Hello again, everyone! I know I mentioned that this fic would be updating on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but I felt bad leaving y'all with another cliffhanger after already having done so, so I thought it would be a nice gesture to give y'all an extra chapter so you can find out what's happened to Shion and Nezumi! And technically, this still counts as a Wednesday update!

I hope you all enjoy it! I'm thrilled to be able to get back to this fic after so long. Now, we just have to keep our fingers crossed that Shion and Nezumi are all right! xD

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Nezumi jerked awake with a breathless scream. Pain flared up in his spine, phantom shocks of agony shuddering through his shoulder blades as he bolted upright. His breath puffed out around him, pale gray smoke erupting forward like a small flame.

He didn't understand the pale echoes of paralyzing fear that seized him. He looked to his side, his face burning as tears streaked down his cheeks like hot tar. When had he started crying? At first, he didn't understand the shape of the passenger seat or the tinted glass that bled into view before him. The view of the dark evening sky was too clear, the passenger seat lumpy and twisted when it had been made of soft fabric only a few moments prior.

The world fell into focus all at once, a thin curtain of gray lifting itself from view. Nezumi's heart stilled as he realized he was no longer sitting in the stolen car.

He was outside the car―the vehicle was no longer anywhere to be seen―sprawled on the dirt in an abyss of darkness that smelled like decay and pond scum. The freezing autumn air tickled his cheeks as he swiveled around to survey his surroundings, his sharp eyes adjusting to the darkness immediately and realizing with gut-wrenching certainty that he was no longer on any human-made road.

No.

No.

This wasn't happening.

Nezumi stumbled to his feet, shaking from head to toe. He spun around, his boots sinking into the wet mud he'd been sprawled in. The dirt clung to his cheek, dripping on his collar as the tears he hadn't tried to stop bled down his skin.

Terror smothered him as Nezumi took a staggering step forward. The air around him was dense and hot, the smell of rotten flesh and dying plants. He choked at its taste, reminded of that first horrible day when he stumbled into the Unseelie Court as a gift. Dark branches criss-crossed the sky above his head, blotting out the silver moonlight until there was no sense of anything aside from utter darkness. Fear prickled through his skin like nettles.

Nezumi shoved aside the primal terror that pooled inside him. He'd been fighting it for years. The Unseelie Court demanded that he quelled his horror, silenced his cries and buried them beneath a wall of cold stone.

But here, in the heart of the darkness, Nezumi's stone wall had been shattered. His nightmares had loosened the tightly-laid bricks, his hands shuddering as he searched left, right, and forward, squinting in the shadows to try and find a speck of the familiar white fabric of a night shirt or a flash of dark brown among the decaying tree trunks and freezing mud.

"Shion," Nezumi shouted. The dense branches swallowed his voice, bouncing it back at him. "Shion!"

Nothing answered. Not even the piercing sound of metal feathers slicing through the air. There was no wind here. No light. Nothing except the dying trees and cold mud and Nezumi, shaking and alone in the shadows.

He stumbled forward, pushing forward through the trees. The gaps between them were thin, but wide enough for a human teenager to slip through. Nezumi slid through them, the fabric of his borrowed clothing catching on the bark. He tore himself free, scrubbing at his cheeks with his muddy fingers. How had he gotten here? How long had he been here, laying on the ground in the cold, nightmares bombarding him until there was nothing left of his resolve.

"Shion, where are you?" His boot punched through a layer of algae and scum, sinking into the thick swamp water until it swallowed him up to his calf. He pulled himself free and stumbled onward.

The trees were silent, but Nezumi could feel them watching. He didn't recognize their type in the shadows, but these trees were ancient in a way that would have made even the Unseelie King uneasy. The undergrowth of the swamp, for Nezumi now knew it to be a marsh he'd awoken in, consisted of wet ivy and rotting leaves, the stench so foul that it erased the stink of the iron from Nezumi's memory. The water wasn't deep enough to consume him, but Nezumi feared that more than the solid ground and wall of trees. A single foolish step could send him headlong into a pit of sand and sunken animals, his breath choked out of him and his lungs flooded with water.

