Page 118

“Oh, not me,” he smirks the words down at me.

I’m closer now, and so he reaches down and tugs a stray strand of my hair, a little too hard.

I wince, then turn a hiss up at him.

His smile is unfazed. “I do just fine in the sun.”

Right.

Hybrid.

“How long will it take?” I ask.

He arches a brow in question.

“Before you find me?” I add. “What if by the time you do reach me, I’m dead?”

He shakes his head. “Keep hidden. Smear dirt all over yourself for camouflage and to mask your scent. Keep close to the riverbanks and streams. Hide. And I’ll get to you in time.”

I don’t need to ask why Dare is the one meant to hunt me down. It’s his career. He’s a tracker, a hunter, a spy, a killer. And he’s faster than the others.

Dare has a better chance of getting to me quick if he’s moving alone.

A heavy sigh whooshes out of me.

I deflate and lean my head back.

The darkness above is a thick blanket that weighs down on me.

Soon, it will shudder through time and space, through the bridges or create some of its own with sheer, brute force.

It will eat at the human realm like it eats at the light in a lantern. It will devour and destroy and blind.

And I feel that in its weight crushing me.

I grunt and climb the rest of the way up.

I roll onto the roof and flop down on my back.

Dare turns slightly, angles himself to consider me.

“What will happen out there?” I whisper the question, eyes fixed up at the dark. “To them?”

It must take Dare a moment to follow my thoughts to the humans, because there’s a pause before he says, “First, darkness. Predictably, they will let their panic lead them into war, bloodshed over resources. They will get sick, die off in the masses.”

I turn my chin; my cheek presses against the cool floor of the roof. “Sick?”

Dare hikes his knee and rests his forearm on it. “The iilra will send plagues through the darkness,” he says with a one-shoulder shrug. “Those who survive it will later face us.”

I swat at a strand of hair stuck to my brow. “Do you support that? An entire species, not terribly unlike us, wiped out?”

No matter what any fae thinks of a human, to allow this, to allow the dark ones to saunter into their realm and slaughter them all, is a harrowing thing.

I’ve never had much pity for anyone outside of me. But gods, I pray for them all.

Dare’s brow knits together. Waves of dark hair fall into his face.

He considers me, not the question, before he says, “Yes.”