Page 82 of Of Wind and Terror

While her body is that of a human, her face is decidedly…not. Eight eyes blink up at me on a face plucked straight out of my nightmares. She speaks around a mouth of razor-sharp teeth—no doubt the reason for her shrill tone.

She continues speaking without waiting for me to respond. “Mitchia sees all. Mitchia knows all. Mitchia dispose of the bad, bad males.” She smiles then, a baring of fangs, and I stagger back a step. She either doesn’t notice or chooses to ignore my fear. “Kassandra says thank you to Mitchia for removing bad males.”

Hesitantly, I lift my hands and sign, “You know my name?”

Those multiple eyes blink up at me simultaneously. “Mitchia knows all.”

Okay. At least this monster–female hybrid knows Falkan. That’s a starting point, at the very least.

“You need to let my…friends go,” I say, allowing my earnestness to seep into my expression.

Mitchia’s terrifying expression doesn’t change. “Mitchia eat them. Mitchia hungry. Mitchia like the taste of bad, bad males.”

“You can’t eat them!” I exclaim in alarm, the cold air like needles in my lungs.

Mitchia cocks her head to the side. “Kassandra would stop Mitchia? Even though males are bad males?”

“They’re not…” I allow my hands to freeze in the air as I debate my next words carefully.

I’ve been conditioned to fear the princes my entire life, but my princes? Do I fear them? Mitchia wasn’t wrong when she claimed they were bad. They’re not good males. They’ve lied, cheated, stolen, killed, and who knows what else?

But I can’t let them die.

“You can’t kill them,” I try again.

Anger sparks in Mitchia’s multiple eyes, hammering off her like a malevolent energy. “Bad males die!”

“Not them,” I insist.

“They lie to Kassandra. Don’t tell her the truth.” The creature points a finger in my direction. It’s knobby and gray, the nail cracked. “Kassandra doesn’t know she’s their mate. They don’t tell her.”

Wait…

What?

What?

No. That can’t be true, can it? Mitchia is lying or delusional. The princes and Aleksander aren’t my mates. I don’t have a mate—at least not one that I’ve met yet.

I’ve heard about the elusive mating bond before. The guards at Madam Herra’s house would speak about it in hushed, reverent tones. It’s a rare connection between two fae, and one that has been dying out in tandem to the black virus sweeping through the nation.

You’re supposed to recognize your fated mate instantly.

And I certainly didn’t feel anything remotely positive towards the males in question until only recently.

Unless you consider the mythical platforms I found myself on when I first met them…

But no. That was just a product of them being powerful princes, right? A hallucination?

She’s lying, isn’t she?

They wouldn’t keep something like that from me.

Even as I think that, betrayal fills my veins, dark and caustic.

Gaia, how could I have been so dumb? The signs had been right in front of my face this entire time.

The platforms.

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