I let the silence stretch. Lost. Not confident in my abilities to pull a centuries-old fae from his brooding session. Instead, I scanned the horizon.
Forest blanketed the ground beneath, but in the distance, a dark, hazy smudge shimmered, beckoning. The ridge of a mountain range, perhaps. The only other landmarks happened to be two wide rivers on each side of us. One foamy ribbon twisting away to the west, the other flowing east.
Wilder broke the hush. “You’ve mentioned this Viola before. She was the one to pass on the necklace?”
I hesitated for a heartbeat, then gave a nod. He continued. “She sounds more like a maternal figure than a friend.”
A questioning tone that he didn’t push. I figured he might be like Frazer and open up once I’d made that initial step. So, I offered up slices of my past. Viola, John, Tunnock, Elain, and Gus. I even gave him snippets of my parents.
Occasionally he’d interrupt to ask things, and we spent a while in that pattern. I finished by telling him about being caught by the Wild Hunt. About Billy and Brandon and Isabel. It was tempting to edit my failed friendship with Hunter out, but it felt wrong, somehow.
Wilder peered down and said, “This Hunter’s the one who tasted you, isn’t he?”
I flushed and blinked. Tasted?
A wolfish grin stretched across his face. “I was referring to your blood.”
Embarrassment warmed my face. “Right … Yes, he was.”
His smile slipped, and an eyebrow rose. “Of course, if he’s feasted on any of your other exquisite parts, we’re going to need to have a conversation.”
A cough mixed with an indignant splutter burst out of me. “We haven’t … It wasn’t like that. We’re not even friends anymore.”
“Oh?”
An innocent sounding plea for information. One that had my eyes narrowing. “I can’t forgive him for Cassandra.”
That drained all amusement from his features. “You asked him to help her, didn’t you? Like he helped you?”
Resentment and anger simmered in my blood. “He wouldn’t do it though.”
Wilder’s response was cold. Almost vitriolic. “I’m not surprised. From what you’ve said, his affection for humans begins and ends with you.”
A darker emotion showed in his voice. It made me want to deny any feeling had ever existed between us; it made me confess. “He said he couldn’t, because spiders are taking the recruits that fail in Diana’s camps. Did you … D’you know anything about that?”
The only sign of alarm was his fingers flexing and tightening against my body. “Hilda told us about a new order; one that had us handing over those recruits to the Hunt. But I assumed they’d be taken back to the Solar Markets, to be sold on. Morgan despises weakness in all forms. Why would she ever buy failed soldiers? Did this Hunter give you his suspicions?”
I nodded and shared the rumors. His reaction was slow in coming. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The only things stronger than Morgan’s contempt for human weakness are her arrogance and paranoia. And she’s been banging on that war drum for a while now.”
A hoarfrost claimed my very bones as he pulled a face. “What is it?”
Wilder didn’t shy away from my gaze. “The Solar camps are notoriously cruel.”
A memory tickled the back of my mind. Hunter had something similar. “What exactly do they do to them?” I asked.
It was a form of self-harm, but it felt cowardly not to ask.
“Well … One of the more infamous training exercises is called the Kula where the fae hunt the human recruits. It’s meant to teach the humans how to hide from enemy forces, but if they’re caught—and they nearly always are—the fae who tracked them down are given leave to torture them for days on end.”
His voice and expression resonated with my own feelings. Horror and disgust, and finally, black, toxic rage.
“Morgan deserves to burn for eternity in the dark court.”
Wilder swallowed hard, but he said nothing. I was left with grief and guilt thundering through my veins as my thoughts dwelled on Cassandra’s fate.
Wilder muttered, “What worries me is why now? What’s made her so twitchy?”
“Dimitri’s her informant, right? Maybe we should capture him, and make him talk.”
The venom in my voice had Wilder’s lip half-curling. “As much as I’m tempted to watch you hold his feet to the coals, my love, we don’t want to piss Morgan off any more than we have to.”
My body heated. Everything after “my love” was a blur. Thankfully, Wilder didn’t seem to notice as he descended into a thoughtful silence. My mind drifted.
Wilder’s delicious purr had ceased, but the steady hum of wings, and the warmth from the two cloaks and his body set me into a kind of stupor for the rest of the morning.
When the sun climbed to its zenith, we returned to the ground to eat some dried biscuits and apple. I’d barely tossed the core away before he picked me up and took flight again.
Time seemed to slow to a trickle in the afternoon. After a few failed attempts to start a conversation, the lulling effect of being in his arms soon sent me into another stupor. I was meant to be testing my limits during this trial. I should’ve felt guilty. And yet …
Wilder finally fell into a glide as the sky deepened to a velvety twilit blue. He landed on a branch high up in the canopy, and with feline poise, moved to the trunk, lowering me to nestle in its crook. It was so wide, I could sit cross-legged, resting my back against the ash bark.
“Give me your rucksack,” he said, holding out an arm.
Pitching forward, I slipped my bag from my shoulders and handed it over. He placed it in the tongs of two nearby branches.
“Wilder?”
“Mm?”
He was distracted, unbuckling the straps at his chest, pulling his own rucksack around to the front.
“What are we doing up here?”
“We can’t camp on the ground at night. The animals and sprites roaming these parts can be dangerous.”
He crouched and dug through his rucksack until he found preserved meat and mixed nuts. Our dinner for the night. I watched on, bemused. “I can’t sleep up here. At least not without falling out at some point.”
His eyes found mine then. Laughter lines crinkled at the corners. “You’ll sleep in my arms. I won’t move an inch: promise.”
My heart stuttered. Then pounded faster and faster. “So, to clarify, I’ll be sleeping in your arms for the rest of the night?”
A flush of heat coursed through my body, causing my palms to go slick with sweat. His prior amusement had vanished. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
He sounded raw, almost carnal. As if he knew what it’d do to me.
Damn.
A flare at his nostrils had my mouth drying. What was my scent telling him? Wilder stared a moment longer, only to unleash a self-satisfied smirk. A lion’s smile. I folded my arms and scowled—a mask to cover the fire in my belly. He didn’t seem all that convinced.
We soon began our poor substitute for an evening meal. As I washed down squashed nuts and dried meat with water from a skin, my eyes slid to the darkening forest floor. “I don’t suppose there’s anything nearby we could hunt that would make for a better dinner?”
He frowned over at me from his position opposite. “Making snares and traps would take too long. Especially now that the light’s fading.”
“You should’ve brought a bow and impressed me with your epic hunting skills,” I teased.
An eyebrow jumped up. “Without doubt. But I don’t like to take one on long flights. Gets in the way too much. Besides, hunting’s not really worth the risk in these parts. Not if you’ve got supplies.”
With a violent surge of anxiety, I said, “What kind of things are down there then?”
“Well, excluding the usual wildcats, bears, wolves, and navvi, occasionally you’ll get a korgan wandering through, or a few zepefras.”
Fear for Frazier made me ask, “Have you ever seen a navvi?”