Why didn’t I think to take a shower? Or for that matter, brush my teeth? I run my tongue over my teeth, wincing at the fuzzy texture. Who knows when I’ll get another chance.
“Just curious,” I say. “Half-starved mortals who look like they’re homeless aren’t the fashion in Everwilde, are they?”
“No.” His gaze flicks from me to the procession of humans happily marching behind us. The meaning in his glance is clear—that’s where I belong. With them. The poor, glamoured recruits who smile dazedly in my direction.
Do they know they’re going off to fight monsters who used to be human?
It makes me sick thinking that soon, these poor, happy fools will be fighting the darklings. From what I’ve seen of the darklings, these people don’t stand a chance.
“How do you keep the darklings out of academy grounds?” I ask. “Other than the giant wall over there.”
“Wards, mainly . . .” Again his gaze shifts to the poor, happy humans bumbling behind us. Pity flashes in his eyes, and he looks away.
Before I can ask more questions, voices trickle across the crisp air. I sink low on his back as we pass Fae students milling around the grounds. They throw strange glances our way. I’m guessing most students don’t arrive on a centaur shepherding human prisoners-soldiers to the scourge lands.
I don’t bother to hide my own curiosity as I stare back. The watery darkness is broken by golden orbs that float above the students. The magical light isn’t enough to reveal their features, only that they are all different sizes. Some larger than mortals, some smaller.
We pass close to a group near the base of the mountain, and the heat from their orbs chases away the chill, if only briefly.
“Any chance the sun might come up, say, in the next century?” I call out to the centaur.
He cranes his neck to glance at the starry sky. Longing flickers in his mossy eyes. “That all depends on the Winter Prince’s mood. If he’s happy we might get a nice bright day, but experience tells me we’re in for weeks of this.”
That does not sound promising.
“Just curious. How many mortal students come from the Tainted Zone?”
“None.” He shakes his head for emphasis, his ears twitching back and forth.
Although his answer isn’t surprising—anyone with power and influence bribed themselves across the borders right after the magical apocalypse happened—I still wish I’d known all this beforehand. here the heck is the sun? Night still clings to everything, the moon in exactly the same spot as before. As if time is frozen here like everything else.
I’m not meant for wintry, dark worlds. I need sunlight on my face and a warm summer breeze. I need flowers and sunburns and the clink of ice cubes against a sweating glass of iced tea so sweet it’ll rot your teeth right out of your head.
By my admittedly limited experience, the Everwilde is the opposite of that.
As if taunting me, a snowflake lands on the tip of my nose. I sigh, my annoyance growing. My tormentor demanded I be here at exactly midnight, yet now he’s the late one and I’m freezing my lady balls off.
The second that thought hits me, something moves between the trees.
I peer through the flurry of snow and make out a man on a moon-white horse lurking near the base of the closest tree. Actually, not a man—I need to remember that—and he’s not on a horse.
He is a horse, sort of.
“Centaur,” I breathe, sure I’m still dreaming as I watch my breath crystallize in front of me.
The Evermore glares. I stare up at him, too enamored to care that he obviously finds retrieving me an insult. From the waist up, he appears completely normal. Or as normal as a Fae can look.
His features resemble a human’s, but brighter somehow, like he’s been painted with chromatic pigment deeper and richer than anything used on us. Large moss-green eyes watch me, set deep in a proud bronzed face. Vibrant red hair falls to his mid-back, twisted and braided with silver ribbons.
“Done staring?” he drawls, but the proud tug of his lips tells me part of him enjoys the attention. “You mortals always stare, in the beginning.”
I nod, but I’m not done ogling him. How could I be? From the navel down, he’s a horse. A mother-freaking horse.
Then there’s the line of humans strung out behind him. They’re linked together in pairs, their wrists restrained by chains. Another delicate chain connects the entire human line to part of the centaur’s armor.
By their slack faces and distant, glassy stares, they’re glamoured.
He holds out a hand and shifts toward me, the powerful muscles of his hindquarters trembling beneath his soft ivory fur.