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fifteen

I was way out of my depth here. Regret made my insides feel like they were literally melting with every step we took—in what I could have sworn was the wrong direction, but what the hell did I know? I followed behind the guy who walked like he thought he was on a catwalk— Jesus, man, fuck. I wanted to sniff the hell out of him as much as I wanted to make him trip and fall on his face, just to humble him a little bit.

So infuriating—and I hadn’t been here a full day still.

My backpack was strapped to my back and my arms were around my torso, and it wasn’t warm by any means, but my blood was boiling so my leather jacket was this close to being discarded in the woods.

Then I saw the lights.

Holy shit, we were definitely going in the right direction because I could see the lights ahead, and my legs moved, took me forward faster until I was walking right next to Rune. I held my breath and almost gripped his arm because the closer to the edge of the forest we were, the more I saw how vast this place was.

“Oh, my God…” I whispered when we finally passed the last tree and stopped.

We were atop a steep hill and we were looking down at what could have been a town or a city, but it was at least four times the size of Lavender Hill. The sky had lightened to a pale grayish blue, though most lights in that city were on still. The buildings weren’t skyscrapers, but some of them were big, wide, most made out of something white—wood or stone, I couldn’t be sure.

It was vast and it was endless, and far in the distance I saw the reflection of water on the left, and more trees on the right, mountains rising up on the horizon, going all the way to the west.

It was a whole world here.

“This is the Neutral Lands,” Rune said. “All kinds of creatures and species live here. They are self-governed so the rules of any kingdom in Verenthia don’t apply here. You steal, your hand gets cut off—or worse. You owe someone anything at all, you’re their prisoner.” He turned, and the way he looked down at me nearly suffocated me. “How much do you know about Verenthia?”

“I-I-I…” I shook my head. “Not much, I don’t think. Just what Helid told me—that-that it’s a continent, and-and Emer and Reme and the stars, and…five days. That’s what he said—three to four days to the Seelie Court, and he-he?—”

“Nilah.”

My mouth clamped shut.

I wondered if they had restraining orders against someone saying your name here.

Because I could do ungodly things if this guy kept calling my name in that voice. Not a whisper, but so, so close. So dark. So goddamn sexy.

“Calm down,” he said. “It takes about three days to get to the Seelie Court on horseback, and we will try to find horses, but most of this journey will likely be made on foot. We won’t get to the Court for about seven days, give or take.”

Seven days. My eyes closed. “I was supposed to be home in eight.”

“But now you’ll need fourteen. Focus .”

Goddamn him and his orders— and my body for wanting to obey.

“Maybe you should try to go to a mythical place that isn’t supposed to even exist, and get attacked by monkey monsters, and almost die, and have a complete stranger try to order you around before you focus. ”

It was the anger. It always got the best of me when I felt especially vulnerable, when I was losing control.

Then he went and made it all worse.

“You’re too small to speak to a superior being this way,” he said in wonder, like the thought just crossed his mind and slipped out of his lips—and he sounded genuinely curious, too.

Superior being?

I didn’t even get to gasp before my body moved and my knee shot up.

I got him right in the balls.

Oh, the way he doubled over. The way his breath left his parted lips. The way the veins on the side of his neck protruded—it was delicious. So worth the death he was going to serve me now.

In my mind, I heard the imaginary applause—it really was an outstanding strike. Perfectly executed. 10/10.

However, my moment ended too soon.

In the next, my back was against a tree trunk and he was there with a hand around my neck. I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, and my heart beat all over my body as I watched him.

His eyes were alive, the blue of them so vibrant it could have been liquid. There was a lot more shimmer in them than I’d realized, or maybe it was just because he was pissed off enough to bite my head off.

“Hate to burst your bubble, buddy, but you’re not superior to me in any way,” I choked out.

His fingers around my neck squeezed a little. “Do that again,” he whispered—and now it was a full whisper. I really hated to admit that it sounded better than when he used his normal voice. “I dare you. Do it.”

