Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

“You’ve been sitting on your ass reading and swimming nude in my hot spring. Sounds like a vacation to me.” With that, I turned for the door. “Let’s go. I still need to go to the city today and my ankle is slowing me down. Not to mention the fact that we’ll probably be hunted from here on out by the verlacs you decided to kill.”

He followed after me. “You’re not a very trusting person, are you?”

I shut the door behind him and headed for the woods. “I just don’t like you. Maybe stop acting so cocky and I’ll warm up to you.”

“Maybe stop acting so defensive and I wouldn’t be so cocky.”

I wasn’t being defensive.

Was I?

So what if I was? For all I knew, he was the man behind the stories of rape and slaughter that came from Oridian. How many girls hadheraped? How many people had those hands killed?

Those strong hands, capable of wrapping around a throat and squeezing until—

“No!”

What in Reldron’s name?

I shook my head and jerked my hood forward, making sure he couldn’t see even an inch of my face. “Just follow me,” I told him flatly. Maybe I should relax a little. Not much, just enough to get this tension out of my shoulders. For all I knew, he really was trying to be friendly. Whatever that meant in his Court.

The weather was nice this morning. The leaves, covered in frost that coated the world, were so damp, they didn’t even crunch under my footsteps.

It was the perfect hunting weather.

One day I would actually get to hunt. Find some real meat to bring home to the family, and not something from the market that was rubbed in this and salted in that. One day I would hear the songs of the birds and the howling of the wolves.

For now, I was fine with the silent stalking of the demons. Their prowling. Maybe that’s what got me started on this wretched train of thought. Being stalked every single day by things from another world, I should have thought about what that would do to me sooner.

Or maybe I was just born like this.

Born to get arousedby—

“Stop, you have company.”

I knew that. Rationally, I knew that.

It was cold today. So cold, I could see my breath through my veil. My hands were so cold, the pain from the bruising was gone. It would be a colder winter than most this year. I could feel it in the air. Which meant I had to be extra careful picking out gloves and boots for Mark. And I would need to collect Gigi Fern.

Gigi Fern was nearly impossible to get, even for Madam Levine. It only grew in the Frozen Lands in Sanguinary. But it was the best cure for frostbite.

Maybe I could find something to bribe Madam Levine into finding a good source for me. What would that cost? A handful of gold?

Maybe if I got Cole good enough information, he would pay for it.

I wasn’t sure what kind of information he could gather from where I was taking him, but I knew it would be of some importance to him. It had to be. The dragons were friends of the Nephilim, but they were allies of the Fallen too. So, this had to mean something.

Even thinking about the fact that, at one point in time, the dragons had been so close to my cottage, it was enough to bring a smile to my face. 1,000 years gone, and they still had marks left around the world to be discovered.

Gods, what would it have been like to have a dragon living so close to me?

Maybe I would have died, but I would have died happy. So incredibly happy.

~~~

Trick

I let the shadow slide up his throat and out his mouth, the screams cut off by the sound of gurgled choking.