by Linda Kage
Blair it was, then.
I sighed, realizing the odds of actually accomplishing all that was unfeasible, and yet I was determined to try anyway. Because being around Nicolette made me feel a sense of hope.
Her and her constant talk of trusting in that damn mark. I swear.
Glancing at her, I reached out and gently touched her hair. When my thumb barely brushed over her tattoo, energy prickled across my skin.
I pulled my hand away, surprised.
Impossible.
Her tale couldn’t be true. No amount of magic could make me love another person. But I tapped my finger gently against her tattoo five times, just to watch the sparks.
When I returned to my pallet, I was pensive and yet optimistic for the first time in weeks. The odds were against me, but at least I had a plan that didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach with guilt and dread.
That might’ve been why I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep almost as soon as my head hit my own pallet.
And why I didn’t stir when danger entered our campsite at midday until Nicolette’s piercing scream jarred me awake.
12
Nicolette
It was the clicking that roused me.
I’d been so tired I couldn’t even remember falling asleep, and I was still deep under when something began to tick and clack directly next to my ear, followed by swishing sounds, like someone sweeping a floor. Then more snicks. Maybe an insect scurrying past.
A moment passed before I was able to drag my eyes open and spot blurry dark patches in front of me in the lighter sandy background.
I blinked drowsily, still half-asleep.
By the time I realized it was a scorpion that had sauntered right up to within a foot from my face, it was too late for me to do anything but scream.
So, scream I did.
Quite healthily.
And that’s when I realized the scorpion wasn’t alone.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” I screeched, jolting upright and then leaping to my feet, where I danced back on bare tiptoes, only to discover that not only was a horde of scorpions lined up next to my pallet in front of me, but there were more behind me, and to the left and the right as well. Our entire campsite was surrounded by a huge circle of them.
Thousands upon thousands of scorpions. Maybe millions.
“Holy shit,” I heard Farrow hiss from the other side of the sleeping horses. I spun his way to find him leaping to his feet as well and diving toward his satchel of supplies.
“What’re you doing?” I cried, vexed that no scorpions were even remotely close to him, which let him run freely, and flee freely, the lucky shit. I, on the other hand, had absolutely nowhere to go.
But he didn’t abandon me to my predicament. Instead, he called, “Don’t worry, princess. I know how to chase them off. Just hold tight.”
I inched my tiptoes further away from the line of scorpions by my pallet as they crept closer, their stingers arched over their backs and the ends of their tails twitching as if ready to murder me.
Sweat rolled down my back as my breathing heightened. “Hurry,” I managed to whimper.
The horses woke just as Farrow pulled a long stick free with a rag wrapped around one end.
Caramel and Mint didn’t seem to be fans of our guests either. They whinnied and began to struggle to their feet, prancing madly, which frightened a few scorpions back, but not nearly enough of them.
“Hold,” Farrow commanded them in a steadying tone before the pair stampeded us to death. Then he set a fire striker against the end of his torch, igniting the rags into flames.
“On our march across the desert to invade Donnelly, more soldiers than I could count lost their lives to scorpion attacks,” Farrow explained calmly as he patted the horses’ flanks when he passed by them before making his way to me. “It didn’t take us long to learn the little bastards abhorred fire.”
He easily hurdled a line of scorpions and landed on the pallet next to me to take my hand. I clutched his fingers gratefully as he taunted the scorpions with the end of his torch, jabbing it at them and shooing them back. The nearest ones skittered away, but the thousands more surrounding the camp rushed forward, as if to assist their comrades in distress.
“Are you sure that’s not just making them angrier?” I asked, sinking closer to Farrow, certain that once their reinforcements arrived, they’d attack and sting us both to death.
“God, I hope not,” Farrow gulped, watching in horror as the mass swarmed forward.
But instead of striking out at us, the two groups merged and began to circle each other, swirling around one another as if performing some kind of orchestrated scorpion dance or something.
I blinked and then squinted at them, certain I was seeing things. “What the…?”
And suddenly, they stopped as if waiting for us to respond. Only then did I realize they’d formed letters in the sand with their bodies lined up against each other.
The letters spelled out the word stop.
Next to me, Farrow straightened and dropped his torch down to his side.
“Well, that’s new,” he said before glancing at me and arching an eyebrow as if silently inquiring if I’d ever seen anything like this before.
I shrugged, just as confused as he was.
More scorpions marched in and organized themselves until they added the word please under stop.
“Aww,” I couldn’t help but coo. “Such manners.” I grinned over at Farrow. “They’re nice scorpions.”
He lifted his eyebrow again, letting me know he didn’t necessarily agree.
I tugged at his hand. “Well, you heard them,” I ordered. “Put the fire out.”
“Like hell,” he answered.
“Farrow.” My voice grew a hair firmer. “They very politely asked you to stop.”
“Right.” The word was soft and slow and totally not compliant. “A million oversized ants with tails full of poison tell me to drop the only weapon we have to defend ourselves, and you expect me to actually listen to them?”