Except he had me by the neck and he really looked like a predator, and I was scared shitless, even if I’d never admit it out loud. He could break me with those hands, easily, and nobody would even hear it if I screamed.

“I think I made my point. I don’t want to bother again,” I said through gritted teeth.

His eyes closed and his body was so close to mine that I felt the heat of him against my chest, felt his breath blowing against my lips. I closed my eyes, too—to get rid of these insane ideas and emotions that were somehow breaking through the anger and the fear. I wrapped my hands around his forearm— strong as fucking steel —to try to push him off, but my body refused to obey me.

“You only need to be alive to heal the prince,” he whispered against my cheek.

My knees grew weak.

Then he let me go and stepped back, and finally his words registered.

Get yourself together! I screamed at myself in my mind because this was ridiculous. This guy was threatening to hurt me and here I was getting turned on by his proximity?!

“Sure, sure, but then I’d like to see what the prince will have to say if he sees the person who saves his life wounded or bleeding or whatever it is that you’re thinking about doing to me.” The look he gave me… “I’d-I’d like to see what he does then.” I stuttered a little, but I prayed he didn’t notice.

His eyes widened as if to say how dare you? And, yes, it was a threat, but I was pissed now, and when I got pissed I could pretend that I had the upper hand in any given situation much better than when I was calm.

“See? I knew you were afraid of him. I suggest you keep that in mind, Mister Moody,” I added.

And holding onto the straps of my backpack, I walked ahead toward the edge of the hill, terrified he’d grab me again.

He didn’t.

“I’m not afraid of anyone,” he said—and his words rang true. I absolutely believed him, but that didn’t mean I’d ever tell him that.

“Sure, sure. Are we leaving or not?”

He didn’t answer, only moved so fast he was right beside me as if he’d materialized out of thin air. I pretended not to be surprised or startled and just kept my eyes ahead on the town we were headed for. The sun had already peeked over the horizon in the distance and the sky had taken on a gorgeous blue color, and the lights in the town called the Neutral Lands had turned off while we’d been busy arguing.

“How many people live on this continent?” I asked. The hill was steep, and we were walking fast, pulled by gravity. It took more effort to keep a slower pace than to give in to the pull.

“Roughly three million.”

“Holy shit,” I said. That was less than Oregon. “And how big is Verenthia?”

“Big enough,” the asshole said. “But the distance we’ll need to cover to get to the Seelie Court is roughly eight hundred miles.”

Fuck. That was a lot of miles. “And we’re going straight ahead?” Because now that I’d calmed down, I was trying to think of ways to get to the prince faster. Fourteen days was far too long. I’d promised Dad and Fi and Betty eight.

“No.”

That’s it. That’s all he said— no. No explanation, no nothing.

I looked at him, looked at his profile, his ivory skin that looked like porcelain in the sunlight, his hair that took on a hint of golden hue.

I said nothing because it was very hard to speak when the ground seemed intent on making you fall, and it was easier to start jogging because I was sweating trying to keep a walking pace. Rune followed, moving so gracefully, like his feet were gliding on the grass, while mine slammed against it in a very messy way. I never had a problem with being clumsy until I saw this guy move.

But five minutes later, we reached the bottom of the hill, and I was breathing like I’d been running an entire marathon, wishing I’d gone to the gym like I’d planned two years ago.

Because as soon as the ground beneath my feet was flat, I stopped with my hands on my knees and it took me a good while to catch my breath, to get my heartbeat to calm down. I was a sweaty mess, and I was completely dehydrated, and I was starving.

I looked up to find Rune standing some ten feet away, shoulder resting on one of the few trees in front of me that could have been an oak if its leaves were only green, with a look on his face that could very well mean he was disgusted.

Suddenly self-conscious about how I’d been about to die just now from having to jog —on a decline—for five minutes, I straightened up and wiped my forehead, and tried to act like I was perfectly okay. I pushed my hair back—the back of my neck was so wet—and didn’t even flinch at how good it felt when a little air hit my skin and cooled it down.

