Page 11 of Crowned By the Fae King

I found a tree with a low branch of about the right diameter, jumped up and grabbed on, and started following Cass' motions. The bark of the branch bit into my palms. Sap stuck to my skin. Every pull-up made the evergreen tree sway, raining needles and bark-bits down onto me.

Cass didn't have to rest any more than I did. He kept moving, so I did, too. It was so easy to fall in lockstep with him, obeying the commands he gave himself, every breath easy and the burn of my muscles pleasant.

We let go and flung out our wings.

My legs hit the ground with a shock, my ankle twisting and knees jamming. Muscles in my back tried to do things they weren't designed for, the wrenching sensation so awful that I immediately puked.

Nothing but bile came up. I hadn't eaten in days.

"You fucking dick," I rasped, spitting to rid my mouth of the taste and panting for breath. I knew he had no idea, but honestly? That was worse.

I shoved myself up and swiped the back of my arm across my mouth. Fuck this, and fuck him in particular. He was a goddamn fae King, and I was going to go stomp up to his stupid fae palace and read him the fucking riot act.

I stalked back down onto the road. Pervert's corpse was still next to his stuff, but the goo hadn't touched it, and he didn't look much like a dead body anymore. He was something that could have gotten dug out of a hundred-year-old grave.

None of the heaps the bandits had left contained food, and the knives were piles of rusted flakes. There were some coins, though not many, and most of them weren't even faery ones. Some were clearly from the mortal world; there were three pennies (one Canadian and two American), a two-euro piece, and a few other coins I didn't recognize at all.

Pervert's clothes were too big for me, but there was enough left over once I'd cut it down to size to cut strips to tie around my arms and legs so it didn't bag so badly. I didn't bother with his boots; there was no way they would be more comfortable than my bare feet, given that I didn't have to worry about cutting up my soles.

Though it was getting dark, I spent some time collecting the bones of the four men and arranging them in a small cave in the woods, trying to give them something of a burial. I divided the human-made coins up among them, setting them beneath the skulls. "Go home to your families," I murmured, touching my fingers to each skull. "You were trapped here, but you can go home, now. This isn't your world. You don't need to haunt it. Go home and be loved."

I backed out of the low cave and started stacking rocks, closing up the small entrance so that nothing would come chew on their bones. They'd been terrible people, but they were still people. Desperate people did terrible things all the time.

Nobody saw themself as the villain of their own story. We all had our reasons, even when they boiled down to an animalistic need to be on top, or to find a mate, or to feel safe. I'd never stabbed someone to death, but I'd stolen before. I'd been in the process of stealing from these same men, even. The least I could do was give them somewhere to rest.

Maybe when this was all over, I could burn incense for all the dead. Whether or not their ghosts were wandering, or listening, or even real, at least they could be remembered.

Once the last stone was in place, I sat back with a sigh, looking up at the sunset sky. Orange and violet clouds peeked between the black branches of trees, everything slowly dimming away as the deep ink of night seeped across the sky. The stars were already coming out.

The cool breeze off the mountain heights kissed my skin. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing it in: the crisp cold of the night air, the tang of evergreens, the musty earth-smell of the decaying needles underfoot. The first creature of the night sang out, an eerie, fluting sound that made goosebumps stand up on my arms.

I walked back down to the road and narrowed my eyes at the dark tunnel through the forest. Out of habit, I stretched my legs, leaning into the pleasant burn. I'd been hiking for weeks, and today had been the first day I'd gotten such a strong read of Cass when I'd focused on him. Maybe I was getting better at it, but I was also getting closer to him.

If I wasn't going to get tired, or hungry, or hurt, there was no reason to walk. I had a road. I was going to run him down like a terrier taking out a rat.

I cracked my neck. "Brace yourself, Xarcassah," I said to the listening forest—and to him. "I'm coming for you."

I hit my first settlement about three hours into running, which translated to probably about twenty miles, give or take. It wasn't a big one, maybe forty buildings, max, but the fact that there were buildings at all was reassuring. Maybe whatever the Court had done had been focused on the opal mine, instead of Court-wide. Even if that meant I was some sort of horrible nexus, and that the survivors had been right to get rid of me, at least it meant that the whole world wasn't in shambles.

Seeing people who weren't trying to kill me cracked open an eching loneliness in my chest, but I didn't stop. If I was some sort of bad talisman, I didn't want to bring down the Court's destructive wrath on a bunch of perfectly normal people. Cass could deal with me himself. There didn't need to be more sad heaps of crumbling bone where men had once stood.

I started passing through settlements more frequently after that. Most of them could have kindly been called "hamlets," composed of no more than a couple stone houses in sleepy little valleys. Some of them were abandoned, little more than tumbled stone. In one of the legit towns, I saw something like a gargoyle perched on a tower, silhouetted against the night sky and scanning the landscape, and chose to walk until I was out of sight before continuing on my grim jog. I didn't want to be flagged as weird by someone who might be able to do something about it.

Some time around one or two in the morning, I broke out of what felt like interminable mountains and staggered to a halt in the middle of the road, dazed by the sudden sweep of visible landscape. Even in the dark, lit only by the moonlight, the open sky stood in stark contrast to the closed canopy of the dense forest.

The brilliance of the stars left me feeling like an ant who'd accidentally trespassed from her home of overgrown lawn onto the sidewalk. The sky was so open. There were so many stars, what felt like an infinite amount, with the sort of clarity that made me feel like someone had taken Windex to the grimy Long Beach sky.

Far across the open landscape, past tilled fields and little dotted collections of homes with their warm lights twinkling merrily, I could see an honest-to-god city. Not well, of course; it was dark, and perched on the edge of the horizon, with the darkness of the mountains looming behind it. But it was there, a glow in the distance, and high above it I could see another faint smudge of light.

Even that small amount of focus brought Cass to the forefront of my awareness. Sprawled in sleep, a wing hanging off his bed onto the ground, one arm over his head—

I gave myself a little shake, focusing on my own body. I'd lost enough time in the past weeks to the allure of the Court and its King that I knew better than to pay too much attention to it.

That far-away glow had to be his palace. I had no idea how long I'd been out here, or why the Court had such an incessant interest in me, but the one person who might be able to help was up on that mountain peak. Thirty miles, tops. I could get there well before morning, if I ran.

I picked my way down the switchbacks of the road, the backs of my shoulders prickling, as if some giant owl might come swooping down out of the dark sky and carry me away. I wanted to get to Cass – I did! – but with the end of the road so clearly looming, everything seemed unmoored.

He had no idea I existed. No reason to help me. What if I couldn't even get to him? Fae Kings probably didn't hang out with wild-eyed, filthy, barefoot maniacs who showed up at their palaces out of nowhere.

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