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He paused. “You are Sloane Marlow, though, right?”
“The one and only. Which is why you’re going to come back and help me right now. Nia’n’an needs help.”
The minotaur opened his hands up and patted the air.He had both his horns sawed off for some reason. I couldn’t fathom why, it wasn’t like a minotaur needed to wear a trucker cap.
“Lady,” he said, with a drawl, “I don’t think he wants me there. Let me take you home.”
“No!” I shouted—loud enough that a flock of birds in the jungle behind him took off. “He needs help! Come help him! I will pay whatever it takes for you to help him!”
He didn’t move an inch, and I was furious with him.
I couldn’t believe that I’d sort-of helped defeat the fighters back there, only to be confronted now with a far more important problem that my money couldn’t solve.
“Did he tell you that?” the minotaur asked, his warm brown eyes narrowing at me.
I reluctantly shook my head. “His translator broke.”
I watched his furry eyebrows rise. “Uh-huh,” he said.
Like he knew things.
And then he went back into his cockpit and came out with something in his hands for me—a fresh translation device, I realized, as he tried to pass it over.
“How about you go back and talk to him first?” he offered. “I’ve got a few days’ worth of rations. I’ll wait here.”
“Are you really not going to help me? I’m offering you, like, forty million dollars!” I pulled the amount out of thin air. There was no way my father would give that much to me, but I’d get it somehow.
Fuck, I’d start up my own skincare line if I had to.
“That spider in there’s my friend,” he said, looking meup and down, perhaps taking Nia’n’an’s handprints on my face in. “And, uh, judging by your situation, all things considered—I think he’d rather talk to you.”
“You are a fucker,” I told him, but I snatched the translation device away from him and started my way back into the cave.
My eyes adjustedto the darkness far more quickly than they used to, and the same fungi that had lit my path out now showed me my way in, especially the parts where I’d almost lost my balance prior and had scraped pieces of it off the wall.
It seemed to take forever but eventually I made my way back to where I’d left Nia’n’an—only to find the entire tunnel’s entrance covered with a thick fog of silk.
“Nia’n’an?” I asked nervously.
Had some other spider come by, hurt Nia’n’an, and then asserted its seniority?
Then I heard his crooning tone.
“Oh thank God,” I huffed, and started trying to make my way through the stuff—and he met me halfway, reaching out and then pulling me through, helping to support me with his two front spider legs.
He’d created a little tunnel in the middle of the carnage where everything funneled into one point, like a teepee lying on its side.
“Nia’n’an?” I asked. I was glad to see him walkingaround—and webbing?—but he didn’t seem better yet to me. “Here.”
I offered the translation device over.
He looked from it, to me, and then put the device on slowly, so that it hung from a ridge near where a human might have an ear, and the mouthpiece was over his own. “My love,” he said—the same thing I thought I’d heard him say a thousand times before—only this time the device translated it for me, telling me his words in a mechanical sounding robot voice.
My jaw dropped and I gasped. “Is that what you’ve been calling me? This whole time?”
His head bowed to mine. “Yes, my love. My Sloane.” His way of saying my name seemed to involve none of the letters my name actually possessed, but the translator managed it all the same.
I sagged with relief. “Are you better now?” I asked, grabbing hold of his arm and pulling. “There’s a helicopter outside. There’s room for you. Let’s go to it?—”