“So, um…” Fuck, I still couldn’t breathe properly without stopping to suck in shallow breaths.

And the guy kept on watching me like that with his arms crossed and his brows slightly raised.

This was not going the way it was supposed to at all.

“Water,” I finally choked because fuck him. I wasn’t trying to look good in front of him!

Actually, I was, but I couldn’t right now, so to hell with it.

“I need water, and I need food.”

Yes, he most definitely hated my guts, and I could tell simply by the way he turned around without a word and continued walking between the trees toward the buildings in the distance.

* * *

It was a town. It had houses and buildings mostly made out of white stone, but some were wooden, too. Only a few with brown bricks. I was still breathing a bit heavier, though we’d walked to that first building in silence, Rune ahead and me a few feet behind. I really did need water—my very soul was parched, and my limbs were shaking, too, from lack of energy.

Yet when we walked alongside the first wide building that marked the edge of this town, I forgot all about food and water for a little while.

No people, which made sense because it was still early. And the lights seemed to still be on everywhere, except they weren’t lightbulbs. They were that same glowy liquid trapped in what could have been balls made out of thin glass, some golden and some silver, hanging onto the edges of buildings and atop doors and windows.

I knew how big this place was because I’d seen it from up the hill—the hill that seemed to stretch all the way to the sides, too, when I looked back—but I still couldn’t help but imagine it the same size as Lavender Hill. That place was all I really knew.

There was no rhyme or reason to the way the buildings were constructed. They stood corner to corner and front to front, some doors huge and some that came up to my hips only, which made me wonder, and made my heart beat faster with every new step we took.

Until we heard a sound—something like a call, but it must have come from machinery, I thought.

The next second, Rune grabbed me by the arm and pushed me to the side and slammed us both against the stone wall of a two-story building. My heart all but flew out my ribcage. I looked down and his arm was over me, right below my boobs, his forearm touching them, pushing them up. His eyes were on me, and right now he didn’t look disgusted. He just looked calculating as he took in every single one of my features slowly, like he was trying to commit me to memory.

Then he said, “Don’t move until I come back.”

And he slipped around the corner of the building in one fluid movement, like he didn’t own a damn bone in his body.

Wait! Come back!

The words got stuck in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed in deeply, tried to calm my nerves. There was nobody here— nobody —and if there were, they wouldn’t be monkey monsters coming to devour me—they would be people. Please let there only be people…

But my panic, thankfully, was very short-lived because Rune came back possibly less than two minutes later. I had just gotten my breathing under control again when he simply materialized from around the corner and stopped in front of me, looking down at me like he was still making up his mind whether to kill me and pretend he never saw me in the woods, blame it on the fucking monster monkeys.

Now that I thought about it, it would have actually been easy.

“Where w—” I stopped talking when he raised his hands and showed me what was in them—a piece of fabric.

A red scarf with thin golden threads here and there that you could only see from close up. And he put it right over my head.

“What the hell?!”

I tried to get away, step aside. He put his leg between mine and pinned me in place.

“It’s clean. And you need to wear this at all times. Cover your face as much as you can.”

I looked up at him, dumbfounded, as he tied the scarf underneath my chin, and then tucked my hair in— without my permission, I might add.

“Do I need to remind you that nobody here saw me or knows who I am! ” I hissed, and I had the good sense to put my hands on his chest— how in the fuck is he so strong?! Seriously, his muscles were like steel—and push him back until I had some space to breathe.

His proximity was not good for my health. Or self-respect.

“True,” he said, and now he was slightly smiling, not disgusted in the least as he took me in.

“I don’t need a stupid sc—” I made to grab that thing and take it off, but his hand closed around my wrist and stopped me.

He towered over me once more and whispered, “There are a lot of creatures here who prey on beauty. We don’t want to call attention to ourselves, remember?”

“Well, I—wait, what?” Did he say prey on beauty ?

“The less people see of you, the better,” he continued and let go of my wrist.

I was grinning now. “Oh—so you think I’m beautiful ?”

