Page 59 of The Arcane God

“Saving them?” Turner asked, feeling confused. “We’re not saving them. Those are our horses.”

“So you will eat them soon?” she asked nonchalantly.

“What? No, we don’t eat them,” Turner explained, raising his hands up and shaking his head. “We ride them. And they carry stuff for us.”

“Oh,” she said, pausing her perusal of him again. “Shame.”

Turner laughed at the taken-aback look she gave him. “Trust me, they come in handy when you’re traveling over the mountains,” he said. “Worth more than just a few meals.”

“If you say so,” she said skeptically, walking ahead of him and making him lengthen his stride to catch up with her.

“So you’re…half witch, but you still drink blood?” Turner asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“Yes,” she explained. “Though I don’t need as much as the others. I can live off of food too. If I need to.”

Turner wondered absently what it was like to be the only one of your kind, but he figured it would be hard—having no one else who was quite like you. He hoped Ena had a chance to talk to Xena. They likely had a lot in common, given their mixed heritages.

“That’s lucky,” Turner said kindly.

“I suppose.”

The two of them walked in silence for a while until they got near to the stryx camp, and Xena stopped him, clicking her tongue at him like some sort of horse.

“We can tie the carcass here. I will drain it of its blood and butcher it away from the camp,” she explained.

“Okay,” Turner said, heaving it off his shoulder onto the ground again. “Do you want me to help you hang it?” he asked, gesturing at it.

She just shook her head. Then, after a second, she said, “You should go back soon, though. Wouldn’t want anything else out here to think you are prey again.”

Turner laughed. “Me?” he asked, gesturing at his aforementioned size.

She smiled back at him again—the most feline smile he’d ever seen in his Iblis-damned life, and it sent a shiver through him.

“Good night, daemon,” she said, effectively dismissing him as she turned to the nearest tree and began to fashion a pulley with some fibrous rope that hung there.

Turner just stood there, staring after her, watching his breath turn to mist in the cold air for a few seconds before finally dragging himself away and heading back to camp.

“Fuck me,” he whispered, running his hands through his hair and trying to shake off the feeling of excitement that swirled inside him.

Nothing good would come of that—nothing good ever came of his feelings for someone else. His relationships always fizzled and died, or failed to begin at all. That’s why he was, and always had been, a solo entity. And he was used to it. Not to mention the fact that she was an animal-shifting blood-drinking stryx, and his cousin’s half sister.

No—he needed to kill his excitement right now, as swiftly as possible. No good could come of this at all.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ty

Daylight peeked in through the seams of the tent and Ty could feel the cold seeping in along with it. He knew he should get up to stoke their fire, but he was loath to let Ena out of his arms to do so.

He pulled her closer to him instead, breathing in the smell of her hair.

“Mmm,” she said, letting out a contented sigh as she began to stir awake. She turned around to face him. “Morning,” she said sleepily.

“Morning,” he echoed.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said, reaching out to trace the lines of his face with her fingertips.

“What, last night didn’t convince you?” he asked cockily.