Chapter Four (Part 2)

Idris nodded and gestured for me to lead the way out. I did so, giving one last parting look to Peace and Wisdom. Both waved goodbye. It felt odd leaving them like this. Not that I was particularly worried about them. They’d more than proven themselves to be self-sufficient over the years. I was still uneasy, for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint.

Maybe the uneasiness came from the god lurking behind me. Having him breathing down my neck was really ruining my mood, so with a nasty glare, I dropped back until we were walking side-by-side. He gave me a questioning look, but I ignored him.

My Sublime Ones were waiting for us outside the gates. Coda, Helel, and Coda’s mate Lilin came right up to me, circling around me and rubbing snot and saliva all over my pants. I patted them all on the head, and when I dove into the thoughts they were projecting to me, I heard them asking if I wanted them to go with us to the swamp, to protect us. I smiled at them but shook my head.

Stay here, I thought at them. Protect Peace and Wisdom.

Coda grumbled uneasily, but I just scratched under his chin, and he melted. Idris watched me fawn over my kittens with a weirdly fond expression that I was going to call him a pansy for later. Helel went over and started bumping his face into Idris’s legs too, which I was insanely jealous about, but I didn’t say anything. They only liked him because he gave them snacks. He bought their love. Asshole.

With one last assurance that I would be alright, I sent my kitties back to their positions around the palace, keeping watch. From the front of the palace, I made a hard left, locating a very small path leading through the brush. It was so overgrown that you had to know it was there to find it. Idris followed me without a word, and even though we were ducking under the low-hanging branches of a Bone Eater, the tree didn’t even make a twitch to go after Idris, proving Wisdom’s claim about the forest liking him.

Bone Eater trees were exactly what they sounded like. They mimicked the appearance of regular willow trees, but their branches were like hundreds of sharp knives that could flay flesh from bone in seconds. Their flexible branches would then bring the bones to the trunk, which had a hidden opening much like a mouth that they threw the bones into. If that wasn’t enough of a nightmare, you should hear the sound of it crunching the bones.

And because the Bone Eater’s method of catching prey left behind all the flesh and blood, they were often closely accompanied by blood-drinking vines and meat-eating lilies.

None of those plants looked remotely interested in taking a bite out of Idris, and it was honestly kind of disappointing. If I had to be stuck out here with him for who knows how long, I should at least get to watch him being nibbled on, right? And seriously, it was really fucking rude how I had to fight pretty much every living thing in this forest for goddamn years to earn its respect, but Idris literally just walked in and the forest was in love with him. It felt like a betrayal, and I was having some trouble coping.

So I took it out on Idris, of course. I walked faster on purpose, ignoring him when he tripped on roots or rocks. I deliberately took the more treacherous paths, hoping something would decide to eat him. Nothing ever did.

And through it all, Idris never said a word of complaint. In fact, he was having almost no trouble keeping up, which defeated the purpose of me doing all this, so eventually, I just gave up. It wasn’t any fun if he didn’t bleed at least a little.

Then, because the universe loved to torture me, Idris started making conversation again. We’d had about half an hour of silence while I was trying desperately to get the forest to do its worst to Idris with no success, and finally, he decided it would be okay to speak to me.

“Why did you do that with Gabriel?” he asked quietly. I frowned.

“Do what?”

“Flirt,” he said. “You were flirting with him, weren’t you?”

Um, no? What the fuck? Was this about the tongue thing? Because that wasn’t flirting, that was just good old-fashioned psychological warfare. I cast Idris a droll stare.

“I don’t know. Was I?”

Idris shrugged and ducked under a branch. “It seemed like it. Do you like him?”

I felt a laugh bubbling up in my throat but held it back by sheer force of will. Like him? I’d known him for half a day, and all he’d done was glare at me and accuse me of wanting to hurt Idris, which I did, but I wouldn’t act on the urge. I wasn’t stupid. But I was starting to think Idris was with all this talk of liking someone.

I kept my tone casual, and thoughtful, focusing on the path ahead. “Hmm. Well, he sliced you open and made you bleed everywhere, which is something I find very attractive. So let’s go with a solid maybe.”

