Sthiara.”

“When we get towhat?”

He didn’t answer.

I knew the bastard couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep that quickly, but with his arms locked around my hips, I didn’t dare turn to find his face or shake him off because I knew that if he fell, he would certainly drag me down with him.

“I don’t know how you can stand him,” I muttered to Elera.

Her soft, pointed ears flickered, and she whinnied in reply—a completely neutral sound, as if she was refusing to get involved. I sighed and did as he’d instructed.

Swaying back and forth gently, I let Elera’s movements guide me as her powerful legs took up a slightly faster pace, and I was surprised at how much more secure I felt when my hands were holding her mane.

Wren was not asleep.

I was not at all familiar with the High Fae’s sleeping habits, but it didn’t take an expert to realise that the uneven breaths I could feel him taking against my shoulders were not those of a person resting. Additionally, he would have to have been certifiably insane to have surrendered any of his control to a half-breed after so thoroughly communicating his distaste for them—occasional niceties and disarming touches aside.

And yet, for some reason, I let him pretend to sleep for the rest of the journey to Sthiara.

Chapter sixteen

The House

“Why did you thinkI left you?”

Wren straightened up as Elera sauntered into the small township of Sthiara, marked by a worn-down sign we’d passed a few moments prior on the side of the road. I felt the loss of his warm cheek upon my shoulder like he had peeled off my clothes, but I steadied myself against a shiver. I didn’t want him to touch me, excite me, or comfort me, and so I had taken advantage of the silence while he pretended to doze off, letting myself cool down and work through my feelings.

Eventually, I’d decided to forgive myself for being human and to better prepare myself for my surroundings. Faerie was filled with magic.Wrenwas filled with magic. I could feel it hovering around me, trying to find a way in so that it could consume me.

I had to keep my guard up.

And that’s precisely what I was going to do.

The road forked ahead; one side led across a bridge over a crystalline stream that appeared to run straight through the town, and the other veered off behind a row of cobblestone buildings with thatch roofing and smoking chimneys.

Elera chose the bridge.

“I don’t know,” I replied contemptuously. “Maybe because you told me to keep my wits about me, and then youleftme?”

I felt him roll his eyes behind me, but his voice lacked all traces of its usual ridicule when he said, “I would say goodbye first, you know.”

Something fluttered, heated, and stretched out in my chest, even as I scoffed.

Sthiara was a quaint town that reminded me of Belgrave in the initial years following its establishment. Very few records existed from that time, and even fewer were illustrated, but I had pored over the one book I’d found in Dante’s with faded grey paintings and sketches depicting the little township in its early days.

The cobblestone street is almost identical to Belgrave, even down to the curbs and flood drainage system that were installed centuries later, and have rows upon rows of small apartments and shopfronts adorned with wood carvings of—

“That’s the Court of Light’s insignia,” Wren told me, answering my unspoken thoughts. His ability to track and read my every movement, even when he was behind me, was becoming quite unsettling.

“Flame?” My eyebrows drew together.

“Ha!” His exclamation echoed in my ears. “That’s an orb of light, not flame. Is that what the humans think it is nowadays? By the Elements, Owain willneverlet me hear the end of it. Whatever you do, don’t tell him that.”

I blinked, long and slow, at the insignia marking every visible doorway in town. “I don’t even know who that is,” I mumbled absentmindedly.