Like the screamers, the flesh beetles are easily dispatched, and we’re able to continue forward again.
“This is going to take forever,” Krug grumbles, and I have to second his sentiment. Now more than ever, we need to make quick work of the distance, and we’re being held back by the monsters.
Bracken is standing in front of me, his head tilted to the side as he listens. Out of all of us, his senses are the strongest. Although I can hear and smell creatures coming in, something about Bracken’s old magic and his powers enables him to sense far more. It’s the reason he knew I was following them and still chose not to say anything.
“We must move,” he states, his eyes hard. “We keep moving, and we do our best not to stop.”
“What is it?” Cora asks, reaching for him.
It speaks volumes that Bracken offers her his hand without complaint, that he allows her to comfort him. “The arachne are gaining ground each time we stop.”
“What happens if they catch us?” I ask, studying the fey.
His eyes meet mine. “Then we hope they haven’t brought the queen with them.”
Cora’s hand tightens on my body. “And if they did?”
Bracken’s eyes rove around the forest, as if he’s feeling for them, searching. “We hide and hope they can’t follow.”
Zetros straightens. “If they come within a mile of us, sound the alarm,” he orders Bracken. “We will take cover quickly and do our best to mask our trail.”
We begin to move again, a sense of urgency in our movements. I’ve never ran into the arachne before, but if Bracken fears them, then we should all fear them.
In all my years, I’ve never once seen the dark fey afraid, but now, he looks over his shoulder as if the greatest monster he’s ever seen follows us.
It takes everything to swallow the pit in my chest. For the first time, I wonder if Cora is really safer with us, or if we’re taking her deeper into danger.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
BRACKEN
They are drawing closer. I can feel it. An instinctual alarm is going off in the back of my mind, their magic brushing over me, searching for her.
My goldie.
Mine.
Not theirs.
I speed up, and the others do the same, following my lead. We need to get far away from them, because the idea of them getting their hands on my little human is unthinkable, and for the first time ever, I’m not so sure we would win, and that cannot happen.
We have to keep her safe.
When I first saw Goldie, I was transfixed by the way one is when they see a pretty gem. I needed to hoard it, clutch it, and destroy it, but then she happened. She aimed those stunning eyes at me, leaving me weak and wordless. She showed me the true depth of a human’s strength and capability, and I was lost—not in the way that I wanted to possess her, although I do, but in a way that I now can’t live without her.
For so long, I existed in the shadows, in the fog, feeling nothing and doing the same thing day in and day out. The only time I ever even felt a hint of happiness—no, happiness isn’t the right word, a hint of excitement, was when I was killing and other monsters’ blood spilled across my hands, but even that pales in comparison to how I feel when she simply looks at me.
If she knew the power she held over me or how deeply I feel about her, she would run, because I’m never letting her go. She makes me feel alive, but more than that, she makes me want to be a better monster, a better man. She never asks for it, though, and she accepts all of me, even the parts my own people found ugly and hated. She accepts my bloodlust, my lack of seriousness…
Yet around her, I’ve never been more serious.
I tease and flirt, but under all the pretty words is the truth.
I am hopelessly, irrevocably in love with the human.
I am one of the strongest fey to ever live, but Goldie holds my heart in her tiny little hands, and I can’t be mad about that. Not when she reaches for me, letting me comfort her. Her eyes seek mine, filled with fear, so I force cockiness into my expression, my lips tilting in my usual smirk, but for once, it falls flat. She sees through it.
She always does.
