“And I’m telling you, I can handle it.”

  The Viscount looked at my hand again, and I realized, I hadn’t let his go. Hot blood flushed to my cheeks, and I yanked my hand away, slipping it out from under his. The Viscount turned his head, suddenly very interested in looking all around us, as if watching for threats. I did the same, only I couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “Right,” I said, trying to break the moment into a million pieces. “We should, uh, probably get comfortable, right? Should we start a fire, or something?”

  “A fire will only attract them,” the Viscount said.

  “Them?”

  “Yes. We are at the edge of the forest, but that doesn’t mean we are not at risk of being attacked. We should not build a fire.”

  A breath of cold air suddenly broke against my bare shoulders, and I couldn’t help from shivering. “O-okay, but I’m going to freeze my tits off.”

  The Viscount’s eyebrow cocked. “Will they?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Fall off if you get too cold.”

  I frowned at him, then crossed my arms in front of my chest. “It was a joke, but I really am getting cold.”

  He looked at the trunk, pulled a fur rug out from inside, and held it up in front of me. “May I?”

  I nodded, and the Viscount stepped up to me, wrapped the furs around my shoulders, and held its corners closed around my neck. The rush of warmth was instantaneous, spreading through me as if there was a fire burning under my feet.

  Though I couldn’t see more than a few feet around me, I could see him as clear as day. Even now, despite the darkness, his eyes sparkled as if the light was coming from inside them. I swallowed lightly. He wasn’t moving, simply holding the cloak closed around me. He was so close, I could smell him, I could hear his soft exhales, I could see his chest rising and falling.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You are welcome,” he said, and I felt his warm breath against the tip of my cold nose.

  I swallowed again, my mouth and throat suddenly dry. “I—”

  “—geez, the silence is worse than you talking,” Rell said, his voice rising out of the carriage. “What are you both doing back there?”

  The little lizard’s voice prompted the Viscount to sharply step back. I took hold of the cloak to stop it from falling and held it closed around my throat. More warmth flushed into my face, igniting my cheeks.

  “Right,” I said, “We should, uh, get inside and close the windows if we’re going to wait until dawn.”

  The Viscount nodded. “Agreed,” he said, abruptly. “Yes.”

  I watched hum pull a pack with some food out of the trunk. He then shut it and walked around the carriage toward the door, where he waited for me to enter first. I stepped inside, found my spot toward the other end of the carriage, and sat down. The Viscount followed, shutting the door and rolling up the window.

  It was going to be tight, but this was where we were going to sleep tonight… in close quarters, at the edge of a cursed forest.

  CHAPTER 17

  I couldn’t find sleep, surprise, surprise.

  It wasn’t the size of the carriage, or the way that kept trying to further nuzzle into my chest, or even the fact that I was sleeping inches away from the Viscount of Emerald Hall. None of these things bothered me because I had slept just fine in a forest before, in the back of a car, with three other people around me.

  Granted, we had all just gotten wasted after playing a show at the Blind Raccoon and deciding on a whim to drive to Los Angeles and demand somebody sign us.

  We made it about as far as Myrtle Creek before our driver passed out and we called it a night off-road somewhere. It was a wonder we didn’t all get murdered in our sleep. When I finally regained consciousness, we were back up north, near Seattle eating waffles and all the eggs we could find.

  Right now, I was sharing a carriage with a Fae noble and a loudmouth, overgrown, magic iguana with wings, but there were two factors that kept me from sleeping. Number one, I wasn’t wasted and passed out. Number two, the noise.

  I had clearly been way too out of it to have noticed the noise in the last forest I had found myself sleeping in, but this one? It wasn’t just alive—it was throwing a rave. It was as if every single creature in it was competing with the next one to see which could make the most noise, and they were all winning.

  There were hoots, croaks, shrieks, and the occasional wail that sounded strangely like a human baby crying. I heard clicking sounds, chattering; even the whoosh of the wind through the trees was loud to the point of being violent, and aggressive. I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of volume levels we would reach if the carriage windows were open.

