Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The clouds slid over the moon again, partly obscuring it and rendering the wraiths almost invisible. But now that I’d seen them, it made no difference. I knew the only thing holding them at bay was the fae carrying me.
At least the wraiths didn’t make noise. But something else did.
All at once, my ears filled with a howl. The sound was violent, serrated, terrible.
It came from everywhere, rising to a crescendo that nearly made me let go of Dorian’s neck and clap my hands to my ears. But I clung tighter, forcing myself to endure it. The howl went on and on. It was a wolf, but not.
The Hunt.
Dorian didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge the wraiths or the wolves. He only ran. Somehow he didn’t tire; his breath came at the same steady interval as it had when he’d spoken to me inside the citadel.
But I could feel his heart beating. It pulsed at his neck like it might break free.
I didn’t know how far we ran. Five hundred paces? A span? My world shrank to his breath and his heartbeat and his pistoning legs until, ahead, a shape appeared. Unmoving, geometric, large.
I stared into the night, eyes narrowed on it.
A house—it was a house, hunched and half-swallowed by the trees. And Dorian ran straight toward it. He stopped only to slap his palm to the door, and fae symbols flared across the wood.
The hinges groaned, the door swung inward, and Dorian ducked us inside. He shut it behind him with his foot, then turned and set both hands to it, leaning into it like he was holding it shut. In the dark, he finally breathed hard and ragged against my arms.
I didn’t know where we were, but silence pressed against me like a second skin. I imagined one whisper would bring the scythes or the wolves down on us.
Another howl split the air. This one was closer, so close my teeth clenched against the warbling pain in my ears.
Dorian’s hand left the door and found my wrist. His fingers curled around it, pulling my arm tight against his collarbone. At first I thought he was guiding me, but when his hand didn’t move, I understood.
He was comforting me.
The howl finally faded, leaving only a high ringing in my ears. Even so, I heard movement beyond the door: footsteps crushing leaves, snuffling through the grass. They approached, close enough that I could make out the deep, rattling inhales as whatever hunted us scented the air.
I closed my eyes. I knew, bone-deep, that if I did anything else, anything but stay frozen as I was, it would be the death of us.
Other movement sounded to our left, and I heard a horse’s nicker. It passed alongside whatever structure stood between us and it. Slowly, the snuffling shifted to the right. We were surrounded, scented.
A cursed fae, her horse, and her wolves.
This was them. The Hunt.
I didn’t know why they didn’t break down the door. Maybe the Wild Hunt didn’t need doors. Maybe they could pass through walls. But neither happened. The door stayed untouched, and the interior remained empty except for the two of us.
Eventually, a grasping cry echoed deep in the forest. It sounded fae.
The reaction came at once. Another howl, this one louder than before. It hammered against my skull, making my lips curl back as I gnashed my teeth. The horses and wolves struck off toward the source of the cry.
We listened. My ears rang, high and tinny. We didn’t move.
Minutes passed before Dorian’s hand finally dropped from my wrist. “You can let go now. It’s safe.”
Only then did I realize how much my arms and hands ached, how raw my grip had been. My fingers refused to unclench at first. When they did, I slid from his back, my boots tapping lightly on the wooden floor. Every part of me shook—hands, arms, knees.
We should be captured. We should be dead. I didn’t understand why we weren’t.
Gradually, Dorian’s form—still braced at the door—took shape in the low light.
Behind me, one of the purple crystals had begun to glow.
I could see four walls and a low thatch ceiling, the rough bones of a cottage.
The walls were mostly bare and windowless.
In one corner, a double bed lay collapsed, the padding half on the floor.
Through a doorway, a smaller room hinted at a kitchen.
This place hadn’t been lived in for a long time. The forest had started reclaiming it. A weed poked through the floorboards by my feet. The scent in the air was old, earthen, and musty, but somehow familiar.
Dorian turned toward me. His black hair had come loose, some of it plastered to his face. Even in the dimness I could see the sweat soaking through his leathers.
