Page 61 of Heartbreak Prince

“I see them.” His voice is tight with nerves. “Stop talking.”

“We can talk quietly,” I assure him. “They only come out when there’s more impact or vibration, or if they hear loud noises.”

“I remember learning about wimmets,” he says, stepping over one of the holes. It’s a larger one, nearly the size of my head. “My tutor showed me sketches—furry little fluffballs with enormous eyes. I thought they were cute.”

“They are very cute. And very deadly. But if we’re careful, we should be able to—”

My foot drops into a hole, and I fall forward.

Vawn catches me by my pack right before I hit the ground. We both freeze, and then I carefully pull my boot out of the hole.

“I think I prefer the forest and the spidermaws,” he whispers.

I step right against him and press my hand over his mouth. Behind him, several paces away, a small fluffy head has emerged from a hole.

The creature has fluffy, floppy ears and immense dark eyes. I have never seen anything so adorable. It’s the strangest feeling, the love that washes over me for that little creature, even as my stomach tightens with sickening horror.

The wimmet cheeps. It has spotted us.

Maybe there’s only one. Maybe we’ll be lucky. If only Vawn hadn’t used up his luck glyph and partially withered his fingertip, we could use that. Our stealth glyphs won’t do us any good here, since they primarily affect visibility. The wimmets, once their attention is caught, can track their prey for miles by scent and sound.

The wimmet chirps again, and several more fuzzy heads pop out of the holes in the ground.

“Run,” I whisper. “We have to run. Run!”

We flee across the slope, heading for the treeline. All around us, wimmets burst out of holes, cheeping delightedly and bouncing toward us. Some of them are dark gray or pink, others are deep blue or crimson. They are part of this ecosystem, adapted to camouflage themselves with blood ivy. They are prey for the spidermaws, and yet they are also predators. Horde hunters.

When they spot a large living thing, they chase it tirelessly. One wimmet, separated from its horde, might follow a traveler for days without causing any harm, but an entire colony of them will leap onto a human or a large animal and cling to it. They might look small and weak, but they’re dangerously fast and shockingly heavy. They’ll cover the entire body of their victim, weigh it down, and overrun it in such large numbers that it collapses. They suffocate their prey, covering its mouth and nose and eyes, piling onto its ribcage until the bones bend and collapse. And the whole time they will chirp lovingly, an affectionate death dirge.

Vawn yells out, trying to shake off two of the wimmets who have caught his legs and are clinging there with tiny paws. The miniscule serrations on the pads of their feet enable them to hold onto their prey until the rest of the horde can catch up and participate in the kill.

I whip out a knife, ready to cut them off the prince, but he’s already activating his nerve stimulation glyph, bending down to prick them with overwhelming pain so they let go.

“The carpet,” I gasp out. “The carpet.”

Vawn unlatches the case, and Severin unfurls from the interior, snapping, “What now? Have you gotten yourselves into trouble again?”

Without answering, Vawn presses his strength glyph, picks me up, and throws me onto the carpet. I catch one of the handles, but Severin is jolting and swerving so horribly that I’m almost thrown off again.

“Stay still so he can get on!” I scream.

“I am trying,” the carpet says. “Shouting at me won’t help.”

“Vawn!” I reach for him, but he paid the price for getting me to safety first. The lower half of his body is covered with adorable, terrible creatures.

I lock arms with him, still holding onto the carpet with one hand. “Kick them off!”

He’s struggling, but more wimmets are leaping onto him every second.

Recklessly I plunge another fingertip into the cut on my wrist, activating my second shockwave glyph with a scream of violent purpose. Thankfully it has recharged enough to be moderately effective, and the pulse of energy hits the wimmets, loosening them. Vawn bites his other thumbnail for strength and the finger next to it for vibration, combining both effects to jar more of the creatures and shake them off.

“Come on!” I shriek. “Come on!”

Kicking and thrashing, he manages to climb onto the carpet. I pluck the remaining creatures off him and hurl them away. “Higher, Severin.”

“Can’t go any higher.” His voice is thready, frayed. “I can’t fly far.”

“Just a little way,” I beg. “To a rock or something. Anywhere we can rest for a minute without being in danger.”