“We should at least hear—er, read—what they have to say first.” It seemed like the only reasonable next step to me.
I batted my lashes at Farrow. “Or you could keep thrusting your fire at them until you piss them off enough to make them strike out and sting us both to death instantly. Your choice.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath but finally saw reason enough to shove the lit end of his torch into the sand and smother the flames. Then he pulled the fire striker from his belt and held it up for all to see as he spoke loud enough for the scorpions to hear. “But attack, and I’m firing this baby back up. You hear me?”
The scorpions moved then, as if they’d heard. Scuttling around on the sand, they kept their distance as they formed more letters.
The next word they wrote was greetings.
As they started on another word, Farrow groaned, and his head fell back. “Good Lord, this will take all day.”
“Shh,” I hissed, jabbing him in the side. “Scorpions are communicating with us. This is absolutely fascinating.”
“It’s definitely something,” he muttered unenthusiastically.
Once the first sentence was complete, I read it aloud.
“Greetings, princess and mate. Oh! See,” I crowed, snickering triumphantly at Farrow and poking him in the ribs yet again. “Even the scorpions know you belong to me.”
He sighed but otherwise didn’t reply, putting all his effort into scowling at the scorpions and distrustfully watching them form more letters.
The scorpion kween wishes—
“Uh, if you’re trying to spell queen, you’re wrong,” Farrow pointed out. “It’s q-u-e-e-n.”
“Farrow!” I cried in reprimand.
“What?” He waved a hand, motioning to the scorpions as they regrouped to spell queen right. “If I had made that error during my lessons, my tutors would’ve smacked my knuckles with bamboo sticks until they bled.”
Yes, my tutor probably would’ve done the same to me—not the until-they-bled part; that just sounded barbaric—but these weren’t humans.
“They’re trying. Give them a break.”
Meanwhile, the scorpions had spelled out the sentence: the scorpion queen wishes to give you safe passage threw our land.
Farrow, of course, had to correct them again for spelling the wrong through.
But I brightened happily. “Really? You want to help us? That’s so kind of you. Thank you, Queen Scorpion.”
Next to me, Farrow merely scowled before suspiciously asking, “Why?”
“Oh my Lord!” I whacked him in the arm. “You don’t say why when someone wishes to impart such a kind gift to you.”
“The hell if you don’t. It typically means they want something in return. Something more precious than you’re willing to part with.”
We owe a favor to the family of King Terran, the scorpions answered.
“King Terran was my grandfather,” I explained.
Farrow sent me a dry glance. “Yes, I remember.”
“Oh, right.” I’d already told him that. Then I beamed. “And you actually listened to me? How fabulous.”
He sighed, probably worried I would now think that had to be some kind of sign, signifying we were true loves after all.
Which I did.
Because we were.
“Oh, stop being a fusspot,” I told him, smiling as I nudged his elbow. “I’ve never had scorpions talk to me before. This is new and exciting. I didn’t even realize they understood humans.”
“Yeah,” Farrow echoed, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s creepy.”
In the sand, the scorpions had written: King Terran saved our kind from certain exsteek...
But knowing they were probably spelling the word wrong, they tried again with extension, only to erase that too and settle on certain death instead.
Then they added: we repay our dets.
To keep Farrow from correcting their spelling yet again over the word debt, I pinched his arm when he opened his mouth.
He glanced over with raised eyebrows, so I spat, “Shh.”
An amused grin quirked his lips, making my insides heat. He was so handsome when he responded to my silent demands with a simple, sexy smile. Made me wonder what else I could get him to do with a single look.
All the while, the scorpions patiently waited for our reaction.
“Right, yes.” Clearing my throat, I nodded and stepped forward. Since I’d been the one they had addressed in the first place, I felt like I should be the one to answer.
Bowing before them, I gifted them with a gracious incline of my head and sunny grin when I straightened. “We are most honored by your offer of guidance and graciously accept.”
“We do?” Farrow edged closer to me so he could ask from the side of his mouth, “Are you sure about this?”
I nudged him quiet and kept smiling at the scorpions. “Once we’ve made it safely through your land, consider your debt to my family line paid in full. Thank you.”
And so, for the next four days, we had a royal escort from the scorpion queen’s tribe.
They would circle our camp during the day while we slept to keep others at bay—although no one else actually came upon our camp—and at night, along with their exoskeletons that glowed fluorescent in the moonlight, their tails would light up and blink, providing a road for us to travel between.
The lightning tails were a surprising detail to learn. “I had no idea your tails did that,” I exclaimed in delight. “How amazing. Now we can clearly see the words you form and talk while we ride.”
“Yeah. Joy,” Farrow grumbled moodily from his mount.
We are the only tribe with blinking tails, the scorpions explained. As we were cross bread with litning bugs.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Farrow muttered. “Crossbred is only one word and doesn’t contain an A. And lightning—”
“Farrow,” I hissed.
He scowled at me. “What?”
“What is your problem? These are our volunteer guides, and they’ve been nothing but kind and gracious to us. They certainly don’t deserve such attitude.”
