Page 8 of Cold Hearted
How was I supposed to hold on? I could hook these cuffed hands around his neck and choke him to death for even getting me in this position—
I hissed as the cuffs tightened, the serrated teeth biting into my flesh, causing a few drops of blood to flow.
Zander rumbled in laughter, his back vibrating against my chest. “So much anger, little bird. We need to work on that.”
“I hate you,” I spat, and resigned myself to grasping a handful of fabric at the back of his cloak as he kicked his horse lightly and we were off.
I not only hated him, but I also hated everything about this predicament. The only thing that had gone my way since being dumped out in this strange world was that Zander hadn’t tried to disarm me. Probably because with these cuffs on he felt I wouldn’t be able to use my blade against him. Little did he know that I would do anything to keep my dagger safe.Without it, I wouldn’t be able to save my people, and if he tried to take it from me, these cuffs would have to chew clean through my wrists to keep me from burying it deep in his chest. Or his eye socket. Or his groin. I wasn’t picky.
I hissed when the cuffs squeezed as I imagined what parts of Zander’s flesh to bury my blade into, so I let go of the images to ease my discomfort. I felt, rather than saw, Zander shake with lightly concealed laughter in front of me and had to grit my teeth in frustration to keep myself from lashing out at him.
About two hours into the ride, I was grateful he was in front of me and couldn’t see my face. Ethereum was everything Faerie was not, something I had prepared myself for but was still a struggle when coming face-to-face with the differences. Where we had only seelie fae, Ethereum was teeming with unseelie: pixies, sprites, orcs, harpies. I watched in fascination as a mer-woman beached on the shoreline as we passed, using her water magic to send streams of liquid into the air.
Any fae with horns, wings, or tails were considered an unseelie: the less refined, more animalistic of our kind that were even called part-monster by my people. Zander, myself, and the other fae who walked on two feet, with pointed ears and no extra appendages like horns, wings or tails, were seelie.
There were many seelie in this realm. The village I first appeared in seemed to be entirely made up of them, but I’d hardly seen any since we started riding. The farther away we rode, the more unseelie began to show themselves. As far as I could tell, the unseelie definitely outnumbered seelie in this realm, and this was news to me.The last time a Faerie champion had been through here a hundred years ago, she had reported that only twenty percent of the citizens were unseelie. Now their numbers had to be more than sixty percent.
It took great effort to keep my jaw from unhinging as we passed a man with horns and a tail as he sold muffins from a cart by the side of the road.
“I’ve never been this far north. Has it always had so many unseelie?” I asked Zander. He wasn’t very chatty. He rode his horse with his hood up and nodded to the people who waved at him. I noticed his horse did not carry the crest of the Northern Army, so I wondered if he wanted to keep a low profile.
He glanced over his shoulder at me with a furrowed brow, and I was again taken aback by his handsomeness. We had some pretty good-looking fae back home, but he was… something else.
“The Midlands are teeming with unseelie. I’m surprised you’re a product of that place,” he said, and I bristled.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “I’m a rarity there for sure,” I agreed, hoping it was the right thing to say.
He turned back and faced the road. “The unseelie seem to reproduce more quickly and have more offspring. A harpy can lay twenty eggs in one sitting,” he offered by way of explanation.
Twenty eggs! They laideggs? I shivered against him just thinking about it. Little babies with black bat-like wings and serrated teeth.
“My nana said a hundred years ago there were more seelie,” I said, using a false nana to explain the journal entry.
He nodded. “There were, but our world’s magic is constantly trying to keep the balance.”
I froze, trying not to allow my body to react to that.Keep the balance. With what? Against what? What did that mean? We had a balance to keep in Faerie, but this was the first time I’d heard of a balance in Ethereum.
I tried to think of a way to ask him more about what he’d just said that wouldn’t make me sound like an outsider, but I couldn’t find one, so I just mumbled my agreement.
We rode another few hours, until the sun was setting just as we reached Houndstooth Village. It was a smaller village than the one we’d just left, and I realized pretty quickly how it got its name.
Bloodhounds.
The village was teeming with unseelie that had the body of a man and the head of a dog. With horns. They were creatures who spoke like a man but could also rip your throat out like a beast. I must have leaned into Zander because he looked back at me. “Don’t worry, little bird, I’ll protect you.”
I pushed back from him and scoffed. “I don’t need protection. Take these cuffs off my wrists and I’ll prove it to you,” I threatened, and the cuffs squeezed in response. I gritted my teeth against the small bite of pain.
“Typical Midlander temper,” hetsked.
I envisioned strangling him again, but that only made the cuffs tighten, so I dropped the thought.
When we reached the stables in town, I stared in amazement at the bloodhound that walked up to us and reached for the reins. “Staying the night?” he asked, his voice deep and growly, a cross between man and beast. It was so repulsive and unnatural to me I had to work to keep the disgust and fear off my face.
I wasn’t used to seeing the unseelie races. We had pictures of them drawn in journals, but this was something else entirely. And it wasn’t that I was against them simply because they weren’t like me, it was that they were all tainted by the Ethereum lord’s evil magic.
“Yes, we’ll need a room at the inn,” Zander told him as he jumped off the horse. Without a word, he hooked me under the armpits and pulled me down too.
I yelped a little at the sudden movement, then he planted me back on my feet right beside him.
