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He brushes the trimmings of hair out of his bedroll, inexplicably restless. Even tangled and matted, the hollow’s darkhair is soft as silk. On a whim Arsene picks up a lock and twists it around his fingers.
Lush, vivid images spring to mind. A nest of soft things in all colors. A pale, lithe figure with long hair as dark as the sea spread out in ripples everywhere. Silken flesh giving under his fingers, shiny with sweat. Gasps and whines of pure need. Delights only a vergis can supply.
In another life, it would be his role to bring swathes of watery silk for the nest, to worship those sweet expanses of skin, to make his vergis feel wanted and perfect. He would tumble into a vergis’s world as a used and tarnished weapon and be forged anew in his mate’s heat. But that life can’t begin until this one ends.
He shudders and pockets the lock of hair.
Chapter 12
NUR
Nur is swiftly entangledin the routines of the human camp, bounced around a number of jobs and handed off to various cheerful, welcoming tutors. In the corner of his eye Irvin and Myra both seem omnipresent, watching and waiting for him to stumble. Maybe they’re expecting him to turn around one day and gobble up one of their pups.
Even in jest the thought turns Nur’s stomach. Bu they aren’t wrong for being wary. The beast lives on in him—it lurks very near the surface.
In the Court he was often aimless, bored out of his skull until summoned by the King to exact justice or punishment, but here there’s always a task, even while the caravan is on the move. He quickly learns he doesn’t like physical labour, hates the smells and the smothering heat that go along with cooking, but doesn’t mind working with his hands. When the cook gives him an armful of old rags that need darning, he returns them stitched up the next day. He finds himself with a second armful soon enough. And a third. Purpose beyond his teeth and claws is so strange he doesn’t know what to think of it.
And the long nights give him far too much time to think.
“Where is the caravan going?” he asks Rhys one night, desperate for a distraction from the rocky landscape of his mind.
The boy obliges kindly. “There’s a new settlement out west, near the coast,” he explains.
Nur chews his lip as he pushes the needle into the stiff cloth of someone’s jacket and tugs it through. He’s an expert at killing, but the challenge of sewing even stitches remains beyond him. “What difference does it make? East, west. This realm is poisoned everywhere.”
“There’s a current carrying the bad air and water away—that’s what they say.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“People like Myra who’ve traveled. She’s made the trip three times now, helping anyone who wants to take a chance on a better life.” Rhys leans back with a sigh. “They say the rain doesn’t burn out there and you don’t need iodine pills.”
“And you trust her?”
“My grandfather was like her. A traveler. He was a mapmaker who made maps using the stars—Myra’s asked me to chart our course on one so she can make copies.” He unrolls a strip of worn leather, marked all over with symbols and lines. “He died before the land could heal. I’m going west in his stead.”
The needle pricks Nur’s thumb; he hisses and lifts his hand quickly to hide the black ichor that wells up.
“How’d you end up in the wastes?” Rhys asks.
Nur glances across the fire. Myra is watching them. “I had nowhere else to go.”
“Good thing you met us, then,” Rhys says decisively.
He doesn’t bother to reply. Life in the human camp is so unlike the Court, but he’s getting used to it. Finding appreciation for it, even. But it isn’t real. The hunger still has him in its claws. When Arsene has no more use for him, Nur can only hope his end will be quick.
Relieffrom his thoughts comes in the form of pain, which takes away his ability to think altogether. The angel ignores him for two more days—laterwas a lie, evidently—and Nur gets lost in the haze. At night, Arsene comes only to wake him for his watch. He disappears while Nur is still groggily wrestling himself out of sleep, leaving a tantalizing swirl of his scent eddying in his wake.
Two can play hard to get,Nur tells himself at first.
Then the cravings rise.
His need sharpens.
He’s so exhausted that he retires early to their shared tent, burying himself in the bed that holds Arsene’s cold-wind-over-stone scent and losing himself to half awake fantasies of being pinned down, that life-giving liquid more precious than water trickling down his throat and coating his mouth with its perfect sweetness. When Arsene wakes him with a rough hand, pure undiluted desire bursts through him. Arsene flinches and hurries to leave.
He won’t feed you, the voice in Nur’s head murmurs.He thinks it’s sick. He lied, and he finds you useless.
Nur paces around the entire camp at night, slowly winding tighter and tighter, the call of the angel’s sun-bright soul almost irresistible.
