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***
“Wake up, lamb.”
Daeary leaned over me as my eyes flew open. I looked around, relieved to be inside another one of Dyf’s makeshift shelters. I exhaled on a sigh and ran a hand over my face.
“How long was I out?”
“A few hours. You worried us, but then you slipped into a healing sleep, so we let you rest.”
The incubus smiled but didn’t touch me, and for once, I was glad. Even with the few inches between us, I felt the tug on my life force, making me feel both aroused and weak-kneed. Daeary scooted back to give me space, and I sat up.
“I’m so glad to see you.” My mind was still reeling from the nightmare.
“What did you dream?” Dyf asked, sticking his head into the shelter. He looked ready to head out soon, carrying one of Daeary’s bags.
I wanted to tell him about Steve, but the images faded like mist.
“There was a pile of corpses,” I finally said. “And a voice kept talking to me about a beast from the abyss, or something like that.”
Dyf crawled into our shelter, leaving the bags behind. “Beast? Do you remember its name?”
I thought long and hard before I shrugged. “The devourer something. It had a weird name. Something about a bulge?”
Dyf and Daeary exchanged alarmed looks. Daeary’s hand twitched as if he wanted to take mine, but he kept his distance.
Dyf murmured what sounded like, “Segid ee Bulge. The Gaping Maw.”
The dream had all but disappeared from my memory, leaving only a bad aftertaste. I couldn’t remember why I’d been so freaked out when Daeary had woken me. So I said as drily as I could, “Yeah, that. I called him Steve.”
Both men stopped and stared at me. Then Daeary laughed out loud, and even Dyf grinned.
“Only you would meet the Devourer of Souls and call him a silly human name.”
“Steve seems a lot less threatening than all those things you call him. I’d prefer to not give a dream more power than I need to.”
Daeary nodded his approval, but Dyf murmured, “We can only pray it was but a dream.”
***
BETH
As we left the shelter behind, I refused to give the fleeting flashbacks any oxygen. Whenever Daeary’s dead eyes flashed through my mind, I shut the image down and focused on something else. For example, how I’d never been in a forest at this time of the morning, way before sunrise. My magical powers should have drawn me to nature at all hours of the day, but no.
I loved sleeping in, and walking like a zombie between two giant Fae men was not my idea of fun. Even though the view of Daeary’s backside wasn’t exactly a hardship. Dyf had fallen silent again, only speaking when pointing out a special herb or a small animal hiding in the undergrowth.
After an hour into the march, the sky lightened above the canopy, and the forest woke with the dawn chorus. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with cool air. The fatigue in my legs was becoming more difficult to ignore, but whenever I faltered, Dyf pushed me forward.
The third time he poked me in the back, I had enough. I whirled around and hissed, “Stop pushing me.”
He stared at me with such coldness, my heart skipped a beat. What was going on? Did he have regrets about last night? I thought he’d enjoyed himself.
I swallowed hard, but pushed ahead. “Look, if you got second thoughts about us having sex… I mean, I don’t have a problem with that. So if you think I expect more—well, I don’t.”
His glare didn’t soften. Instead, his posture became even more rigid than it already was. “Do not think that we are friends, halfbreed. I do not know if you killed the king or not. And I do not care—”
I interrupted him, my own temper rising so fast I felt dizzy. “What the fuck? What do you mean, if I killed the king? I didn’t kill my own grandfather. I thought you knew that?”
Chapter twenty-eight
