Page 37 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom (Faeted Seasons #2)

Meera

“You should eat something.” Damon sat on a broken tree limb. He nudged me as I stretched in front of him, holding out a dehydrated survival kit and a canteen of water.

I scrunched my nose on instinct but accepted it all the same before I plopped down on the log next to him.

I groaned in slight relief, but it was short-lived.

My feet ached. My back was sore from sleeping on the ground or leaning up against a tree.

My scalp itched. Damon and I hadn’t bathed in days.

We wiped down the best we could, and I had deodorant in my backpack, but that only worked for so long.

The one thing movies and shows never accurately depicted was how everyone looked pretty and clean, even when the world was ending.

Sure, they had a smidge of dirt here, and a smudge of blood there.

But they had clean hair and shiny lips, with just a touch of perfect mascara to brighten their eyes.

The last time I saw my reflection in a pool of water, I looked like a swamp witch. I smelled like one too.

“What I wouldn’t give for real food,” I murmured. At this point, I’d eat a squirrel if I saw one. “Something that didn’t have ‘just add water’ as directions before eating.”

“You can always ask Corvo if he’ll bring you something else” he said while pouring water into his own before stirring. I followed suit, grimacing at the smell.

“He’s moody enough as is bouncing between the realms.” I sighed deeply before taking a bite. It looked disgusting. “What is this one?”

“Beef stroganoff,” he mumbled around a mouthful before swallowing thickly. “It’s not a food I’m familiar with, but if this is anything close to the real thing, I think we could serve this to the hounds at the castle and they’d be thrilled.”

“It’s not my favorite meal in my real life. I wouldn’t bother trying it once we’re out of here if I were you.”

“Hate to break it to you,” he began, pointing his spoon at me before gesturing to our surroundings, “but this is, in fact, real life.”

I grumbled, chewing as quickly as possible.

“Believe me, I’m well aware. My body is done with it.

Nature. Hiking. The outdoors. Fricken done.

” I finished my food and set down my empty parcel before I ran my hands through my greasy hair.

“We’ve been heading toward the Fold for about three weeks, and I have no idea when we’ll actually get there. ”

“How do you figure it’s been three weeks?” Damon waited, curious for my answer. “I stopped asking how many days we’d been here after Corvo said time was a useless construct and he threatened to piss in my closet and shred everything I owned.”

“I didn’t need to ask him. I’m a woman,” I said, raising my brows to him knowingly and motioned with my hand in a circular fashion so he would connect the rest. He waited for me to elaborate, and it was obvious I needed to spell it out for him. “I have a period.”

Damon smiled softly. “I didn’t realize you could track the time with it.”

I shrugged. “I’m regular, so that helps. I mostly get cramps in the mornings. My body does other things throughout the six weeks in-between. Periods are the worst, but at least it’s good for something here.”

“Your scent changed a while back. I assumed it was your courses?—”

“What?” My stomach twisted and my heart shot into my throat as it pounded. I jumped up from the log we were sitting on and turned to face him. “You can smell when I’m on my period? Oh my god! Why didn’t you say something?”

Damon barked a laugh and rubbed his palms on his pants. “Would you have preferred me to mention I can smell blood in that exact moment? Really? That isn’t polite in Faerie, and I would think you’d be appalled if I said something.”

“I’m appalled now!”

“Why, exactly?”

I stared at him, not wanting to speak all the thoughts racing through my head.

Because we know there’s a scent. We just don’t want others to smell it.

It’s just part of the package and we deal with it, but we still try to be as hygienic as possible.

Had I not been? Taking a moment, I breathed in deeply to calm myself. “It’s difficult to explain.”

It was the vague way of saying I was embarrassed. Sure, periods were normal. Yes, it was completely natural to have one. But something about it just made me feel icky knowing Damon could smell it.

“Periods are natural,” he said, echoing my exact thoughts. “It’s okay. It’s just a little blood.”

I blinked rapidly. “Are you trying to mansplain a period to me?”

He chuckled. “I suppose I am. Look, I’m not trying to be a dick here. How about I stop talking and wait until you tell me what I should do.”

“You sound like Atlas right now,” I said, crossing my arms and suddenly feeling a longing for my family.

