Caom shot me a sly smile. “You don’t remember us, Ash?”
Dread churned in my already roiling stomach. The cart dipped and shuddered, making me press my lips together tight.
Memories I’d locked away teemed at the front of my brain, hungering to get out. Black creatures watching me. Spindly girls with twig-like limbs. Grey things with horns. Nua, with his big green eyes and golden skin.
I blinked hard and looked away, not wanting to believe any of it. I’d struggled with it for years—with the fact that I’d seen them until I wasfourteen, when I was much, much too old to have imaginary friends or still believe in shit like that. I’d worried there was something wrong with me—something that made me hallucinate or see things that weren’t really there.
After my fourteenth birthday, when I’d stopped seeing them entirely, I’d gradually relaxed and pushed it all from my mind. Convinced myself it had all been a false memory. A biproduct of my overactive imagination as a kid.
“I’ve never met you,” I mumbled, trying to hang onto the belief that none of it was real for a little longer.
But it was hard, when I fearfully peered back and saw the progression of creatures, all different shapes and sizes, trooping through the forest ahead of us in a single line. My heart started to pound, my head slowly clearing. Sweat beaded on my hairline.
“Notus, no,” Caom was saying. “But the Folk. You’ve met plenty, haven’t you?”
The Folk. My gut roiled again, and I swallowed hard.
That wasn’t real. None of that was real.
Was I hallucinating right now? Was this the way my grief had manifested? I couldn’t handle real life, so I’d retreated to the one I’d made up in my head as a child?
“The Folk aren’t real,” I mumbled, jumping when Caom snickered and crawled forwards again.
“Shall I prove to you how real we are, pretty boy?” he murmured, sliding long fingers up my bare calves and dipping his head to kiss my knee.
I jerked my legs back, tempted to kick him in the chest. “Don’t touch me. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Caom huffed and sat back like a petulant child as Idony eyed him.
“It won’t work on him, Caom. You know that.”
“I don’t need my power to seduce anyone,” he muttered, picking up another apple and taking a ferocious bite.
“Evidently, you do.”
Caom flushed and glared at her. “He’s different. You said so yourself.”
Fuck this. I drew my legs under me to try and make my way to the edge of the cart. They trembled wildly. My bare feet were cold, and everything felt slightly damp as dawn approached through the thick canopy of the forest.
“You won’t get far.” Idony’s voice was flat, and she barely glanced up from her sewing.
But the fog was finally clearing from my brain, and I couldn’t believe how long I’d already sat here like a mindless idiot—like I hadn’t been fuckingkidnapped and taken into the woods.My breaths escaped me in panicked spurts as I launched myself towards the back of the cart.
Caom caught me easily, his toned limbs freakishly strong. I struggled in his hold, shoving at his face and chest, trying to get my legs up so I could kick him in the gut or groin.
He laughed, making me grit my teeth as hot anger surged and made my blood boil.
“Gods, you’d be fun,” he rasped in my ear, shoving me back into the corner.
I immediately scrambled back up, but he placed a long-fingered hand on my chest and pushed me down effortlessly.
“I’ll happily scrap with you for the rest of the journey, pretty boy,” he told me with a sly smile. “But it won’t help you.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled, wrenching his hand off my chest and scrambling up again.
Caom rolled his eyes before launching himself at me again. After a brief tussle, I ended up panting wildly, flat on my back in the cart with Caom straddling my waist as he stared down at me.
When he blindly held an arm behind him, Idony handed him a length of rope without a word.