It was meant as teasing. Rune seemed to bring that side out in me—I wanted to tease him as relentlessly as I did Betty, but with him I was pretty sure it was a side effect of the nervousness he made me feel because of this physical attraction I seemed to have to him.

Either way, I meant it as a joke.

Rune didn’t even smile, the asshole, simply said, “You are.”

Just like that, he took all the fun right out of it. Made it…unimportant .

“A lot of creatures here will go to great lengths to own a face like yours even if they don’t know who or what you are.”

Ugh. Own a face? Was he serious?

I waved him off. “Whatever. Let’s just find somewhere to eat.” I pulled the scarf lower until it fell to the middle of my forehead. “This good enough?”

Again, he analyzed me with that same focus, then leaned in and pulled the knot he’d tied over my chin so it covered my bottom lip completely. “This is.”

I rolled my eyes. “You still think I’m beautiful.” Again, this was meant to tease him, but this guy, for all his changing moods, seemed to have no sense of humor in his veins.

“Mermaids are beautiful, too. They are still mermaids.”

“I beg your pardon—did you say mermaids ?” And in my mind, the image of Ariel with the long red hair and the green tail and the purple shells for a bra, came alive.

“I did.”

“What…what… how ?” Nobody said anything about mermaids to me. Helid never mentioned them—he said fae! Not monkey monsters and not mermaids—just fae.

“The only thing you need to concern yourself with when it comes to mermaids is staying away from them at all costs no matter what happens,” Rune said. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

Just as he said that, we heard the same sound as before from somewhere behind the building, and I kept imagining it was a dong or something—anything made of metal that was being hit by a hammer.

“Hey, wait!” I said and followed Rune, and the moment we stepped away from the next two-story building, I saw exactly where the sound was coming from.

An animal that looked maybe forty percent like a rooster, was standing on a single leg, large claws wrapped around a thick piece of wood in front of a one-story building. It had colorful fur on its head, and its feathers had edges made of fucking metal if my eyes weren’t lying to me. Its beak was sharp and grey, and when it opened, and its tongue came out, it was forked.

A rooster with a forked tongue that sounded like a goddamn bong.

Suddenly I found myself with my arms around Rune’s because this was insane. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the rooster even when Rune looked down at me, at my hands around the curves of his biceps, but he didn’t push me away. For that I was thankful.

Because after another row of buildings, we came into this open space—a wide street set in triangular cobblestone lined with buildings of all kinds and sizes on either side. Most importantly, the residents of the Neutral Lands were out in the open, under the fresh sunlight to make it very easy for me to see.

My fingernails dug into Rune’s arm, but he didn’t complain. He just kept walking like he couldn’t see what was around us.

A man with two heads on his shoulder—a woman with purple skin—another with glowing white eyes—a man with two lizards on his forearms with their tails wrapped around his arms like accessories—another with a bald head and a black mustache!

That last one might be the most traumatizing thing I’d ever seen.

Just kidding. I’m trying to cope here.

And, unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to stop looking or make a single sound no matter how many times my lips opened and closed.

“Breathe. You’re safe,” Rune said, again, as if he couldn’t see another woman standing in front of what could have been a shop, and she was waving her hands that were tipped with claws toward the rooftop, while water dripped from the very tip. It wasn’t coming from anything at all, but the drops were materializing out of thin air then sliding down the reddish shingles.

When she turned, my legs stopped moving and Rune had no choice but to stop with me.

Her skin wasn’t green, but her noise was big and pointy, and she had fangs coming out of her lower jaw.

“Wi-w-w-w…” Witch! It’s a witch! I couldn’t speak, though. I could hardly breathe at all.

“By Reme, he didn’t tell you anything ?”

Rune asked me that. He actually asked me that.

Then, when he realized I wasn’t going to answer, he stepped in front of me, took my face in his hands, blocked my view of the woman with the claws and the fangs, and said, “If you can keep your eyes down until we find a place to sit, I’ll explain everything.”

As if I had another fucking choice.