He picked his way through the trees, straining for any sign of life. He worried he'd stepped in the wrong direction, picked the wrong place to start. The swamp stretched outward, too far for Nezumi to see, too close for comfort.

A warm weight permeated the trees, but it didn't bring Nezumi any comfort. He choked out a sob, the sound rattling through his rib cage and stilling his heart for only a moment. The branches hovered above him like hands, looming like the fingers of a great beast that intended to pluck him off the ground at a moment's notice.

"Shion!" The name tore itself from his throat, too loud in the dying air. The edge of sorrow in his voice should have made Nezumi ashamed of himself. A few days ago, it might have.

The dark blood in his veins allowed him to catch the small particles of light in the shadows and see the shapes and colors of the trees―though there was nothing but dark grays and greens. Mushrooms with red caps and white speckles pocked the tree line, but there was no rhyme or reason to them. A single cluster might have been the same one Nezumi had passed a moment prior, or a new set entirely. He didn't try to use them as a guiding point.

He would have expected the water to make sound as he trudged through them, but the splash felt oddly muted under cover of the curved tree branches. The wood creaked, mindful of his every movement.

Something loomed in the distance: a gap between two tree trunks, larger than the others. Nezumi pushed forward, coated from head to toe in mud. Ice clung to his skin, prickling into each nerve ending until it was all he could feel, all he could taste. He approached the gap and shoved his way through it, the slender portal yawning open to the view of something curled at the base of a tree in the middle of a small clearing.

Tiny mushrooms, these ones glowing blue and green, illuminated the figure on the ground. He lay rolled away from Nezumi, but the white fabric of his shirt was mud-splattered, the hem of his pants torn.

Nezumi bolted forward, his foot catching on a root that stretched up from the water. He tumbled forward, his chin striking the ground. Cursing, Nezumi shoved himself to his feet and lunged for Shion, no other thought in his mind.

At the sounds Nezumi made bursting into the clearing, Shion's prone form didn't move. Terror snapped through him, and Nezumi couldn't breathe. His chest ached, his body stinging as he tried to force the air into his lungs. Nezumi wrapped his arms around Shion's shoulders and rolled him onto his back, his fingers brushing gently over his pale cheeks. "Shion," he whispered, feeling the side of his neck, relief trembling through him as the steady thump-thump he felt. "Shion."

"He won't wake for some time," hissed a voice from overhead.

Nezumi darted a glance upward, angling himself so that Shion was beneath him―and then he saw it, crawling down the side of a tree. Piercing black eyes sat in the middle of its human-like face, so caked with mud and grime that Nezumi couldn't tell what it might have looked like beneath.

Curled black horns sat beside its high cheekbones, and on its back―Nezumi's stomach sank into the cold water of the mire. Feathered black wings covered in mud. The creature scurried down the side of the tree and loomed in front of him, tall even when crouching, blackened eyes wide with excitement and its sharp teeth glinting in the shadows.

Nezumi watched in horror as the Bog crept toward them. Beneath the mud on its long hands―on his long hands―he could see painfully familiar black tattoos, small woodland critters and thorns visible. His jabbed nails reached out toward Shion's cheek.

"Don't touch him!" Nezumi snarled, swiping at the Bog's reaching fingers.

The Bog pulled his hand back, slowly, but the smile never left his mud-caked face. He crouched in the darkness, dressed in rags and torn fabric he'd likely stolen from humans who'd become lost in the woods centuries ago. The smell of decay clung to his skin like perfume, and Nezumi felt it flood his lungs and choke the strength from his body.

