Page 81 of A Song of Air
She already knew what her familiar would say. That she was a stupid, stupid fool.
And she was somehow breaking her own heart.
A Coming War
“We are not welcomehere.”
Valerio turned and regarded the merciless, marble-black eyes of his oldest friend. The words he’d whispered hung like a morose, steady-swinging noose between them. Any other time, at any other place, Valerio would have twisted the tight line of his mouth into a sardonic smile. Now, however, he felt the loom of threat in the very air they breathed and couldn’t muster the energy to do so.
The hairs on the back of his neck had stood on end since arriving at this camp. A dreadful sense of foreboding clung to his gut and refused to loosen its hold. He liked to think he had enough experience now to know that something was going to go to absolute shit, and both his body and his friend were warning him of that fact.
Uric regarded Valerio with a familiar severity, the words he wanted to say echoing loud in the silence between them.
“I know.” Valerio turned back to the camp. He had grown accustomed to humans and the disdain they wore so tightly on their souls, but it was an odd thing indeed whenFaewere wary of him. He tried to understand their reasoning, but found it difficult to do so.
Finally, Uric gave voice to his thoughts with choking force, like they were forbidden Unseelie fruit plagued with rot and death. “We should leave this place.”
Valerio closed his eyes, but that didn’t drown out the sound of those words. They were a request, a plea, but they felt like a command. He avoided grinding his back teeth together in frustration. How easy it was for Uric to voice what he thought they should do, how easy he thought that Valerio should just succumb to those whims.
He could not.
His role was much more complicated than that now that his father, the king, was back to full health.
“I cannot help but wonder if every Elemental we find will bring us complications,” Valerio mused quietly, though he felt no mirth in the words.
“My prince, please,” Uric pleaded.
Valerio sighed. “Pleasewhat, Uric?” The glare he slashed Uric’s way only made the Fae straighten, even more rigid than he’d been before.
“They’ll not hesitate to put knives into our backs. We mustleave.”
Valerio’s back tingled as if a phantom blade had lodged itself there to somehow put more emphasis on Uric’s warning.
The weight of everything that was required of him was pressing down on his shoulders, and his entire soul was ready to crack into a thousand fragments of emotions he could not bring himself to face. He steeled himself against unwanted feelings and blew out a breath, scoffing at his own pathetic resolve.
“Look around you, Uric,” he said quietly. “What do you see?”