  What the hell am I doing out here?

  If Rell were awake right now, he would probably have had something to say about that. He would’ve called me out on questioning my decision now, here, once we were so far past the point of no return, it wasn’t even on the horizon behind us anymore.

  But I wasn’t really questioning my decision. There was a different feeling working its way through me right now… something that toed the line between utterly freaked out and total wonderment. What was I doing here, in a forest, in another world, sleeping next to an alien Noble and… Rell. No one back home would ever have believed me, assuming I ever made it back home alive.

  I was going to have to live with the knowledge of this place my entire life. I was going to have to go back home, back to paying rent, back to earning money, probably behind a deli counter, because let’s face it, the band was going nowhere and no one was going to hurry to answer my resume. And all the while, whether I was taking shit from my landlord, or my boss, or my new neighbors, I was going to be sitting on the knowledge that I was, once, here.

  That wasn’t sounding so great.

  “You’re not sleeping,” said the Viscount. His voice was low, and quiet, almost a whisper, but it sent a wave of warm prickles across my body.

  I had my eyes closed, and my head facing the back of the seat. “How can you tell?” I asked, matching his tone.

  “You snore.”

  I turned my head over my shoulder. “I do not.”

  “Slightly, yes.”

  “I don’t like that you know that.”

  “I cannot help but notice things.”

  “Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “Because I am keeping watch.”

  “I thought I told you to get some sleep.”

  “You suggested I sleep.”

  “No, I agreed to eat those weird, savory dates you brought with you from the house if you agreed to sleep. I can still taste them. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop tasting them.”

  “You said, I will eat your dates, but you need to get some sleep.”

  I turned to face the wall again and sighed. “Now you’re just picking at my words.”

  “Choose better words.”

  I couldn’t see him, but I knew he’d said that with a slight shrug, and maybe something of a grin. He was enjoying this. I shut my eyes, deciding to keep trying to catch a little sleep, but knowing that he was awake, barely more than a few feet from me—that was the thing keeping me up, now.

  Should I talk to him?

  What would I even have said to him. The Viscount and I couldn’t have been more different… at least, that’s what I had thought until now. Because until now, I had considered him a stickler for the rules and for proper procedure, but here he was, going against the orders of his superiors and doing what he knew in his heart was right for him.

  Maybe we had more in common than I thought? Maybe he was a rebel, too? A rebel bound by honor and titles, by status and protocol; a firebrand in a business suit. Crap. Did that make him somehow more attractive?

  Oh no.

  Do I really find him attractive?

  I was about to turn over again when I heard our horse snort. It had been tied to a nearby tree so it could lay down and rest for the night, but it sounded like the horse was getting up. I heard its hooves trotting on the dirt, I heard the rope stretch taut. When it whined, I shot bolt-upright and stared at the Viscount.

  Already he had one of his hands held up at me, the other held against his mouth in a shushing gesture.

  My heart crept steadily into overdrive, as if it now wanted to lend its loud thumping to the cacophony outside of this carriage. Something was clicking out there. Clicking. It was a distinct, insect-like sound that rattled the sides of the carriage just as easily as it tickled the inside of my ribcage.

  The sound rose, the horse whined again, snorted, trotted hard against the damp soil underneath it, then there was a snap, and everything stopped.

  Everything.

  The entire forest fell utterly quiet at the drop of a hat. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast inside of my chest, I could see my pulse thumping behind my eyes, and I could cold hands of panic starting to grip my throat, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  Nothing.

  Not a single sound.

  I gave the Viscount my eyes, but since I couldn’t even hear myself breathe, I didn’t dare speak. He looked at me, then he looked at the window, peering around it to try to get a better view of where he’d tied the horse. I peered with him, craning my neck as far as it would go, but slowly, without moving too quickly or too much.