The Unseelie King always smelled like decay and dead roses. Nezumi never understood why. He supposed living in the swamps for years had seeped the stench into his skin, so strong that not even the creams and scents that Unseelie King requested from dwarves and gnomes could permanently erase the smell of his homeland.

The Bog crouched in front of him was the monster the Unseelie King would have been before he sought the comforts of the Unseelie Court―before he'd stripped the swamp mud from his skin and swore to never again lower himself to such plebian protections. The mud clinging to the Bog's pale skin assured Nezumi that this creature wasn't the Unseelie King, but that notion didn't calm him. Unseelie King or not, a Bog was still a Bog.

Crouching over Shion's body, Nezumi could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest. Shion's brow was pinched in worry, his eyes clenched shut as he slept. He looked uncomfortable and afraid, and Nezumi pressed closer to him to offer some semblance of comfort.

The gesture was not lost on the Bog; his blackened eyes widened with mirth as he took in the physical signs of their combined terror. "You resisted the nightmares better than your companion." His voice was a low rasp, as if bits of gravel had wedged themselves beneath his tongue and shredded his vocal cords. "Though, I shouldn't be surprised… Your bloodline connects with our own. Nightmares do not hold as much power over you…" He grinned with his muddy teeth. "But still a bit."

Nezumi didn't bother scrubbing the tears from his cheeks. There was not much mud and grime there already that he was certain it wouldn't matter. He couldn't imagine the Bog could spot them, but he crouched closer to Shion until he could feel his warm breath puffing against his bare throat.

"The nightmares are an unfortunate side effect of my attempt to halt your iron carriage," the Bog went on slowly. "How else was I to remove you from that road you so desperately fled down?"

"The strixes," Nezumi said, the word bursting from his lips. He could still hear the scraping metal of their feathers, the chattering whispers as they dove after the car. "You sent them?"

"I did not command them," the Bog corrected. "My brother, Danai, did."

Nezumi's blood ran cold. He knew that name. The Unseelie King had forbidden it to be spoken in the walls of the Unseelie Court. Nezumi had been too terrified to test the waters. Those uncertain few whose tongues loosened after a few goblets of blood-wine, however, slurred out tales of the Swamp Court just before the Unseelie King or one of his Knights swept in and silenced them forever for the audacity of acknowledging that "ragtag bunch of idiots".

Prior to his stint as the Unseelie Queen's primary consort―leading into his reign as the Unseelie King following her brutal murder―the Unseelie King had been dubbed Izumi the Indestructible, one of a trio of three Bog brothers that terrorized the swamps. As the middle sibling, Izumi was preceded by Danai the Destroyer and followed by Mava the Merciless. Following the Unseelie King's ascension into murderous royalty, Danai had announced that the swamps were to be acknowledged as a Court of their own, following the rules of no Court aside from their own. Neither Solitary nor aligned, the Swamp Court struck down those from either Court, hiding in the thick trees and avoiding justice from either side. Rather than confront them head-on, the Unseelie King had simply ordered that none of his number were to give the Swamp Court the time of day.

Nezumi swallowed the solid lump in his throat as he stared into the grinning face of Mava the Merciless. He smelled like decay and blood. Beneath the piles of mud and grime, Nezumi could see the familiar curve of his high, regal cheekbones, the cavernous black eyes that promised terror after terror to those foolish enough to cross him.

"You share blood with him, too," Mava purred; the sound rattled through his throat. "Such a pretty little thing."

Nezumi watched in muted horror as Mava reached a hand out and smeared his palm across Nezumi's cheek, scraping mud across his skin and swiping away the tears that had cemented to his flesh. He withdrew his long fingers and smiled like a nightmare, cocking his head to the side in a way that would have terrified a mortal.

"There," he said. "You look even prettier now."

Nezumi's jaw twitched as he unlocked it and forced the words out of his throat. "What do you want with us?"

