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“What is it?” I breathed, some deep animal instinct instructing me to keep my voice quiet.
She didn’t speak, but lifted her finger and pointed instead. Down into the ravine, my sharp fae eyes acclimated to the darkness so that what was at first glance a wall of black began to show shades of nuance. I strained my ears to hear, to see if I could match what my eyes saw.
A river, at the bottom of the ravine, rushing softly.
And at the riverside, tucked in among the tall boulders, was a tent.
“Who—”
But Veyka was already moving. She’d chosen a path and was picking her way down the treacherous slope of the ravine. She had to go slowly, or risk upsetting the rocks and alerting whoever waited below to our approach. I could no more hurry after her than yell for her. I could shift. But little good it would do me—my beast was not winged.
I had no choice but to follow her down, step by agonizing step.
She reached the bottom of the ravine a minute before me, but I was ready. She was damned fast, but she didn’t have the advantage of surprise. I grabbed her arm, one hand going around her mouth to stifle the cry of surprise.
The damned queen bit me.
I kept in my own curse, lowering my hand slowly. “I was only trying to stop you from crying out,” I whispered against her ear, still holding her firmly back against my body. She gave up struggling, thankfully. My cock did not care about the danger of the situation.
“Let me go,” Veyka hissed.
I didn’t relax my grasp even a fraction. “What is your plan?” I countered.
“To find out who the hell is in that tent and what they are doing all the way out here,” she said back.
“What will they say when they realize it is their queen questioning them?” Whatever anonymity she’d been granted by her sheltered upbringing was gone since that afternoon in the throne room. Petitioners from all over the elemental kingdom had come. Word of the gorgeous, white haired queen would have reached even the terrestrial kingdom by now.
She exhaled very slowly. “Who says they are fae?”
A shift in the breeze, and I knew she was right—we both did. For the scent that drifted across the dark red clay was unmistakably human.
It wasn’t coming from the tent, either.
A shape moved in the darkness.
He made no attempt to soften his footsteps, scraping across the muddy clay riverbed. But there was something wrong. Veyka must have sensed it as well. She shifted her weight back, moved her hand for one of her daggers.
“Why have you come to Annwyn?” she said sharply, her voice brimming with authority.
No answer came. She drew her knife.
“Who brought you here?”
Still, no response.
But the shifting in the darkness was faster, more urgent. Another few seconds, and the moonlight and our adjusted eyes would reveal the human intruder to us.
“Answer my questions or you die,” Veyka said. There was not a single ounce of mercy in her voice. I was not inclined to it either.
Then the man lurched into the pale moonlight.
Not a man—not anymore. One leg stuck out at a terrible angle, bent at the knee. Still, it advanced forward. Half of its face was missing, nothing more than a gaping hole of black. It was moving faster now, dragging that ruined leg through the mud. No limp, no sign that the human felt the pain.
Because it was not human, not now. It was something else, something other.
And it sprang for our throats.
I lunged forward, shoving Veyka behind me. I ignored her holler of protest, pulling my axe free from my belt and swinging it above my head in one fluid motion. The human-thing had no weapons. I’d fell it easily. But there was no recognition or hesitation in its eyes—in the one eye it had remaining, the other half of its face a ruined mess of red blood now dried to black.
