After a bar full of monsters had tried to kill me, I couldn’t exactly complain.
15
The conversation I overheard that made me want to run from this building and the whole void had been a misunderstanding. I groaned as I rolled over in bed—Void had tucked me in and kissed my forehead, then muttered about dismembering my abusers—thinking about how big an idiot I’d been.
They’d been talking about mekilling—not killingme. How they thought I killed Vann. And how I actually killed Mav. Not planning my grisly end, but rather … talking about me.
Which was equally strange to think about. Three huge, scary-looking monsters speaking about me, little old Hala from fuck knows where, with no friends, no family, and a missing hamster. I mean, they were talking about me possibly collapsing the portalsbut still.I was used to the people discussing me having clipboards and cattle prods and deep frowns on their faces.
This was all new. And I felt like a complete moron for trying to run when Mav, Sang, and Void had been mostly sweet. Well they’d chained me up, but in their defence I’d killed Mav so I was willing to move on from that.
I rolled over with another groan, pushing that aside and trying not to think about the weapons and hunters lurking in the void, hunting me.
"Go to sleep, Hala," I huffed, and buried my head under the covers.
After a while, I managed to sleep, drifting from nightmares to dreams of Vann speaking to me between the walls of the hutch, me trying to ignore him even as I burned for friendship. He’d made me laugh once, and that was it—we’d been inseparable. Well, if you didn’t count the walls that literally separated us…
I woke up with a groan when the dream became a nightmare, Vann crying out for me through the wall as a keeper strode into his room and shocked him for speaking. I wished it had been conjured by my subconscious, but it really happened. He’d been quiet for the rest of that week, so I whispered the rules of the hutch to him.
I didn’t know the rules to live by anymore. The void was impossible to navigate, and I wasn’t sure what was okay in this house and—
Someone was watching me. I knew that cold, tingling feeling.
I dragged in a slow breath and let the nightmare rise up around me until the very tips of my fingers glowed fuschia. It hurt like a stab deep in my heart, Vann’s grunt of pain as the keeper shocked him, the silence that filled his room the rest of the week.
It hurt so much, I had enough magic to burn a monster as big as Void to goop, so I threw the covers back and—halted my attack when I recognised the huge, shirtless figure crouched at the end of Void’s bed. Mostly I recognised the horns and the kitty ears.
"Sang," I sighed, releasing the magic and raking my hand through my hair. "It’s you."
"If it was anyone else, I would have shredded them with my claws and made their skin into a fleshy ball of wool to play with."
"Ah…" I swallowed, watching him uncoil his big body and stand. "Cool…?"
He nodded, shaggy hair moving around his face. "I wanted to take you to my room. I made you a nest."
My heart skipped, my stomach bursting into handstands and cartwheels. He’d made me something? He’d spent time making something forme?
"Really?" I breathed, forgetting how tired I was when Sang scooped me off the bed, duvet and all, and into his arms.
"It’s a good one," he promised, giving me a massive grin as he carried me out of Void’s room and down the hall, the soft light of the hallway catching the edges of his horns and the sharp points of his teeth. "I spent hours on it."
My eyes rounded as I stared up at his face. "No one’s ever done anything like that for me."
A deep scowl cut across Sang’s dark face as he shouldered open his bedroom door. "Well, fuck all those people." He hurriedly added, "Not literally! Fuck me—Sang. Only Sang."
I laughed, my chest warm and heart full. "What would Mav and Void say about that?"
Sang begrudgingly agreed, "Them too, but only because they’re my friends. No one else."
"Alright," I agreed and wondered if I was crazy. "Woah," I whispered, staring at his room when he carried me inside.
"You’ve seen it before," Sang said with wry amusement, "but this is new."
At my stunned expression, he kissed my nose, then my cheek, then my lips. "I smelled you in here, sweet human. I thought I’d find you wrapped like a pretty present on my bed."
"Oh. Ah. Sorry?"
He nodded, carrying me across the room to the new addition: a huge triangular tent in the middle of the rug, covered in fairy lights, with cushions and blankets piled invitingly on the floor. There was an army of plushies of various characters I didn’t know scattered on top of them, but artfully, as if Sang really had spent hours painstakingly arranging the nest, as he called it.