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This demanding.
It was similar to the wild darkness I felt when staring at the Runturin moments ago, the pull and desperation rumbling through me with the same need.
I took another step.
I wasn’t there to kill Fae; I shouldn’t be following anything but the path to end the queen. But this pull, this desperate yank of powerful magic…
Yersua had said he took the ears to the barracks door at the Runturin. Those old barracks were still connected to the main castle. If I caught this Fae and took its ears to that door, I could find a way in. I could find my way to the queen.
The boy may have cost me time, but he also led me right to what I needed to finish this job.
To gain access to the Runturin.
“Don’t worry Lilly. I am going to fix everything, I promise.” The words were little more than a hiss before I took off running.
Chapter 15
Caspyn
The pull nearly dragged me through winding alleys into unfamiliar streets. The longer I followed it, the stronger that webbing tingled over my skin, sending me stumbling alongside grime covered walls that grew dirtier with each step. The poor slunk into shadows, gaunt faces and frail hands pulling tattered blankets tighter, eyes wide and haunted as they watched me walk by them as though I was a wraith from another world.
I didn’t stop moving, my cloak flowing behind me as I kept my hand on the hilt of my blade, those tendrils of warning becoming like a vice. Each of those glittering strands tightened with each step, the pull from them becoming near desperate, as though if I didn’t move fast enough I would lose them.
I turned one corner, then another, squeezing through tight alleys and wide yards, only freezing once when I swore I heard the scrape of a sword against leather behind me. There was nothing there but shadows, the violent pull of all those threads yanking me forward and keeping me from investigating further.
Not that it mattered, nothing was there but an old drunk anyways.
Answering in kind, I picked up my pace, weaving through streets and dodging puddles of excrement before the winding alley I had been racing down came to an end; a scratched, stained, and chipped door rising up before me.
By the Goddess. The bastard was in there, I could feel them, maybe a floor up. The sides of the building that closed off the alley were too slick with grime for me to scale without too much noise, which meant the door was the only option. Not being familiar enough with the city, even I knew I could be walking into a trap.
I took two steps back, the sound of whimpering and rustling meeting me as I moved too close to a beggar that was still trying to move into the wall in an effort to get away from me.
“What’s behind there,” I growled, pointing a black gloved finger at the door. The poor woman looked up at me with skin streaked with dirt, eyes wide and blood shot as she tried again to move into the wall.
I must look like death had come to claim her with the look she was giving me. Perhaps I was.
“Here. For five coins,” I said, fishing them out and throwing them on the ground before her. “Tell me what’s behind that door. Is it a home? A shop?”
Her eyes darted between coins and my face before she darted forward, trying to swipe up the glinting pieces of gold before my foot and cape swept forward, stopping her.
“Answer first.”
“A flop. ‘Tis a flop.” She made for the coins again, and this time I moved back, letting her snatch them before she scuttled away and left me to stare at the door again.
A flop. An abandoned home where those addled with drugs or spirits would find themselves lost for days to work off the dosage.
What in the world was a Fae doing in there? Especially a Fae strong enough to pull me to this door.
Every other time I had found the beasts in a city or town it was in some fine inn, surrounded by merchants in an attempt to blend in with those fine silken clothes they always wore.
But here?
The alley was empty and silent now as I pushed the door open, the hinges eerily silent as I stepped into a space fouler than the alley I had come from. The woman was right, it was a flop. People lay everywhere as they drowned in a world of vices, lust, and greed. The smell of unwashed bodies and excrement was as permeating as the dark as I made my way through the mass of bodies, barely able to inhale now with the pressure in my chest and arms.
The Fae was close.
Oddly, none of the stairs made a sound as I began my ascent, still keeping my hand on the hilt of my blade. Even with the subtle groans and moans of the mass of people below me, the sound of a sword escaping its sheathe would be too loud for Fae ears. I would be lucky if I could get close before they attacked.