Mava tilted his head the other way. His dark hair―the same shade as the Unseelie King's, the same shade as Nezumi's―fell over his sharp ears. It'd been cropped short, shorn for functionality and stealth rather than appearance. All the while, the teeth-revealing grin never left his thin lips. "I wanted you out of your iron carriage."

"Why?"

"You were being pursued. Couldn't you sense them?"

Nezumi felt a cold shiver creep up his spine like a fat spider.

"That strange one… The one with the golden eyes…" Mava blinked at him. "The Phooka from the mountains. He stayed in the trees and watched you when you passed by the lot. He followed you until I spirited you both away. A strix bit a chunk in his arm and forced him to flee. He killed it, but he lost track of your iron carriage."

Scorpia. Nezumi's heart tightened in his chest. "Where did he go?"

"I do not know."

"Why was he following us?"

Nezumi felt that he knew the answer already, but he needed to hear it from the Bog's lips.

To his horror, Mava cocked his head to the other side and rasped, "I do not know. Perhaps he is angry that you have slaughtered the King he loves."

Nezumi glanced down at Shion. His pinched brow had smoothed out a bit as the worst of the nightmares bombarding his mind had begun to bleed away. He was beautiful and terribly thin and too wonderful to be trapped in a place as horrible as this. Nezumi could still see the tears streaking down his cheeks as they'd sprinted from the Unseelie Court, leaving the carnage behind. He could see the Unseelie King pitch forward, his back arching as the silver knife punched through the flesh and muscle and pierced his heart through his back.

"He's…" Nezumi swallowed the lump in his throat. "He's dead?"

Mava's tattooed fingers pattered on the tree branch stretching across the floor beneath his palms. The smile didn't leave his lips, but it did droop a little at the sides. "The Unseelie Court has been silent. I have heard whispers―tales that the beast has breathed his last. Those who fled the chaos claim to have seen a knife sink into his skin and quiet him." The light in his eyes glinted with wicked ideas. "A knife that came from your hand."

Nezumi didn't answer.

"But if you have not felt the arrival of the magic, then it might be that he has not perished in that instant." Mava folded his hands around the root and gave a harsh tug. It did not loosen, but the action seemed to calm him. "Another might have swept in and claimed the kill in your absence. Or he still breathes. We have heard no more tales from the Dark Court."

Nezumi tasted blood on the tip of his tongue. He ran his tongue along the insides of his teeth, unable to feel any pools of blood welling up from inside. He wasn't wounded.

"Why did you help us escape from Scorpia?" His voice was swallowed by the curved branches. He steeled his nerves and asked, a bit louder, "Why did you bring us into the swamp?"

"We have long despised our brother for his betrayal," Mava explained, as if he were casually stating the color of the tree branches forming a makeshift sky above their heads. "To leave our nest for the promised luxury of the Unseelie Court, to then seize the crown and treat us as if we were nothing. As if we hadn't nursed him back to health when illness plagued him. As if we hadn't shared our kill with him or told stories around the fire at night. As if we hadn't sprang from the same womb. He abandoned us, and we have long wished to see him perish." As he spoke, the world around him steadily began to darken. Mava's expression twisted into a look of feral excitement, pleasure burning like purple flames behind his black irises. "Imagine our delight," he said, tapping his fingers anxiously, "when that bastard's own offspring ruined the sacrifice that meant so much to his Court."

Nezumi's blood burned, terror making it hard to breathe. Shion made a low, distressed sound in the back of his throat. Nezumi's fingers drifted to his neck, brushing lightly against his skin and assuring him without words that he wasn't alone in this strange, brutal place.

"You amused us," Mava continued. "Danai hasn't stopped laughing since the moment we heard that our traitor brother's own hubris has caused his demise. He bade me to find you and express our deepest gratitude to you. Imagine my surprise when I find you fleeing in an iron carriage, crafted by human hands."

Mava glanced down at Shion. He regarded him the way the Folk regarded most humans―like fascinating and strange animals, prey that could easily turn and become a predator at a moment's notice.

