Prey and Mercy

X. A Different Lost Boy, A Deadly Neverland

He's heavy. 

Are mortals usually this heavy? They can't eat as much as we do. That just doesn't seem right. 

What if he's different?

A demi-god? The Embassy would never allow it. 

Speaking of Embassy, we should almost definitely alert the Huntsmen. Lost mortals are right up their alley. 

But Prey had this look on his face like some secrets were worth making and this was one of them. I don't know why. I've accepted that I don't really know him. Him or his stupid, callous decisions. 

"Truce?" He had asked. He stood only a few feet away, bow dropped to rest against his thigh. The wind played with his hair, dark as midnight, but I could only stare. I didn't believe that any of this was happening. 

My mind had an agency all on it's own. "Why? So you can stab me in the back some more?"

Prey swung his bow over his shoulder then and marched forward, eyes like storms. "For once can you set your trust issues aside? I mean seriously, Mercy. There's a body of a mortal boy dying at your feet. Will you shut up and look down?" 

Flashing my dagger in the sunlight, I branded it to line up with his throat if he stepped any closer. "I don't care about the boy."

"Then end me, Mare." he pressed his throat against the jagged edge of the blade so that a trickle of blood met the collar of his shirt. "Kill me. I'm sure you know how to handle a situation like this right? Call the Embassy, submit to the system you hate so much. Show me how useless you really are." 

I'd imagined it so many times before. I could mimic every movement, play it by script if I wanted to. For once in my eighteen years of life he was mine. 

I pressed just a bit further, maybe just to watch the flash of panic in his eyes. I could only assume that's what it was. 

"Why do you care what happens to him? You killed him. I'll give him to the Huntsmen and your body to Odphy's Temple. All will be right in the world. What was that thing we say? It was always supposed to be this way..."

Prey didn't flinch. Instead, he reached for my hand, fingers tightening around my fist. He didn't shake or quiver like I wanted him to. "I have nothing to say to you even in death. If you want a rise out of me you won't get one. But if I were you I'd think about the situation. His last words. How the veil was reinforced days ago." He pulled my hand, dragging flesh and blood with it. 

My eyes followed the shallow cut growing deeper and my fatal by the second. He would put all these thoughts into my head and then leave me to face them alone. He would make me falter in my decisions. 

"I fucking hate you, Prey Wylder."

He'd blinked as I jerked the dagger away, shoving his blood into the wind. "I know." 

We walk now with our weapons sheathed, the limp body of a boy not a day older than us draped over my arms. 

Prey decides it's probably best to take him to his lake house and I can't really argue against it. I'm forced to lay the blonde haired boy across the backseat of Prey's car as I take shotgun, elbows against the car door so I can keep a safe distance between the two of us. 

I know he's annoyed. I can feel it. 

The shed is the last place I want to be at the end of the day, or any point in time. I stop with the limp mortal in my arms at the doorway, glaring at the pale amber light that falls from the circular awning. The floorboards still hold the rose tainted stains of Harper Rosenthall. I can smell him and it breaks me.