Page 5 of Crowned By the Fae King

She had the grace to look ashamed. "I don't know," she whispered. She set the backpack down on the ground and took a step back. "Look, I really appreciated what you… did." Gina swallowed audibly. "But people are talking. Saying it's your fault. You know. Because you can…" She waved her hands like she was casting some sort of magic spell.

I did know.

"Say it," I said, my voice clipped.

She looked away. "You can talk to it. And it listens."

"Kill the witch?" The words came out sharp with bitterness.

"Come on, Q," Gina said, her shoulders slumping. "It's freaky. You're freaking people out. I made them put together some food and water and stuff for you, okay? So just go, before people decide to make you go."

The attention of the Court freaked me out, too, but I wasn't letting that stop me from helping them. Apparently that wasn't worth tolerance. It was worth a backpack with supplies, and nothing more.

I picked up the bag and slung it over my shoulder. It was heavy; something inside sloshed. A canteen, hopefully.

"Fine," I said. "Good luck, I guess."

"Yeah," she said, studying the ground. "Good luck."

It was getting dark, and I didn't want to be caught in the faery forest alone at night, but I didn't have a lot of options for holing up. We'd set up camp at the base of the cliffs, in the only open space nearby, so I couldn't stay here. The buildings down the hill and on the nearby outcropping were totally wrecked, to the point where staying in them was probably more dangerous than sleeping rough.

I had no fucking clue how to navigate a forest, let alone pull some Hatchet shit and survive in one. I'd spent my entire life in Long Beach, save for the seven months I'd spent in this hellhole.

It didn't matter. I couldn't stay here.

I turned on one heel and walked away from Gina, heading into the dark forest as if I knew what I was doing. It probably didn't help my reputation that I could do that. Striding confidently into the blackness of a forest was the sort of thing creepy monsters did in fairytales.

I couldn't have said how I knew I wouldn't walk into a tree or trip over a rock. I just wouldn't. My feet knew where to go.

Bitterly, I made my way back to the smashed remains of the outpost. My weird sense of the land around me was shattered where I'd fallen, as if I'd impacted something more than the ground, so it was easy to find.

The lockbox had broken open like an overripe fruit on the stone, spilling its guts across the ground. My hands seemed to know where to go without me telling them. I managed to dig up almost a dozen leather purses of coins. The leather was grown through with small roots and so fragile it tore in my hands, but the coins were still coins, silver and copper and a few gold. I used my canvas pack to wrap them up and shoved them into the one Gina had given me, trying not to let the anger devour me.

There had been opals in jars in the lockbox, too, now shattered and spilled across the ground and buried under the young soil and lush wildflowers. They didn't play nice with my sense of the world around me; everything seemed to shatter into brilliance around them, like crystals in the sunlight casting rainbows. It made me a little uncomfortable, but I knew the gems would be valuable for trade when I made it somewhere else with people. I dug for the biggest cluster of refraction and came away with a handful of high-class gemstones mixed with shards of glass.

The broken glass cut me. My injuries healed before they could even bleed.

I wrapped up the opals, too, and tucked them into the outside pocket of the pack. I had no idea what any of this meant, or what it might do to me. Maybe opals were poisonous now, or something. No reason to keep them in my pants pocket to find out.

Since I didn't have any actual destination, I figured I'd keep walking until it got too dark to navigate, or until I got tired. That would probably get me far enough from the scared people making me their scapegoat to keep them from finding me.

My path fell in line with the yearning sensation tugging me north. It was as good a direction as any other.

The forest grew darker. Nocturnal creatures started venturing out, their eerie cries hanging in the cool air of the mountain night. If I relaxed, I could feel them, all around me. Mice tunneled beneath leaf litter, the sensation of whiskers making my cheeks tingle and the taste of loam resting lightly on my tongue. Trees let out their long, slow exhale, leaves rustling in the same breeze the owls rode. Moths followed the intoxicating scent of sex, searching for their lovers, only to be caught in the sharp teeth of bats and the entangling strands of spiderwebs.

Deeper in the wilds, a pack of wargs howled, following the musk of something delicious. Saliva wet my mouth. We would hunt it, follow the trail it left, sink our ivory fangs deep into flesh seasoned with the sour salt-taste of fear—

I walked into a tree.

The jolt threw me back into my body. I panted, sweat breaking out over my whole body. "Don't take me," I whispered to the land all around me. My hands shook. "I've got people who need me. I can't be with you."

The Court didn't answer me.

I rested my forehead against the tree, taking meditative breaths. My mind automatically drifted to the faint sensation of a beating heart far to the north. It settled me, my heart falling into the same rhythm as I focused.

If I let my mind wander, I could picture the Court as if he was a man. He had been awake and aware, but now he was…

Sleeping, I thought. Dark lashes closed over dark eyes. Pointed fae ears piercing through tangled black hair, coarser and more matte-brown than my own shining blue-black strands. A powerful body, as rugged as the mountains, now lax in sleep, resting after the tidal wave of force that had healed what we'd broken.

---