Page 16 of The Stones for It
Kelsea
“How much longer will your pet insist on hunting her own demise?” Vrath huffed.
I gritted my teeth against the urge to snap at the rude gargoyle. Again.
He’d been a judgy prick ever since I’d met him, which was only about an hour ago if I had to guess, but it was impossibleto tell time with the endless night that held the trippy forest captive.
“Aww, sheislike my pet, isn’t she?” Neiron gushed, still skipping along beside me.
Every now and then, he’d do a weird little pirouette like a ballet dancer, flinging his arms wide in graceful delight as he spun around a tree trunk or leapt over a glowing flowerbed. Occasionally, he’d corrected my direction with a wing nudge, but that was the extent of his help.
It took everything in me to ignore both fae and keep trudging on, searching for one of the magic-barred exits Neiron was vaguely directing me to.
Surely, they’d have their Council guard dogs—the Royal Hunters—stationed at them, but both Neiron and Vrath seemed to think only magical spells locked us in this nightmare until sun up.
Either way, I had to try.
There were no other options for me at this point. I wasn’t the type to just sit around and wait for things to happen.
Even if I couldn’t find a Royal Hunter at these mystical portals, I needed to escape through one. If the fae were so set on choosing humans to steal away for their courts, then I had to leave before that became my fate. Before I was separated from Rattle permanently.
I still hadn’t quite figured out how Neiron fit into all of this as one of my supposed mates and a royal fae in charge of his own court.
Was he planning to choose me for his?
Did I want him to?
“Maybe you should put her on a leash then,” Vrath mocked. “Or at least, muzzle her.”
I whirled on him, reaching for the blade strapped to my thigh. “Why are you even here, pally? I’m sure yer pigeons are bustin’ to shit on yer shoulders by now.”
“I’m here to make sure you don’t get my oldest friend hurt.” He sneered, eyes blazing with a fiery crimson glow. “Your kind are nothing but cowards and traitors.”
“If we’re so terrible, stop invading our world and kidnapping us.” I raised my glassy blade, Neiron’s foxfire seething within.
Vrath stepped right up to it, letting the tip indent the smooth skin of a muscular pectoral. Right where an angry human had already stabbed him.
“But you’re so good for breeding,” he purred, a dangerous rumble to his voice that did things to me it had no right to.
Sexy arseholes were still arseholes.
My lips parted, ready to cut him with my tongue as much as my blade, but the gargoyle slapped a palm over my mouth. His other hand caught my wrist in an unyielding grip, yanking the dagger away from him with laughable ease.
I clamped my teeth around the small bit of flesh I could get a hold of, nipping at his palm like that rabid spiky squirrel who kept harassing me.
The bastard quirked an icy brow, but didn’t remove his hand.
“Quiet, mortal,” he breathed, scanning the rainforest.
It immediately redirected my focus.
Anything could lurk between the lush trees in a Faerie jungle. Bobbing orbs drifted closer like they’d heard my silent plea, their warm light banishing the deeper shadows.
Neiron paused beside us, head cocking this way and that, tilting his long fox ears with the movements.
Whooping laughter echoed through the night, setting my pulse racing.
The haunting cackle was my new least favourite sound.
