His black hair looks even softer at night, because I’m some idiot girl who notices things like these. It’s like he deliberately left it just long enough to grab a handful of hair.
Maybe Dice is right; maybe I’m a sex-starved immortal and I’m unbalanced because of it. Or maybe I’m delusional since I’m starting sentences with, maybe Dice is right.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I remain unbreathing, trying to be as silent as Slade.
Just as we cross over a vine, I hear riiiiiippp.
Slade and I both freeze and look over our shoulders at a wide-eyed Dice who is behind me.
Dice swallows, and I look around for any sign we’ve disturbed the silence too much, because it’s already nightfall.
That dungeon held many secrets. One being the fact that time apparently moved slower in there.
Grimacing, Dice takes another step, and I hear riiiiiiiiip. It’s almost the same sound, but a little different.
“My leather pants,” Dice says
on a quiet whimper.
He tries to take another step, but suddenly he vanishes, and I dive into the empty space where he was, as a foreign, creepy cackle lines the night.
“Run, Princess,” Slade says evenly, moving in behind me as a loud, thunderous noise starts in the far distance. “Run now.”
My eyes come up just as trees start crashing down all around, then rising back up like they’re unbreakable. Leaping back, I barely manage to not be hammered by one of the collapsing black trees without any leaves.
“Where are the beetle leaves?” I ask, backing into a very hard body.
A hiss of air comes out of Slade, and his arm comes around, clamping down on my waist.
“Beetles don’t come out at night. It’s the damn—”
He doesn’t get to finish that, because suddenly a large, black blanket is racing toward us.
“Don’t let them bite you!” Slade shouts as he launches a blaze of blue energy in a circle around us that lights up like fire.
The light reveals the blanket is really a lot of really big damn spiders that are crawling over each other en masse, all of them salivating as they try to get to us.
“That is so not cool. Why do people like living here so much?” I ask on a hushed breath, backing into Slade even more because my skin is crawling and I want off the ground.
Cursing, I feel my body dematerializing before I can process it, and I start to shout at him that we can’t do this, when we’re suddenly on the outside of the forest with dizzying speed.
Staggering away from him, I start to rush back into the forest to find Dice, when a woman suddenly appears in front of me with pigtails that stick straight out, blue eyelashes that seem to go on forever, and rosy cheeks.
She almost looks like one of Karma’s dolls, only she’s an actual person.
“Sorry, Your Grace,” the woman says as she curtsies. “I tried to get the incubus out before he woke the biting ground.”
Taking a wary step back, I ask, “You know where Dice is?”
She nods and smiles. “He’s with my sisters, and soon me. I’ll return him to you unharmed and untouched by morning.”
A sinking feeling collects in the pit of my stomach. “You’re Polly.”
She shudders. “You say my name like I’m some sort of villain. Your incubus is the villain, but I promise you and the royal family no one will lay a hand on him, and no bodily or mental harm will befall him.”
“Then why do you want him?” I ask suspiciously.
Slade huffs somewhere behind me, and Polly glances past me like she’s just noticed him. She visibly pales, even though it’s dark, and she drops her eyes like she’s submitting to an animal.