Page 19 of Beyond the Veil (Endangered Fae #4)

A year? And his nail still hasn’t grown back? Nusair might pretend that the iron wasn’t such a problem for him, but he was obviously suffering. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“I think you really mean that.” Nusair tucked an escaping strand of bright purple hair back under the shirt keffiyeh . “Even if I could get him out, you have no way to relieve his pain. Let him stay where it’s quiet and safe.”

There was some horrible amount of sense in that, but the refusal still hurt. I just want to hold him. “So why aren’t you where it’s quiet and safe?”

“Little sorcerer, when you’ve been shut up in someone’s stinking perfume bottle for a couple hundred years, you develop an aversion to being locked away.”

“Oh. Of course. Sorry.”

Nusair heaved himself up and stood straight again. “You’re okay, for a human. Not that it matters. We’ll all die here regardless of race.”

He strode out and turned the corner where he apparently ran into the Canadian trio guarding the corridor entrance.

“Hey, kids. How’s it hanging?”

“Who the hell—”

“Where did he—”

“Hey, Diego! You okay in there?”

When Diego emerged, the boys pounced on him, demanding to know who that was and what had happened.

“That was Nusair. A potential ally. Please be kind to him when you see him. I think he’s been in this purgatory for longer than he wants to admit.”

The trail had been easy to pick up at the edge of Prince Faisal’s estate.

Limpet had asked what sort and Theo had had trouble describing it.

A psychic trail, if he had to give it a name, but it was the remainder of the connection Mr. Sandoval had forged with him in their first days together.

Theo had sworn to him and the connection was simply…

there, an invisible Ariadne’s thread that could always lead him back.

The thread should have been severed, or he thought it should have been, when Mr. Sandoval regained the lost pieces of his soul.

That was another thing no one could explain.

If those pieces had been misplaced and recovered, where had they gone?

He’d found that people who dealt with magic didn’t often have sensible explanations for the things they did.

They simply felt and things just were . For Theo, this lackadaisical attitude didn’t fly.

There had to be explanations, a set of natural laws that applied.

Consul Morrison said there were and that the dragons understood them. For most humans though, magic was still a fairy-tale poof kind of thing.

“Mr. Sandoval wouldn’t look at it that way. I know he would try to find out more.”

“Pardon?” Limpet glanced over from his contemplation of the desert rolling by and Theo realized to his embarrassment that he’d spoken aloud.

“Nothing. Thinking.”

“You spend a great deal of time thinking. But I’m sure I haven’t heard you thinking before. Does that happen often?”

“No. Sometimes. Maybe.” Theo adjusted the truck’s sun visor.

Two hours outside the city, they were still driving on paved road, passing occasional clusters of houses or roadside businesses.

He didn’t think that would last too much longer.

If the prison lay well hidden in the desert, it wouldn’t be along a well-maintained road.

“I’m alone a lot. Maybe I talk to myself. ”

“Ah.”

That short statement seemed too good to be true, and it was, since a moment later Limpet launched into a long, complicated story about a kelpie who insisted on living alone and couldn’t lure humans to her because she always muttered to herself.

Theo managed to tune him out after the first few sentences, worried about the sun and the increasingly flat landscape.

No hills and no trees equaled no shade. He could push on for longer than he probably should but not indefinitely.

Limpet’s cheerful, animated voice was actually becoming less annoying, at least. It was a soft voice, with one of those beautiful fae accents perfect for storytelling, soothing but not necessarily mentally invasive when Limpet rattled on, like having NPR on as Theo drove.

Another hour and all signs of human habitation ended.

Theo pulled his hat lower, trying to ignore the tightening bands of pain around his head and chest. Heat he could deal with, but the damn sun was just merciless.

Worse, he started to feel the pull of the trail off to his left.

While he hoped for a crossroad or a turn in the highway, if the tugging on his brain got any worse, they would have to head out into open desert.

Six five-gallon bottles of water in the back of the truck. Four full cans of gas strapped to the sides, so we won’t run out of fuel. No more than a hundred kilometers of desert to cross. We’ll be all right. Probably.

Limpet was still telling his story, chipper and unconcerned that his audience might not be listening.

It didn’t matter to him. He was so astonishingly untouched , despite the violence he’d experienced early in life, as if everything just slid off him somehow.

No guilt, no regrets—how would it feel to live like that?

“Theo?”

“Hmm?”

“Your eye is twitching.”

“Yes.” Theo hoped that would be the end of it. No such luck.

“You’re worried about something? That is, of course you are with Finn and Diego locked in some cage. But I mean something new. That makes your eye twitch. And now you’re growling.”

Theo choked off the low rumble with a cough.

It was his own fault for not tossing the selkie out while in the city, but he hadn’t been sure that the little guy would make it back to the embassy on his own.

Then it would have been Theo’s fault when he was detained by the police.

“We have to head off road. This truck is made for it, but, yes, it worries me.”

“Ah. Out into the waterless wastes. I think that worries me a bit, too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dry.”

“It is a lot of dry.”

After another mile, Theo couldn’t put it off any longer.

The pull had just started turning to the left and back, so he knew he was in danger of going too far west. He eased the truck off the road and started south, out into the ocean of sand.

With its wide, knobbed tires, the truck seemed to handle the uneven ground well.

Theo just hoped it stayed that way. Did sand get deep in places? Would they sink?

“I’ve just worried you more,” Limpet said with a frown. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do. Should I tell you another story? You seemed to like the last one. Although maybe you were trying to be polite and—”

“Yes. Please. A story.” Anything to stop the barrage of rambling, ADHD topic-jumping questions and observations Theo knew was coming.

“Happy to oblige. Once there was a water dragon. I suppose you’ve never met one of them. They’re not really like the mountain dragons you probably know, all wise and fierce and strange. Oh, the water dragons are wise in their own way, but they only care about water things…”

Theo allowed himself a little smile, congratulating himself for getting Limpet focused again so he could concentrate on driving into the hell of sand.

While he had a direction, he had no sense of distance yet and he couldn’t shake an odd, absurd notion that they would drive off the end of the world.