Page 20 of Tell Them That I’m Coming

How did it get here? I know that Duke Haures is careful to keep the veil between Earth and Sombra closed, but with the right spell, it can open. I’m living proof that shadow walkers exist. I’ve been popping into Brille Rouge and Soleil since I was a young spawn. The slavers obviously have a way to travel from Noctavara and back. Could there be a way to travel from the fae realm to the human world?

If there is, I haven’t been able to figure it out just yet. My shadows match our pace as we walk through the Shadowed Woods, but no matter how much I try to create a portal to go anywhere but here, it’s like I’m blocked again.

I wasn’t going to leave yet. Not without Rafe. Still, when I do find him, I’ll need to find my way home again, and I only hope that I’ll be able to.

For now, I focus on hoping that Rafe is okay, and that I’m not walking into a trap by following Thane so easily…

The fae bandit walks a few steps ahead of Binx and me, cloak dragging like darkness behind him, as he turns his head just enough to glance over his shoulder. He’s been doing that every few minutes, as though making sure I haven’t vanished on him, but this is the first time he speaks up.

“You’re quiet,” he tells ne.

“I’m thinking,” I reply automatically.

His lips quirk up in a sly grin. “Let me guess. You were thinking when you ran into a snare, too.”

My jaw clenches. I open my mouth to snap something back—something sharp and satisfying—and the bond tugs, low and steady, like something’s hooked inside of my navel.

I shudder out a breath, deciding not to waste another by retorting. “Never mind.”

“If you say. But, you know, you don’t have to bristle every time I speak. I’m only teasing.”

If that’s what he wants to call it. “I don’t bristle.”

“You do,” he says simply, and that—his calm certainty that he’s right—makes me want to bristle harder.

The dark forest floor is soft beneath my boots, damp and springy, nothing like ash. It gives without crumbling, and that should be comforting, but it isn’t. It’s too alive. The trees here don’t just exist. They loom. The silver moon overhead helps me see where I’m going, but the way it enhances the soft glow of Thane’s golden skin is even more distracting.

Add that to the grin tugging on his lips, and I have to work to hide my scowl.

So I force my gaze away from his shoulders, from the elegant tilt of his pointed ear beneath the hood of his cloak, from the way the fabric of that cloak sways around his legs like he’s the one who’s made of shadows… I force my attention away from Thane, looking down at the path instead.

The path—or what passes for one.

Thane doesn’t follow trails the way a demon would; except, perhaps, for a Sombran hunter like Dagon or Nox. He doesn’t pick the clearest route or the straightest line. He moves like he’s seeing something I can’t, like the forest is a map only he can read. Sometimes he veers left without warning. Sometimes he pauses and listens, head cocked, amber eyes narrowing at nothing.

Every time he does, my body reacts. I feel heat pooling down in the lower part of my belly, watching him closely as though I can’t resist the pull. It’s the mate bond again, I know it is, and considering this is the worst possible moment for me to feel so very drawn to a stranger, I hate it.

I also… don’t.

Crud.

Hours into our walk—and not that much longer after I realized they were missing— a trio of monarch butterflies appear, fluttering in and out of view like I can’t be sure if they’re real or if I’m seeing things.

Sometimes they dart ahead, bright against the dark. Sometimes they vanish completely.

Sometimes one lingers near my hair, close enough that I can feel the brush of air from its wings against my pointed ear, my cheek.

Thane notices every time with a narrowing of his gaze.

He doesn’t comment on the butterflies again—not directly—but I catch him glancing at them with a tightness around his mouth that wasn’t there before when he was enjoying himself teasing me.

“What?” I ask finally, after the third time he looks like he’s swallowed something pointy and sharp.

His eyes slide over to me. “I can’t tell if you’re following them or if the queen’s butterflies are chasing after you.”

My shadows curl around my boots, more transparent than they usually are. They don’t gather. They don’t listen. They just… exist, thin and frustrated, like a limb I can’t fully use.

I glance down at them and grit my teeth.