It took me a bloody fucking month to get back.
I died three times.
It was worse than the 1800s when I had to book passage on a steamer to cross the bloody ocean.
Fragments of Fae reality everywhere, took down every plane I took up.
I consider the possibility that, by the time I return, he will have caught her, cut my brand off her skull, and made her impossible to track.
Then I begin to feel her.
She is alive. She still wears my mark.
But what I sense is incongruent with her situation. I expect grief. The woman killed me and, in humans, familiarity breeds a certain emotional bond.
But lust? On the heels of murdering me, who does she lust for?
I entertain myself with thoughts of searing my brand from her skull.
When I finally arrive at the bookstore, what do I see in the alley behind it?
The woman that summoned me to save her, then stabbed me in the back at the first opportunity, isn’t lost in the Silvers, in need of saving.
She’s standing in my alley, kissing the bastard that had her raped and turned her Pri-ya.
No, let us be perfectly precise: She’s grinding herself against him and shoving her tongue halfway down his throat.
My monster rattles its cage.
Violently.