“Look what the dog shit dragged in,” I mutter, ladling out soup.
“You wish you looked this good when you're half in the drink,” he replies, plopping down and tossing me a smoked squirrel with one hand.
I catch it mid-air. “What did you pickle this thing in, boot sweat?”
“Only the finest,” Veeto grins, taking a swig from his bottle. “Anyway, I brought you a new one.”
“A new what?”
“Story.” He grins wider, eyes gleaming under his unruly mane. “So I’m out near the Crescent Spine, minding my business, when some idiot human with more balls than brains tries to jump me with a rusty pitchfork. Naturally, I dodge, grab the bastard, and stomp his belly so hard his kidney popped out his throat.”
Charen wheezes from the stew lid. “Bullshit.”
“True story!” Veeto says, holding one hoof up like he’s swearing to the gods. “Kidney. Tongue. Same space. It looked like a pink slug trying to scream.”
I squint at him. “Veeto, I’ve dissected more humans than you’ve seen sober mornings. The kidneys don’t connect to the tongue.”
“Not normally,” he says with a shrug, “but I rearranged his anatomy real creative-like.”
I snort. “More like you hallucinated it.”
Veeto throws a chunk of squirrel at me. I catch it in my mouth and chew slowly.
“Point is,” he says around a mouthful of soup, “humans are dumb. They always come stomping where they don’t belong, thinking the forest owes ‘em a shortcut.”
Charen hiccups. “Speaking of dumb humans…”
Before she can finish, the trees explode.
Well—not literally. But they rustle like a thunderclap, and suddenly there’s this blur of blue and silver charging up the path. Toad Knight.
He skids to a halt in front of the fire, wheezing, one hand on the hilt of that ridiculous sword he calls Righteous Hatred.
“She betrayed us!” he bellows.
Veeto blinks. “What, again?”
Toad Knight spins, jabbing a finger toward Charen. “That eight-legged venomous jezebel is guiding a human—a human—this way!”
Charen lifts one leg in salute. “Guilty.”
“You traitorous dung-stained goblet,” Toad Knight roars. “You’d sell our secrets for a shiny rock!”
“Only if it’sreallyshiny,” she says, already pulling out her next balloon.
I stand, brushing crumbs from my lap, and wander to the edge of the treeline.
Veeto groans. “Ugh, here we go.”
“Quiet,” I say, squinting through the shifting fog.
The trees part in slow motion, and there she is.
Stumbling. Bleeding. Half-dead but upright through sheer hate and muscle memory.
A human girl, maybe five and a half feet of filth, torn leather, and dried blood. Her hair’s black, plastered to her cheeks. She’s leaning on a stick like it’s the only thing keeping her from dropping into the dirt.
And heraura.