“Are you all right?”
My voice came out hoarse. “Me? What about you?”
His eyes traveled over me, slow and careful, as though he hadn’t heard me. “No cuts, scrapes?”
“I’m fine.”
He waved that away. He strode to the doorway into the smaller room and set both hands on the frame, staring inside. Then he began to pace the cottage, checking corners like he expected something to rise from the dark.
The place was strange, uncanny. Then I realized—
“There are no windows.” I turned toward the crystal. It bobbed low enough to touch. “Is this another elder fae home?”
Dorian gave a low snort. “My mother would take offense to that.”
My head jerked toward him. His mother? It struck me then that I had never once thought about Dorian’s parents. Or where he had grown up, except I did remember one thing he had said in the Eldermaze.
A dream from childhood. Something trying to get in, and him trying to keep it out.
My gaze traveled once more. The way he’d paced to the other room—there’d been familiarity in his step. “This is your home.”
“Was.” He rose from where he crouched, brushing dust from his hands. “I suppose it still is.”
“I thought you’d always lived in the citadel.”
“Only the nobility.” Yes, that’s right. He was lowborn. He read my face and said, “The common fae live where they can.” His voice was hard.
I turned toward a simple low wooden table, dragging my fingers through the thick dust. What had happened here?
Instead, I said, “That was the Wild Hunt outside.”
He let out a breath. “Yes.”
The icy fingers of my anxiety spread once more over my shoulders. “Are we dead and just don’t know it?” I gripped the edge of the table as my almost-father would do when he was evaluating a piece of woodwork; it was thick and well made. “I don’t feel dead, but maybe the dead never do.”
“You’re not dead, Eurydice.”
I lifted my eyes to him. “Something kept the Hunt out, then.”
“Only living fae can enter this place. No wraiths, no Wild Hunt.” Dorian tested the bed’s frame and eventually slid the padding off it and onto the floor.
“But I’m not fae.”
“You’re a guest,” he growled.
So I had gone from prisoner to guest. If we survived this, I’d probably be back to prisoner in the citadel. “So we’re safe from two of three threats.”
He grunted a yes. He picked up the edge of the bed’s padding and shook it free of dust.
I set my hand on the back of one of the dining chairs. It was low and rickety and just like the table. “And if the other fae come here?”
“Not likely. None of them know of this place.”
That was a surprise. “You said you’ve known the others your whole life.”
“I did say that.”
I sat in the chair and slid my hand across the table to a small wooden figurine that had tipped over. It was a crudely carved toy pony. Something made me lift it to my nose. Smoke and resin and something particular touched my nostrils. Familiarity, comfort. Dorian’s scent.
Faint, but unmistakable.
This really had been his home. Perhaps this had been his toy.
With the pony in my hand, my thumb rubbing over it, my shaking began to slow.
My heart didn’t beat so hard. It reminded me of a toy horse my almost-father had once whittled for me, though mine had been far cruder.
This was smooth, sanded, crafted by a skilled hand.
I wondered whose hands had crafted his. I wondered if they’d sometimes loved Dorian in the way Aldric had sometimes loved me. Occasionally, like the afternoon rains skipping a day.
I set the pony aside on the table while Dorian rummaged through a dresser with one drawer intact. He extricated a piece of folded cloth and allowed it to unroll with a flap of his hands.
“This’ll do for a night.”
A night. A whole night here.
“The Hunt will come back here,” I said. “Won’t they?”
“Yes.” Dorian dropped the blanket onto the mattress. “Not tonight, but they will return.”
I leaned forward. “Something stopped them, Dorian. What was it?”
“This place. It’s magicked to mask scent at night.”
Scent? At night?
He pressed his hair back from his face. “But we’ll at least have until morning.”
Here was another dimension of magic I didn’t understand. A thing could be magicked. That sounded permanent, or at least more enduring than Dorian snapping his fingers to create a spark.