"What about this human has quelled the violence in you?" Mava wondered aloud. "What about this boy made you so eager to strike down your monarch?"

Nezumi's heart thundered behind his chest. His breath burst around him, a shred of warmth in the freezing cold of the swamp. Answers died on the tip of his tongue; he refused to let them escape. He owed Mava nothing―and yet, he did. If Mava hadn't surrounded the stolen vehicle with strixes and whisked him and Shion away, then Scorpia would have caught up with them in the next town over. Much as he might have disliked it, Mava had saved them both.

"My brother wished to express our gratitude," Mava reiterated. "As payment for providing us with such wonderful entertainment, we have removed you from a situation in which you have definitely been ambushed. However, we still feel as though we owe you a favor for striking down that traitor." He gestured toward Shion. "Are you strong enough to carry him?"

"What?" Nezumi asked, recoiling.

"If your strength has failed you, I can carry him."

Mava reached out for Shion, but Nezumi drew him away. If Shion did happen to awaken, he'd likely have a panic attack if he looked up and saw something as horrific as Mava carrying him away. "I can carry him," Nezumi stated, looking Mava in the face. It was strange to stare into those cavernous black eyes and not feel his strength bleeding out of his skin. "Where are you taking us?"

"Our swamp borders a human city," Mava explained. "Well away from where your iron carriage could have brought you. The Phooka won't think to search for you there. Our kind are rare in those iron walls, and your… pendant…" Mava scrutinized it, still trapped beneath the collar of Nezumi's shirt. "It will help you conceal yourself awhile longer."

Nezumi gulped down mouthfuls of freezing breath. The urge to escape the swamp crushed in all around him. Much as he hated it, he found that he could understand the Unseelie King's desire to escape such a wretched place. How could anyone live here and not go mad in the process?

Though, looking at Mava as he unclenched himself from the floor and straightened his spine, his long joints and twitching fingers moving anxiously, his smile never waning, Nezumi wondered if it hadn't already happened.

"Your human is lovely," Mava said. "You would do well to hold him close, lest other creatures seek to remove him from you. A human who loves the Folk is a rare gem."

Nezumi's fingers shifted along Shion's cheek, his hands moving to cradle his head. The soft brown hair on Shion's head felt warm against his cold, shuddering fingers; sensing Nezumi close, the fear in Shion's sleeping expression calmed. He turned his head and pressed his lips against Nezumi's wrist. It sent bolts of warm electricity buzzing through him.

Mava stared at him with those luminous, haunting black eyes, as if he could see through the muscle and bone and blood vessels and into the pounding thing in his chest. "Tales of your cruelty have spread through our swamp, as well," he whispered. "You strike down other Folk without hesitation. You have never wasted time with humans. And yet you look at this mortal boy as if you are afraid he will vanish. I heard you shout for him in the darkness. Shion, was it?"

The name sounded foul on Mava's tongue.

"A beautiful name," Mava said, taking a step toward Shion and reaching for him again. "He would have made a beautiful faerie." He regarded Nezumi through his mud-hardened lashes and grinned again, a hungry sort of look on his face. "Or would you not have loved him the same if he had been born of our ilk?"

Nezumi shifted Shion into his arms, quietly using the muscles in his arms and legs to lift him off the cold, filthy ground and cradle him in his arms. He held Shion's head still against his chest, ensuring that if he were to awaken from the nightmares Mava's spell as plagued him with, Nezumi would be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.

No longer interested in the answer, or perhaps bored with the realization that Nezumi wouldn't give him one, Mava turned and gestured toward the darkness. "Stay close," he purred. "The swamps obey me, but stray too far and they'll swallow you up."

Nezumi held Shion close, relishing in the warmth of his body. He stepped forward, following after Mava as the Bog swept into the shadows and led the way. His hysterical laughter, like snakes slithering through dry leaves, led him onward.

To Be Continued...