Atlas was always the voice of reason. The calmest of them all.

Maybe it came with being the firstborn. I don’t know.

But something about Damon’s demeanor and the composure of his voice reminded me of my big brother.

Realizing that, I lost some of the stiffness in my shoulders.

He pressed his lips into a smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” I looked at him curious and he answered, “Sadie told me about your family, when she wasn’t griping at me for existing.”

“Ah.” I sniffed, feeling awkward and not knowing what to say next. “It is a compliment, I guess. He’s a born leader. Level-headed.” I smiled, tilting my head to Damon. “Very much not a dick, most of the time. Not to me at least.”

“Sorry I made you uncomfortable. We don’t have to talk about it. Forget I said anything.” I waved him off, letting him know it was fine. We packed our things up in silence and cleaned up the mess we made. “Can we circle back to what you said, though?”

I groaned. “Which part and why?”

“You said you could track time.” Damon put his hands on his hips and craned his neck back, looking at the sky.

The two moons glowed, beaming down on us and illuminating the landscape of Evorsus.

He then looked down, pointing to a bush of the blue flowers we followed.

“I haven’t been able to. We’re headed north.

I know that much. But I haven’t been able to find a way to track time at all.

We eat and sleep based on our body’s needs and instincts here, and the best I’d hoped for is that we were following some type of pattern similar to life in our realms. But time moves so differently here, that was the best I have come up with and it’s nowhere close to your estimate. ”

My hackles rose instantly in slight defense. “Are you saying you think I’m wrong?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “The opposite actually. I trust your ability to read your own body better than my ability to guess how much time has passed based on how much I sleep and eat.”

“Sorry. I made an assumption there.” I huffed a laugh and started to head north.

Despite being able to dream walk with Vareck, wherever he was in Eversus, we weren’t sleeping at the same time.

I hadn’t seen him, and my heart ached because of it.

I was tired all the time, but sleeping all the time was also counterproductive.

“How many days did you think had passed? I don’t think I even paid attention to that.

Hunger has just been weird. I know I need to eat, but I just don’t want to. ”

“Might have something to do with the quality of our meals.” He sighed, walking beside me. “I thought we’d been here about two weeks.”

“I had to ask Corvo for pads and some wet wipes about a week ago, give or take,” I mumbled. “I had a few in my bag, but my emergency backpack wasn’t meant for a long-term hiking trip through the jungles of hell.”

“He brought them to you? I’m shocked.”

I snorted, thinking about Corvo’s reaction when I asked.

“Well, he wasn’t thrilled about it. He told me he wasn’t a general store.

Or a pharmacy. And then he brought me pads that may as well have been pillows.

So I had to beg him, open a can of tuna he brought me, and then he finally gave me what I asked for.

” I pointed at Damon’s pants. “He brought us clean underwear. It’s not that shocking, is it? ”

“Cats are very transactional. Especially Corvo.”

“Well, he was adamant that he wasn’t a trash can either so there was no transaction I could make there for garbage disposal. I’ve just been burying my trash whenever I have to stop.”

“We do what we have to do here.”

Yeah, we did. Still felt like littering which is an asshole thing to do but I wasn’t carrying around used feminine products and food wrappers.

A thought occurred to me. “Do you think it's been three weeks for them as well?”

“For Sadie and Vareck?” Damon asked.

“You and Corvo said that time isn't the same here on each side. So three weeks have passed here, that's three weeks in our realms based on my body’s cycle. But time moves differently in Eversus from Evorsus. Do you think that they've been there for three weeks too?”

“I think your question can't be answered,” Damin sighed, not in annoyance but at the impossibility of it all. “The way that you're describing time is in reference to how time passes in Faerie or on Earth. That time is linear. Eversus and Evorsus don't move with the rules or laws of time and space that we're accustomed to. If three weeks’ time have passed for us, then three weeks Earth and Faerie time have also passed for Vareck and Sadie. How they’ve spent it and what it feels like is probably very different from us. I wouldn’t be surprised if to them it’s only been a few days, or even months. It’s impossible to know without talking to them. ”

“This place really is hell in every which way,” I grumbled.