Too personal.
I don’t want him to taste me. I want him tobreakme.
He straightens, and our mouths collide again, his hands spearing down between us as he rips at his pants, his movements becoming frantic when he releases himself, his solid length pressed against my belly.
Fuck.
My heart gallops as he grabs my leg, takes its weight, and widens me—partsme—the blunt head of his manhood nudging at my tight, uncharted entrance.
Every muscle in my body locks, lungs seizing.
I look up, focus on the glowing stalactites littered across the ceiling, and remind myself to breathe.
Grabbing his ass, I urge him on … then stifle a scream when he punches his hips forward and splits me open.
Irun along the muddy bank, the river growing frailer with every sweeping turn it weaves between the trees. Peering through my hair hanging over my eyes, I spot the first sign I’m getting close: A tall, glass tree weeping toward the ground—a taste of the blast that punched down from the sky and all but eliminated the entire toxic race of Unseelie, freezing the Central Territory of Arrin in a vitreous eternity. Veins from the blast even crackled and stretched their jagged fingers into the outskirts of Bahari, Rouse, and Ocruth.
Everything it touched, it destroyed.
Arrin is now a time capsule that bears all its bruises for those brave enough to venture into the glassy graveyard, though not many dare. There is no vegetation. Nothing but clear dunes and a harsh wind that slowly sands the desolation into a fine, white powder that gets in your ears and eyes and mouth, making it hard to breathe.
But on the outskirts, miners carve out a living from the solid corpse of dunes, and transparent forests and jungles provide unshadowed refuge for people too afraid to rely on lantern light to keep them safe from the Irilak. Lorn is one such village caught on the fault line between dead and alive, glass and soil. It sits on the prominent point of the thinnest elbow of the River Norse, cradled by its tight curl that’s tricky for larger ships to maneuver through.
I keep running until the lush, fertile jungle turns crystalline and cold despite the bold blades of sun striking the see-through canopy and the clusters of buildings, shrubs, and stones. Jagged glass veins stretch across the soil and up into the trees. Covering small cottages. Tempering horses—some with their heads bent, grazing on blades of grass caught in a lucent eternity they’ll never grow out of.
I know I’m too late by the harsh reek upon the air. By the vaporous huddle of Irilak flitting excitedly, collecting in heavy pockets of shade that pour off thick patches of untarnished jungle.
I don’t pay them any heed as I slow my pace and crouch behind a bush. Fist tight around my stolen spear, I watch a large Vruk grub the soil with its stubby nose just shy of the glassy fault line, cast in a large, timely shard of sun that fends off the Irilak nesting in the wing.
Talons punch free from its paw and it slashes,slashes—like a cat toying with its food. Wood rattles, muffled screams howling from beneath the ground …
A bunker.
Before a glass barn that’s splashed in blood, another Vruk is hunched over a messy lump of flesh, head to the side as it crunches through its meal.
Bones pop. Snap.
Splinter.
Someone screams in the distance, the sound swiftly stifled by a fetid roar that makes the hairs on my arms lift.
I crack my neck from side to side.
Three. At least.
Movement draws my eye to yellow liquid trickling down the side of a trunk not far from me, pinching the air with the distinct waft of urine. My gaze climbs up into the fragile canopy to a little boy with straw-colored hair and tear-stained cheeks, blue eyes locked on me, knobby knees barely keeping him wrapped around the branch he’s clinging to.
A wobbled sound spills from his trembling lips, and I lift my finger to my mouth.
He nods, burying his face into his arm.
I inch onto the glass terrain and crouch in a blade of sun, set my spear down, then slide my dagger from its sheath—its wooden hilt cold in my clenched fist as I stake the weapon into the ground.
Drag it sideways.
A shrill scratching sound ratchets through the air, making my teeth grind.
The beast digging at the bunker whips its head in my direction, bits of the splintered trapdoor caught in its wide maw, those black eyes stabbing at me. Blowing puffs of steam from its flared nostrils, it tosses the wood aside and roars, charging, rattling the ground with its thundering approach that lures the attention of the other Vruk feasting by the barn.