  “Rell,” I thought. “You have to wake up.”

  But Rell wasn’t listening. Maybe he couldn’t hear me. Maybe he was far too deep in sleep that my thoughts weren’t reaching his mind. Dammit. He was getting frustratingly good at not being around when I needed him. When he woke up, I was going to strangle that little—the carriage suddenly rocked violently, several of the windows smashed, and I was sprayed with bits of broken glass and some kind of warm liquid.

  I put my hands up to shield my face from the explosion and scrambled toward the opposite side of the carriage. I hadn’t heard the window shatter, I hadn’t heard the thud that caused the carriage to jerk and shake; I hadn’t even heard myself scream, even though I was sure I had. When the glass stopped flying, I opened my eyes to see what the hell had just happened.

  Instantly, I wished I hadn’t.

  A horse stared back at me from a hole in the side of the carriage. Its eyes were glassy and wide, its face was cut up and scratched, and where the neck met the window, a trail of blood was starting to slide down the wall. Terror seized hold of me and made my limbs freeze and lock up. I wanted to move, to step out through the door just beside me, but I couldn’t. The Viscount was sitting across from me, also pressed up against the same wall I was up against, and Rell was still asleep, still curled up next to the horse’s head.

  I was about to try to speak when something forcefully yanked the horse’s head out of the carriage and pulled it into the dark, causing more of that wall to shatter, and splinter, and break. It wasn’t until a piece of wood bonked Rell on the head that he finally opened his eyes. I saw his lips move, and I could tell he was saying something sarcastic, and grumpy, but I couldn’t hear him.

  When the adrenaline finally kicked in, I pointed at my ears and screamed in my head, “I can’t hear you!”

  That made Rell perk up and look around. He took one look at the devastation next to him, and the blood sliding down what was left of the wall and pooling on the floor, and he scrambled over to my side of the carriage like a frenzied cat.

  “What the hell was that?!” he shrieked into my mind.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t hear anything. Can you?”

  “No!”

  The Viscount took my hand, opened the door to the carriage, and quickly stepped out. I didn’t have a choice but to follow him, though I made sure to grab Rell before getting out. Now that I was outside, in the cold of the forest, my senses were starting to return, to sharpen. The mix of panic and fire coursing through my veins had instantly woken me up, and may have even been the only reason why I saw it.

  There, on the other side of the carriage we had just left behind. I couldn’t tell what it was, not exactly, but there was something there. Something so large that it loomed over the carriage. A creature with long, thin limbs, and a giant bulb on its back. It was hunched over, and it looked to be stabbing the ground with its front limbs.

  I backed up a step, then another, and another, finally tripping over a root on the ground and falling flat on my ass. The Viscount still had hold of my hand, so he pulled me up. With his other hand, he started drawing shapes into the air… and his fingers began to illuminate.

  I watched him quickly trace a series of straight and curved lines into the empty space in front of him, then watched as they began to light up and glow, soft and green. Finally, the Viscount drew a circle around the area of shapes he had just finished, and he pressed the palm of his hand against it.

  The symbols flashed, I heard a pop in my ears, and suddenly, I could hear again—though I wished I hadn’t. It was all so fast, so sudden, and totally overwhelming. The crickets and the owls were gone, but the howling wind remained, and now there was something else, too; a chattering, clicking sound, and the awful, sickening squelching of flesh being rapidly torn apart and eaten.

  “What is it?!” I yelled, finally able to hear my own voice.

  Instantly, the chattering and the squelching stopped, and the creature turned, slowly, to face us. It had heard me, too.

  CHAPTER 18

  “I told you to stay quiet,” the Viscount growled.

  “I tried!” I hissed, “What the hell is that thing, and why it is huge? Why is everything here so huge?!”

  The Viscount lowered his voice and put himself between me and the creature. “It is a Crawling Quiet, and it is attracted to sound,” he said.