My mind turned toward the more pressing issue.
In the Kingdom of Storms, each district had a minstrel who sang songs in various pubs. Our minstrel had sometimes sung of great hunts in ancient times, of dogs and foxes and men who rode horses in pursuit of the foxes. At the start of the hunt, the dogs always circled, sniffing the ground, seeking—
“The wolves,” I said. “They have our scent now.”
Dorian avoided my eyes. He busied himself with unslinging his belt. “That was inevitable. They had our scent the moment the trial began.”
How could that be? Unless… “It isn’t our bodies they scent.”
Dorian jerked toward me, surprise cracking his guarded face. “And how would you know that?”
“It’s just a suspicion.”
He shook his head and set his belt and sword on the dresser. Then he unclasped his cloak and tossed it onto the mattress. “Well, you’re right.”
“What is it they smell, then?”
Still turned away from me, he raked his hands through his sweaty hair. I tried not to stare at the curve of his back and failed. “Fear,” he said.
My gaze moved from his shoulders to the back of his head. “What do you mean, fear?”
He turned only his face toward me, his profile sharp in the dim light. “The wolves scent our fear.”
That was why Dorian had asked me to think of a happy memory. Not comfort, camouflage. He hadn’t wanted the wolves to scent fear.
"It was my fault," I said. "I couldn’t think of anything happy."
He turned toward me fully. In this light, in this small space, his eyes on me were dark and luminous at once. He knew what I meant.
"Neither could I. So I guess we’re both to blame."
Silence fell, and the two of us gazed at one another. Once again, he had carried me through danger. This time literally. And once we’d stepped inside this place, his first instinct had been to set his hand over my wrist, to comfort me. Even though he had been afraid, too.
I could not summon the voice inside me that guarded me from him. It was the amnesia of the trials: outside them, we were enemies; inside them, we were something else. Partners, I thought.
But right now his gaze felt laden. Intense.
I didn’t know what to do with that intensity.
My bow pressing painfully into my back gave me an excuse. I broke the stare to unsling it and unclasp my cloak. Relief came with the motion, as if steel and leather could shield me.
"You are cut." Dorian’s footsteps neared, and the scent of him filled my nose as he stood over me. His fingers touched my forehead near my hairline. "Here."
My body tensed. My insides twisted, unbidden. It was like a chord had been strummed inside me, and I hated how aware of him I was—his nearness, his warmth.
It wasn’t desire, exactly. It was memory, need, survival. That’s all. Wasn’t it?
He removed something from his jerkin and dabbed it to my forehead. I winced, suddenly aware of the sting, but I didn’t move.
I closed my eyes and swallowed. I had to remember all the reasons I hated him. He had attacked me, kidnapped me, dragged me into this nightmare.
"Will it need stitches?" I asked.
“No.” He dabbed again. His touch was steady, gentle. “It’s hardly bleeding.”
It was nothing. A small wound from a branch, probably. But to him, it was worth tending.
That thought made me look. I lifted my face, and the fae above me paused, cloth in hand. In this light, he didn’t look like a villain. He looked like someone I might have known before my world ended. Someone I might have liked.
“You should sleep,” he murmured, eyes on my forehead. “You can have the bed there.”
Sleep, yes. He was right. My body begged for it.
I stood, shrugging off the pull of exhaustion. My head barely reached his sternum. I breathed fast without meaning to. Somewhere deep in me, my body craved what it recognized: strength, safety, care.
I met his eyes. “Thank you.”
He stood very still, tension radiating from him, then nodded and stepped aside for me to pass. When I stepped by him, I noticed one thing in my periphery—
His hands, still holding the bloody cloth, curled tight before relaxing.
It was the first time I’d considered how very, very much he held inside him. Tight, bound up, as though every word that escaped was dangerous.
And the more he held in, the more I did, too.
So the moment passed, as ephemeral as a soap bubble. Neither of us said a word into it.