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Saying goodbye, we stepped out, heading quickly away from the fields and main road and toward a trail.
“What was that?” I nudged her when we stepped on the path.
“What?”
“I don’t know… you sounded very courtly.”
“I’m rich, remember?” she replied flatly. “It’s how we speak.”
“And I guess how they bite too.” I winked, touching the small wound on my neck. “Though that seemed a little less proper and more feral.”
She picked up her pace, not responding to me.
“Scarlet?” She didn’t react. “Hey?” I grabbed her arm, turning her to me. “I was just teasing.”
“Don’t.” Her lids narrowed. “Don’t tease. Let’s not even talk. We have a lot of ground to cover, and we need to get away from here.” She strode down the lane, furious at something.
I was about to call after her when howls from dogs came from the distance, and I quickened my step behind her.
She was right. We had to get far, far away before they locked onto our scents and I had teeth sinking into me in a very different way.
Chapter 10
Ash
We slogged down the hill in a laborious cadence. Spires of human churches and buildings crested the dusky horizon, lights guiding us through the fields to the town of Sebe?. The idea of a warm place to sleep and hot food in our bellies motivated me to keep going.
Barely.
Snow swelled the clouds overhead like pregnant sheep, baying in discomfort and ready to give birth. The contradiction of sweating under your clothes and being so cold you could no longer speak hadn’t lessened in the last thirty hours. Not that Scarlet seemed keen to talk to me anyway. Her answers to everything since we left had been short and curt.
Exhaustion coated Scarlet’s features. Her pallid complexion highlighted her pink cheeks and nose, rosy and runny from the freezing temperatures.
We had only slept a few hours in some dilapidated abandoned house the night before. At least it gave us shelter from the icy temps as we nibbled on what we had of Anca’s leftovers. Sleep came fast, but it didn’t keep me long—an endless loop of nightmares surging me awake with fitful gasps.
Scarlet pretended to be asleep, but I could feel her wide awake along with me, both of us suffering silently in the freezing night.
Silence had never bothered me before; it was where I used to find comfort and meditate in my thoughts. Now I found death. Not just in myself, but in the villages and hamlets we had passed through. Twenty-two years after the fall of the Otherworld, these places had become forsaken. Most had given up a long time ago, moving into bigger cities to try to survive, leaving these places derelict and lifeless.
Scarlet’s muteness bothered me the most because I could feel her thoughts battering loudly, though I couldn’t hear them. I felt her shutting down more and more, yet I couldn’t seem to stop it.
And why did I even care?
Of course I cared about her as a living, breathing person, but I didn’t need her to express herself to continue to do that. I could see her drifting off to dark places, the vacant stares at the wall as we ate last night, getting lost in a past I knew nothing about. It made me want to pick at her. Find a thread and pull until she unraveled.
The old Ash would have. He was interested in people, curious about their lives.
This man no longer did. He used up all his empathy. His humanity. He only craved finding a brothel to fuck and get high in.
My teeth sat on edge at the idea of fresh powder riding through my veins. To not feel anything anymore. To not care about her silence.
Between a river and two major crossroads, Sebe? had become a booming town. Even more than it probably was before the fae war. A hub for trade, travel, transporting, and, of course, titillation.
Firelights flickered from the signs down the strip, trying to gain notice over the identical business next door. Various styles of buildings were crammed together, and in some I could feel German/Dutch influence from its first settlers, even though they had been taken over many times since then.
Horses, wagons, and a few derelict motorcycles filled the narrow street, assaulting the air with manure and battery acid. Music and light streamed from the pub’s windows while women and men of the night stirred in the rooms above, their day just beginning.
Looking at Scarlet again, noting the exhaustion on her face and the way she held her ribs, I knew she needed a bed tonight.
