Page 77 of Hunted By Fae
Before seeing them on the road like that, all our plans and schemes centred around basic survival, and maybe the threat of another group, or a wild animal.
None of it accounted for dark fae warriors.
Obviously.
But like I said, my mind is mush, mush in fog, and to think up strategy now is an impossibility.
My brain needs time to reset.
‘Thesespells’, as my mum used to say in her kind way, ‘just need time and patience.’
If I fight against it, I go further into dissociation and then it’s like I’m comatose, and every sound I hear is both an echo and static around me, and I’m delayed in mind and body.
Funny that I’ve always felt a bit alien here in this world, with my fellow humans, and now literal fucking aliens are invading us.
Even if they’re fae—they can still be considered aliens, right? Foreign, from another world, another species, really.
No, I push that down. A thought for another day. Not now, while my brain churns to keep up with the basics.
I should sleep.
But there’s an electricity in me, zapping and humming around my bones, and it keeps me toophysicallyalert.
I shift around to my side, then lean my cheek on the spine of the couch.
I watch Bee fiddle with the radios.
“Will I like it there?”
The tip of a grown-out fringe brushes over her apple cheek. “It’s cruel. Whether it’s the light or the dark, it’s a cruel place. Humans don’t have rights—none at all, really.”
“But there are humans there.”
Her chin tugs to the side, and she considers me.
I add, “I won’t be that out of place then?”
“What do you really mean by that?”
Sometimes I love when she reads me so fluidly. Sometimes I hate it.
“You know,” I say with a bitter smile. “Most people don’t… take to me.” My shoulder lifts, lame. “I just… I might not be totally welcome.”
“Neither am I.”
That should soothe me, maybe a little, maybe more than that. Instead, I have a sickly pool of dread spilling through my insides.
To be unwanted, unwelcome is to be an intruder. That’s a feeling I’m used to, but in the face of the blackout and dark fae, maybe not one I should spare too much thought on.
“Get some sleep,” she says—and that cuts the conversation off.
With that, she shuts me down.
I don’t sleep.
EIGHT MONTHS IN THE BLACKOUT
FIFTEEN
