OMG WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, KELL?

BUYING MY FIRST HOUSE. 🏡

So now I'm poor.😭

It's been a real whirlwind of a process, so I've been super busy working! Unfortunately, Wattpad doesn't support me in any way monetarily, so I had to balance house-hunting with my regular work, and that took up every hour of my day basically. Because the house happened so fast (we weren't expecting to find one so soon// it's worth far more than it was sold to us at, we didn't have a choice but to jump right in with an offer), all of my time went toward it.

But now I'm back, settling into my new life and dying to write! We might still experience a few hiccups, but supposedly our internet service is connected and ready to support lots of updates!

💖

"Dot's gone. Gone. She's—"

Val caught her breath against Chiro, until he re-directed her clutching fingertips toward the dark frame of his desk. Wobbling towards the pair on feet that felt heavily unsteady, I rubbed my eyes, tried to make sense of a world coming together in wintry seams. The snow dissolved as I reached them; the room regained the forbidding grey stone of the castle. The broken glass and chill of my ruined childhood home retreated with the rapid heartbeat of an interrupted nightmare. Val's red cheeks and heaving breaths  drew me from the snow-swept dream back into the present.

Chiro stood a few feet away, unimpressed with the pair of us as I stumbled toward Val and she panted brief lines of nonsense at me. 

Dot. Gone. Dinner. What the fuck. Was wrong? Withme?

Nothing, I'd assured her, rubbing gooseflesh off my arms. My head felt fuzzy. Light. Astral. Yes. Astral. The word was a good one, the right one. And it was so easy to slip off thinking of other right words. But I had to concentrate outside of myself, which was harder than you'd think, when you feel so self-aware, like you've just slipped on a new Halloween costume or a nice gown for a special occasion.

Astral. Aware of my body—current body, I thought coldly, remembering the corpse that rotted in the frozen Alaskan soil—and yet acutely aware that I had existed outside of it. Touch, even something as simple as fingertips on the nape of my sweaty neck, or the roll of goosebumps, felt novel.

Touch didn't feel regular, normal, routine, until I'd plopped down on the desk beside Val and she'd gulped down enough air to tell her story.

Dot had last been seen picking aimlessly at her dinner. She'd had a poor appetite since the incident, not exactly unexpected. My stomach churned at the thought of what had been spewed into her mouth. After, she'd gone out toward the gardens. She preferred being alone. Dot in all her quiet beauty never tried to get on with the other girls beyond the barest minimum. She preferred Shail, who in turn preferred hunting small lizards and other things small enough to be batted and swung around. Shail never asked anything of her, but he always heard things first. Skittish creature she was, I believe she liked knowing which direction to look. The cat acted as more than a mere weather vane, however; he was her barometer, sensing the unsettled systems so she could be prepared.

Yarah, on her way back to the bedrooms, thought she'd glimpsed Dot from a window as she got ready for bed. Dot, dressed in a tawny cloak that drew great contrast to her dark locks, had crossed into the courtyard, headed towards the markets, where there was always a crowd as preparations for the multitude of weddings reached their peak. No sign of Shail.

"He's a cat," I muttered, sparing a glance toward Chiro. The demon rubbed his chin, eyes unfocused in distant thought. He had heard enough fifteen minutes ago. "If Dot followed him, there's no telling where they've gone off to. I've watched him pop out of places I didn't even realize there was enough room to pop out of."

Val pushed her damp hair back. Tiny, sweat-thickened curls sprang back like grass over her glistening forehead. "She's a bit of a chicken, no? She wouldn't follow him around behind a tent, especially with night coming on. What's the point in tailing a cat through the dark?"

"She's a shell of a woman," Chiro cut in.

"Don't say that!" Val hissed. The man shrugged.

"He's right," I agreed, lifting my own shoulders. "She's not healthy. We don't even know how....how much of her is left in there. That's on me. I shouldn't have left her alone so soon after those monsters got her."

Val pursed her lips. "It ain't your fault, Tay. I've been thinking she's flown off the handle a while ago, but then to go through what she did." She tried slicking back her hair again. "Good lord. She could be anywhere."

"With anyone." The depth of Chiro's voice ended the conversation on a somber period.

*

Dakota located Shail in the gardens. There was no telling how long the cat had been there, but despite his current half-finished meal of a ratty creature, he hadn't been there long. The crag cat's armored hide was pebbled with drying mud. The girls took their torches in a frantic search throughout the gardens, but nothing had been disturbed more than a few crushed flowers and a scratched tree where Shail had sharpened his claws.

Word spread.

By the time I'd made it to the market, more than one story, told by lord and otherwise, had made its way through the circuit. And more than one monster was happy to stop and tell me all the vicious ways they'd taken her. I'd fallen for it the first time. After that, one story bleed into another and I was pushing past them to move on to the next liar and their wares. I'd been forced to split with Val, Dakota, Chiro, and the others. No one was giving us a straight answer, and we had zero leads, except for a scrap of mud on a crag cat.

"I saw the little ghost," came a soft voice behind me.

I whirled, hand tightening on the curtain corner of a merchant's stall.

A tall, dark-skinned man with a bright smile and vermilion eyes waited for me to realize it was him who'd spoken. He was dressed in the same Grecian style Akta had favored, but where the Stag had been a deadly Bambi, this one was more his rival, bulky and scarred and while not handsome, not entirely unattractive, either. He was a demon built from words like presence and iron, and those were no small traits to ignore.

"Unless you've got something original, I'm afraid I've heard it all tonight," I told him, peeling back the curtain, standing at an angle now, where I could keep an eye on him while glancing inside. In the glow of a warm lantern, crouched on all fours like a bristling coyote, was a young boy of pinched, wolfish features. He hissed and leaped at me, hands nothing but dagger-like claws that stretched for my chest.

Hard fingers gripped my waist, wrenched me from the tent in time to feel the rushing surge of air as the child crashed into the dirt.  I hit the ground with a dull thump, blocked from the child by the unfamiliar lord. He moved across to the stunned child, raised his foot over the kid, then brought it down with a grunt of effort, slammed it so hard a bony crack split the night air. The boy screamed. The man kicked him once, twice, and then the kid found the strength to scramble, awkwardly on all fours, into the gloom.

"You're welcome," the man said. His boot pressed painfully against my wrist, pressured hard enough to make me groan. He stepped over me before I could return the hurt. His wrist flicked  in a half-gesture toward the sky. "She's all yours, mate."

With a flutter and a rattling breath, the stink of rot settled between us. Them an disappeared behind the arch of a decaying wing membrane. Before I could scream for help, the King sank his talons into my chest and squeezed. Pain rushed through my senses, numbed my reflexes into submission.

"These are dangerous times," the dragon rumbled. Blood pattered the ground, then the roof of the tent, and then I couldn't hear anything over the pounding of my heart. "This is for your own good. Only a few days, ma petite puce. Wouldn't want you getting cold feet before our big day."