  My hand flew to my mouth to keep the next question from flying out before I could stop it. I had so many questions, my mind was racing, my heart was thumping, this thing—this Crawling Quiet—stalked slowly, carefully toward us. I still couldn’t see it clearly; it was a hulking mound of long, pointy limbs and what I assumed were pincers in its giant mouth.

  The Viscount and I kept slowly taking steps back, away from the carriage and what remained of our horse. Rell stalked with us, his bright, amber eyes focused on the creature that dwarfed the ride we had been sleeping in moments ago. One of its large limbs came crashing down on the roof of the carriage, skewering it from top to bottom.

  “What do we do?” I thought, my own inner voice sounding just as panicked as my outer voice.

  “Relax, I have a plan,” Rell said into my mind, “Fire scares these things off.”

  “Fire? We don’t have any fire.”

  “Yeah, we do.” Rell stopped stalking backwards, and in a moment, he was ahead of the Viscount. “We have me.”

  “Rell, no! You can’t breathe fire!”

  “Watch me.”

  Rell extended his wings, crouched, and took to the air with a bounding leap. To his credit, he was very quiet when he moved. I only heard the beating of his wings because he was close to me, but I didn’t think I would’ve been able to hear him had he been even a little further away.

  The Crawling Quiet, though, had incredibly sensitive hearing. It curled itself around the carriage and made a clicking sound toward Rell, who was still gaining altitude. I wanted to scream for him to come back down, to stop being stupid, but I couldn’t speak. This creature had just eaten our horse as a midnight snack; the last thing I wanted was to catch its attention.

  “That’s right, look at me!” Rell yelled, and the creature hissed in his direction. “Holy hell, you’re a big girl! And your breath smells like dead horse! Gross.”

  The Crawling Quiet drew one of its long, spear-like limbs back. It was getting ready to impale Rell. My frantic brain remembered I had been given a weapon, an ax! The only problem was, the ax was still in the carriage that was being steadily squashed by the monster currently all over it.

  “Time to fry,” Rell said, and he sucked in a deep breath of air. I watched him from the ground, saw his throat light up in shades of orange and gold, and then he opened his mouth and spat fire at the Crawling Quiet.

  In my mind, I had imagined a jet of flamethrower proportions had just shot out of Rell’s mouth. But the truth was, he had only spat a handful of embers at the creature. Some of them caught on the edge of the carriage, others hit the wet earth and fizzled away quickly.

  “What the hell?!” he shrieked. “Come on!”

  Anticlimax wasn’t the word.

  The fire hadn’t hurt the Crawling Quiet, but it did retreat from the tongues of flame catching over the top of the carriage, and I got to see it now, at least. It was huge, and black, and covered in thick chitin that sparkled in a pearlescent way wherever the light touched it. It wasn’t a spider. That was where my mind had gone at first. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t horrifying to look at.

  This creature was the size of a school-bus. It had two large, bulbous eyes that sat above a pair of mandibles that were bigger than I was. On the outside, they were smooth and dark, but on the inside they were serrated, hooked, perfect for tearing through soft flesh. The inside of its mouth was full of teeth, and dripping with fresh, dark blood, and its limbs weren’t just spears—they were covered in spikes, and sharp thorns.

  It was the largest beetle in existence, only this one liked to eat meat, and not leaves; and the fire Rell had just breathed wasn’t scaring it off one bit.

  The Crawling Quiet was about to strike out at Rell, so I called out to it. “Hey!” I yelled, “Over here!”

  “What are you doing?” asked the Viscount.

  “Trying to save my friend’s life.”

  Instead of attacking Rell, the beetle turned its attention toward me, and then it lunged. The size of it as it barreled toward me swallowed the world whole. I could see nothing but teeth, and pincers, and legs, and dark, bug-like plates. I couldn’t help but realize I had been here before, in almost the exact same situation, only back then I had been dreaming.

  This was real life, and I was about to die if I didn’t act fast.