Idris was silent, apparently taking my words at face value if the way his face darkened was any indication. He slapped a few hanging vines out of his way with more ferocity than before. What a weirdo.

“Gabriel’s very young,” he said finally. “He’s immature. But he’s also shaping up to be a very fine member of my guard, and his future is very bright.”

I scowled, confused. Why was he telling me all this? Trying to set us up or something? I walked in silence for several moments, but then it hit me.

Oh, right. It was because Idris had been around the last time I liked somebody, and he didn’t want me punching a hole in his little guard dog like I did to my first boyfriend. Well, that’s awesome. Really, it’s lovely that he’s so worried.

I stopped in my tracks abruptly. Idris walked a few more steps before he seemed to realize I wasn’t beside him, and stopped as well, looking back at me curiously. I leveled a glare at him that actually seemed to make him tense.

“Don’t worry,” I said with enough venom to outdo most of the plants around us, “I learned my lesson. I won’t seduce the young prodigy into falling in love with me. We all know what happens to those that make that mistake, and I’m sure Gabriel likes his heart right where it is, and not tossed across my bedroom.”

Idris paled, eyes widening slightly, but I brushed past him with a sneer, and for once, he didn’t try to make up some excuse to placate me. He followed me silently.

At least he was quiet now. This whole endeavor would just go a lot smoother if he didn’t try to be my friend. We both know I wasn’t capable of that. Friendship was just one of the many things right out of my reach, placed on a shelf just slightly taller than my fingers could touch. It was right up there next to love, and no one was ever going to give me a step stool to get to it, so why even bother trying to grab it?

We reached the swamplands just as the sun was starting to go down, leaving us in darkness.

The swamplands were a wide swath of muddy land that stretched out for quite a few acres. There were species of plants and animals living here that you couldn’t find in the rest of the forest, and oftentimes, they were more deadly. Green fog rose off the water in places, and the water itself came in several different colors depending on what plants were growing in it. There were pools as red as blood, some almost yellow, and others a deep inky black. A mixture of smells clouded the air around us, from the deceptively sweet sugary smell of the Hanging Moss, which worked in much the same way as a Venus Fly trap, to the bitter, medicinal smell given off by the Swamp Snakes. Thankfully, we didn’t have to guard the entire swamp, just the areas that grew Butterfly Root, and there was only one pool that did.

I led Idris over to said pool, having to climb through another pool with black water that I barked at Idris to not touch with his bare skin, because it would melt the flesh from his bones in seconds. Idris looked startled when I spoke to him, and I realized it was the first time I’d said a word to him since our discussion earlier. He composed himself quickly, following my steps through the shallow water to avoid letting it soak through our pants.

Butterfly Root grew in one of the smaller pools, nestled in a circle of cypress trees with abnormally large, spread-out roots, which were probably the only thing preventing the Butterfly Root from spreading to other pools and latching on.

I settled down on the roots of one of the cypress trees, leaning back against the trunk. Idris mirrored my pose on a neighboring tree, deliberately sitting so he was facing me. I scoffed at him, gave him the middle finger, and moved around my tree, settling on the opposite side so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

I heard Idris sigh, but he didn’t try to follow me or start another conversation, thankfully.

We settled in to rest after the journey but I stayed awake to take the first watch, letting Idris get some sleep. After about twenty minutes, I spoke up quietly, watching the fog rise off the water, glowing silver in the moonlight.

“By the way, these aren’t normal cypress trees,” I said, and smiled devilishly. “They feed on tears, sweat, pretty much any bodily fluid. And they’ll do anything to get it. Sweet fucking dreams.”

There was a sort of huffing noise from Idris that could almost be mistaken for a laugh, but that wasn’t possible. Idris didn’t find me funny. Pathetic, sad, an evil piece of shit, sure, but nothing about me was amusing to him. So I assumed the sound meant he was acknowledging my warning, and left it at that.

As I sat there, listening to the sounds of animals eating and being eaten, fucking, screaming, etc., I contemplated the prospect of having to spend days on end out here with Idris. It was a bleak fucking thought.

I hoped whoever the fuck was harvesting the Butterfly Root showed up sooner rather than later, because if I couldn’t beat their fucking head in to release some of this aggression, I was probably going to end up killing the king of the gods.