He sniffed. “Well, they made me picture lightning bugs tupping scorpions, and it wasn’t a pleasant vision.”
“Omigod, shh…” My eyes grew wide with mortification even as I slapped a hand over my mouth to muffle a laugh because now I was picturing lightning bugs and scorpions together too, charming each other over a candle-lit dinner in the sand with a plate of freshly roasted insects between them.
When he lifted an eyebrow as if to say, See, disturbing mental image, isn’t it? I rolled my eyes and begged, “Please, just try to behave and get along.”
“I wasn’t raised in the art of courtly decorum like you were, my lady.”
“I’m aware. But as long as you try, that will be good enough for me.”
With a grunt, he relented with, “Fine, I’ll try,” before he clicked his tongue and had Mint trotting up ahead toward the front of the glowing scorpion line.
I shook my head, trying to figure him out.
I’d never seen Farrow on the outright-cheerful side, but he’d been exceedingly cranky since the scorpions had joined our expedition. I knew they hadn’t earned his trust yet, but honestly, the scorpions had been very welcoming since we’d met them. I had no idea what Farrow’s issue was, and he’d been so closed off, irritation was the only mood I could glean from him.
It was all so baffling. I must be missing the key piece of a puzzle that would help bring the whole picture together because I certainly didn’t understand all the parts he showed me.
Letting him stew in his mood, I focused my attention on my new friends, learning about their lifestyle throughout each night of travel, enjoying the stories they shared about their tribe, and telling them stories of my people in return. Farrow kept his distance and usually stayed silent, until the third night when the front line of scorpions made an arrow that pointed right, letting us know they thought we should turn there.
“But that’s south,” Farrow argued. “We don’t need to go south. We need to go east.”
He broke through their ranks, making them scatter across the ground to keep from getting stepped on by his horse, and he kept heading in the direction we’d been going all along.
I trotted up to ride next to him. “Are you sure we shouldn’t turn here? The scorpions haven’t steered us wrong yet.”
“Well, they are now. That’s south. And we need to go east.”
“But it’s dark. What if we got mixed up in the—”
“We didn’t get mixed up. I know where we’re going, and it’s east.” He pointed forward and sent me a stern glance. “This way. So just—” He waved me off dismissively. “Go back to talking to your new friends and completely ignoring me, why don’t you?”
My mouth fell open, not expecting him to say that last bit, and definitely not so bitterly either.
“Oh my goodness,” I gasped in sudden realization. “You’re jealous. Of the scorpions.”
“What? No!” He snorted and more forcefully repeated, “No.”
“Is that why you’ve been so moody? You think I’ve been ignoring you?”
He cast me a half-offended, half-incredulous frown. “I have not been moody. And I didn’t say you’d been ignoring me.”
“Yes, you did. That is literally exactly what you just said. You said I’d been completely ignoring you, in fact.”
If it’d been daylight, I might’ve actually seen him blush. But it was night, so I could only catch the furrowing of his brows and hear the irritation in his voice when he demurred, “I would never be so dramatic,” only to make a big, dramatic show of snapping his reins to urge Mint on ahead of me.
I grinned after him.
Farrow had been jealous.
That meant he liked my attention.
That meant he liked me.
This was a start. This was
a damn good start.
13
Farrow
I was jealous.
Of some stupid bugs.
And what was worse, Nicolette had caught on and called me out on it.
Jesus, how humiliating.
But damn it all, since the moment we’d left Donnelly together, she’d been nothing but interested in me, trying to learn more about me or tell me about herself, trying to convince me we shared a special bond. And then bam, the terrible-spelling scorpions had come along, and suddenly she was like Farrow? Who’s Farrow?
Not that I wanted her to pester me with all that love-mark nonsense. It was just that the abrupt absence of her constant attention had left me feeling forsaken.
Okay, maybe forsaken was too dramatic of a word.
But she’d just completely stopped talking to me. And this itching, nagging place inside me craved to have some of her attention back.
I scraped a hand over my face and groaned aloud. What was this girl doing to me?
She trotted up beside me, and my stomach knotted with tension and irritation.
And longing. Jesus, I fucking longed for her overly cheerful, way-too-gullible, yet utterly adorable attention.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel ignored.” She sounded truly regretful.
I ground the back of my molars together hard. Now she was going to talk to me out of pity. It was more than I could take.
“I didn’t feel—”
Her scream cut me off.
“Nicolette?” I shot her a worried glance, only to find her—
Not there.
“Nicolette!”
“Farrow!”
I looked down. She’d shrunk about two feet.
“I’m sinking.”
And she was. She sank another foot lower.
“Oh, shit.”
I was out of my saddle and on solid ground next to her in an instant. “It’s death sand,” I explained, reaching for her without moving a step closer in fear I’d tumble into the fatal depths with her and be unable to save her. “Hurry. Take my hands.”
She did, linking her fingers to mine without question or hesitation. I yanked her up, off her horse, and into my arms with so much force and momentum that we went sprawling backward onto the ground, Nicolette landing on top of me.