Page 142 of A Soul to Steal

I also don’t need to eat.It hadn’t taken Gideon long to realise he no longer felt the desire to consume food or drink water. He also didn’t need to piss, since he put nothing in his body.

He’d found it strange at first and hated it, but now that he was used to it, he preferred it.

His body didn’t seem to be changing. He didn’t lose any of his hard-earned muscle, but it also meant his hair wasn’t growing, nor had his barely noticeable stubble grown into a beard. He already summarised that he was frozen in time, and that he’d look this way for the rest of his life.

He wasn’t all that broken up about it.

He didn’t mind the way he looked, except for the thick keloid scarring across his torso – mainly because it reminded him of his death. If he were to change anything about himself, it’d be his dishevelled clothing and his lack of earrings. He missed having rings dangling from his earlobes, and he hoped the holes he could feel in them meant he could wear them in the future.

Like a saving grace, a bright stream of sunlight shone into the cave and stole their attention. It washed over them and made the gold in Aleron’s skull glitter. He often forgot his skull did that, since it was near impossible to see it without the light.

“Looks like the storm is completely gone,” Gideon stated, rising to his feet.

A small part of him filled with disappointment at that, considering he’d...enjoyedhis time in this cave with Aleron. He held his hand out to Aleron to help him to his feet.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Aleron’s skull lowered from his face to his outstretched palm. His orbs flared bright yellow, and he tentatively reached for it.

Then he did nothing.

Gideon struggled to pull the heavy fucker to his bird-like feet. He used all his strength, all his might, to no avail.

By the time he had to grab his thick wrist with his other hand and tug with both, he grunted out, “You’re supposed to help m– AH!”

Aleron suddenly stood, and Gideon went flying back.

Before he could fall to his arse, a strong arm wrapped around his back and kept him to his feet. Dipped backwards, resting all his weight on Aleron’s forearm and hand, he huffed through the rapid drumming of his heart.

“I have you,” Aleron assured him, the end of his snout barely inches from his nose.

Unsure if it was due to embarrassment, or just Aleron’s presence so close to him in an intimate hold, his cheeks heated. He’d even gripped the long fur of his chest to hold on.

“Nice catch,” he grumbled.

Almost like Aleron had expected him to fall on his arse, he’d leapt straight away to grab him. He’d moved so damn fast... Realisation struck when Aleron let out a quiet, rumbling chuckle as he pulled him to his feet completely.

You sneaky bastard. You knew that was going to happen.

To his dismay, Gideon found that ridiculously charming.

Aleron halted when they’d reached the very east of Austrális and had passed over the tapering point of the Veil’s canyon crack. It had taken them the entire day to get to this spot, since he flew slowly in order to scour the ground for any sign of his kindred.

Night would fall soon, making it difficult to see anything dark moving within the shade of the trees. Up this high, he could barely scent the earth, let alone a being.

They hadn’t long passed a mountainous fortress, one in which he knew held vicious Demonslayers. Gideon had pointed to it from a distance, calling it Zagros Fortress. He knew this name only because of Emerie.

This is the place my kindred suffered...He had half a mind to turn to it and destroy it for harming Ingram. For chaining him deep within its bowels and torturing him. The only reason he didn’t was because of the human he wished to keep safe.

He also didn’t wish for them to rest near it, but he found himself hesitant to move forward.

“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked from within the cradle of his arms.

“I do not know where to go,” Aleron admitted, feeling thembounce in the air with each of his wing flaps. “I do not know where Ingram is, where he could be. I do not know if we should go south, or if we should go back and check the north. I may have missed them due to the storm.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but don’t you guys have, like... a home?”

He searched the distance, wishing he could see a trace of Ingram’s shiny iridescent scales, or Emerie’s bright-red hair.

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