Page 72 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
“Only if we’re lucky!”
“What is it you want? What have I ever done to you?”
“I don’t know. I can hear when you chew. You walk like you’ve never tracked a thing in your life. You breathe too loud. You snore.”
“Do you think you don’t snore? Besides, what do you care? It’s not like I’m inviting you to sleep next to me after we leave this place.”
“Get fucked, pretty boy.”
“You offering to climb on top, warrior princess?”
Vareck groaned beside me, but I watched in curiosity as the two of them argued with each other. My sister was no doubt feisty and hotheaded, but this was something different. It was almost as if this place was changing her. Bringing out a heightened version of her qualities ... especially the more difficult ones.
Corvo had so kindly popped in while we were trudging along, quite literally dumping a full backpack of food for us, before he quickly disappeared, telling us it was dinner time in Faerie and he didn’t want to miss it. No pleasantries, no conversation, nothing. Just showed up with the backpack, turned around toshow us his asshole, then popped right out of Evorsus all over again.
I couldn’t even be annoyed with him. I didn’t want to stay here either.
I rummaged through the bag and picked out four food pouches to warm up. They were your standard survival kits. Bland, shitty nutrient-packed food that was made just to keep you alive. You’d certainly never eat it for the taste.
“Do you know how to stop this?” Vareck whispered, flicking his eyes to Sadie and Damon. “We’re all going to end up mad if this goes on for much longer.”
“I had a thought about that. You said this place is sentient.” He looked at me curiously, nodding in acknowledgment. “Do you think the realm is messing with their heads? I don’t know Damon, but Sadie isn’t usually this bad. I mean, she’s a lot to handle, but this version of her is bigger. Meaner. More explosive. Could the realm be blowing up their emotions? Maybe trying to break them mentally, or even break them apart somehow?”
“Breaking them mentally makes sense. I don’t see the purpose of breaking them apart. They barely wanted to be together to begin with,” he mused, scrubbing his fingers through his beard as he considered the possibilities. “Unless it’s as simple as strength in numbers…”
I nodded along, wondering if that was what was happening. The land either wanted us to lose our minds, or to separate so we couldn’t fend off whatever Nameless or murderous teddy bears or cannibal mutant rabbits it wanted to throw at us. I hadn’t seen those, but my mind had wandered enough that it was starting to create things that weren’t there. “We need them to chill out.”
“If you have a plan to shut them up, I am all ears,” he said.
After handing Vareck his pouch, I stood up and tossed one to Damon. He caught it quickly, pausing long enough for there to be a moment of beautiful silence between them.
“Hey, Sadie.” I tossed her a pouch and when she caught it, I smiled. “Truth or dare.”
She grinned, and the murderous look in her eye disappeared. My sister looked like herself again. “We don’t have liquor,” she pointed out.
I shrugged. “Getting drunk here wouldn’t be my first choice anyway.”
“Fair enough.”
Vareck raised a hand. “I’m sorry, what’s ‘truth or dare’?”
“A drinking game we play with our brothers.” I launched into the whole explanation of how the game was played between us. You pick truth, you tell the truth and take a shot. You pick dare, you complete the dare and take the shot. Refusal or incompletion equals forfeiture, and you lose the game. The last man or woman standing wins.
“Wait, you have to drink even when you complete your turn? It’s not a situation where you take a shot because you refused?” Damon asked, his brows scrunching, looking around as though he missed part of the rules. “I don’t understand the point.”
I scoffed, smacking my hand over my heart in a mocking gesture of shock. “Bragging rights, of course.” I looked to Vareck for encouragement, but even he looked slightly dubious. “Look, we don’t have a drink, but we can still have fun.”
“Is it fun?” Damon whispered to Vareck.
“Sadie is the reigning champion,” I added. Damon’s back straightened and his jaw muscle tightened. “If that matters ...”
“Too scared, princeling?”
“I’m in,” he said. Damon turned to Vareck and nodded like they were teaming up somehow. Vareck looked at him, craning his neck back and turning to me for an explanation. I just shrugged.
“All right, sister. Truth or dare.”
I knew my sister’s answer. She only ever took a dare, and this time I was going big. It was a calculated risk, but it was dangerous all the same. For days on end, I had been listening to Sadie and Damon make snide remarks and snap at each other. Yes, it was getting out of hand, but I truly thought that was the realm just amplifying bad behavior. An outsider wouldn’t realize it, but my sister had a crush on this man. She didn’t know how to act on it, so instead, she was scared shitless and decided the best course of action was to be obnoxiously mean. He was everything she wasn’t, and the antithesis of everyone she had ever dated. Damon was cultured, had clean fingernails, chewed with his mouth closed, didn’t beat people’s faces in for a living, and he didn’t own a motorcycle. What she didn’t see was the way he looked at her too. The way he held her eye contact even when she was bitching at him. Or how he watched her when he thought no one was looking. There was a subtle curl to his lips when she said something flirtatious, albeit still a little mean.
