Bonus - A Hunt So Wild - Chapter One
Briar pressed herself deeper into the cave's shadows, cold stone leeching the last warmth from her torn dress.
Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, each drop marking time she didn't have.
Her feet throbbed, cut and bleeding from running in silk shoes through the forest. The gown that had once made her feel powerful now hung in tatters, the crystal thorns that had been her armor scattered.
She wasn't sure how much longer she could run. Her body had limits the fae hunters didn't share. Lord Cairn had already found her once at the hollow log, had let her go just to chase her again. Playing with his food.
Drawing her knees to her chest, she grimaced, her ribs aching with each shallow breath. The warmth in her chest pulsed weakly, still reaching for something that would never answer. Three days. She had to survive three days of this.
And then what?
The impossibility of it settled over her. Perhaps it would be easier just to let them catch her. It would certainly be quicker.
She closed her eyes and immediately regretted it.
Eliam's face rose to greet her, not as she'd last seen him, cold and remote on his throne, but from that morning that now felt a lifetime ago, when he'd brought her tea with purple flowers.
When his fingers had been gentle in her hair. When she'd thought that maybe—
Footsteps. Heavy and deliberate, not even trying to mask their approach.
Every muscle locked as she pressed back against the stone, trying to become part of the shadows. Maybe it was an animal. Maybe—
"Well, well, we meet again, my lady."
Lord Cairn's pale face materialized from the darkness like something from a nightmare, his smile all sharp edges and cruel delight. He moved with the lazy confidence of a predator who knew his prey had nowhere left to run.
"I must say, you've given us quite the chase." He remained just out of reach, the expression on his face suggesting he was savoring her fear like fine wine. "I was worried the hunt would be boring, but you've been delightfully entertaining."
The cave suddenly felt smaller, the walls pressing in. Briar's fingers scraped against stone, searching for anything—a rock, a stick, anything to defend herself with. Nothing.
"You have no idea how excited some of us were when his grace cast you aside." His eyes gleamed in the darkness. "All that time watching him parade you around like a prize none of us could touch. And now..."
He took a step closer, the another.
"Please." The word escaped before she could stop it, barely a whisper.
"Oh, I do so enjoy hearing you beg."
His movement was viper-quick. One moment he stood watching her, the next his hand tangled in her matted hair, yanking her forward. Her legs went out from under her, stone scraping her palms and knees as she tried to catch herself. The impact drove air from her lungs in a sharp cry.
"I've been wondering what made our Forest Lord so... protective." His grip tightened, forcing her to look up at him. "What was so special about one little human thief?"
Briar's hands clawed at his wrist, but she might as well have been fighting stone. "You don't have to do this."
"Don't I?" His free hand traced the edge of her ruined neckline, a mockery of gentleness. "If not me, then someone else. Would you prefer Lady Sarelle? She was discussing something about fingers. Very creative, our Sarelle. Always did appreciate precision work."
The warmth in Briar's chest flared suddenly, not reaching for Eliam, but recoiling from Cairn's touch like it recognized something fundamentally wrong.
"How fascinating. You still carry his mark, even cast out as you are." His fingers found the thorned patterns visible above her neckline. "I wonder if it still burns when—"
The blade came through his chest from behind.
For a moment, Cairn's expression was merely surprised. Then black blood bloomed across his shirt, and his grip loosened. He looked down at the sword point protruding from his ribs—a blade that seemed to devour light, leaving strange shadows in its wake.
"Touching what doesn't belong to you?" Thaine's voice carried that familiar dark amusement as he yanked his blade free, letting Cairn collapse. "Such poor manners, even for you."
Briar scrambled backward, her back hitting the cave wall. From predator to predator. The huntsman stood over Cairn's twitching form, wiping his blade clean with casual efficiency.
"Hello, little rabbit." His smile was all teeth.
Before Briar could even process the shift from one nightmare to another, more footsteps echoed from the cave mouth. Multiple sets, all of them moving fast.
"Huntsman," Lady Sarelle's voice dripped honey-coated poison as she materialized from the shadows, two other fae flanking her. "How surprising. We tracked her here first."
"Did you?" Thaine didn't turn, keeping his eyes on Briar even as he addressed the newcomers. "Strange. I only see Cairn's corpse and my lord's property."
"Former property," Sarelle corrected, her fingers already weaving something silver and sharp between them. "Cast out. Fair game. The Hunt's laws are clear, she belongs to whoever takes her."
"Then take her from me." Thaine finally turned, positioning himself between Briar and the others. "If you can."
"Three against one?" The fae on Sarelle's left laughed, the sound bright and cruel. "Even you aren't that good, huntsman."
"Four," another voice called from behind them. Another fae stepped forward, blood still dripping from his recent kill. "I do so hate to see anyone monopolize the fun."
"Lord Redwick, how kind of you to join us," Lady Sarelle said, her gaze steady.
Thaine's blade hummed, that light-eating darkness spreading along its edge. "My lord gave specific instructions about the hunt. Three days. Fair chase. You're turning this into a common brawl."
"Your lord isn't here," Sarelle observed, those silver threads beginning to glow. "And accidents happen during hunts. Friendly fire. Such a tragedy when the huntsman fell trying to defend prey that wasn't even his to take."
Without warning, Sarelle's silver threads lashed out like whips while Redwick came from the side with something that looked like crystallized moonlight.
Thaine moved—not the fluid grace she'd seen before but something more desperate, more vicious.
His blade carved through silver threads, deflected moonlight, opened a line across the third fae's throat in a motion too fast to follow.
But four against one, even for Eliam's huntsman...
Briar had no intention of waiting around to see who won.
She swayed to her feet and did her best to ignore the way her head swam in protest. She retreated deeper into the cave, hands scraping along rough stone in the darkness, desperate for any way out.
The sounds of battle echoed behind her, steel against something that sounded like breaking glass, Thaine's snarl of genuine anger: "You dare use binding magic on me? "
The darkness pressed in, suffocating, and suddenly she was back in the Oubliette—forgotten, alone, waiting to die in the dark. Her breath came in sharp gasps, panic rising like bile in her throat.
Then she saw it. A single flower, pale and luminous, growing from bare stone.
Another bloomed beside it. Then another. A path of impossible golden blooms unfurling in the darkness, their soft light revealing passages she couldn't have seen otherwise.
The warmth in her chest, silent and dead since Eliam had crushed that circlet, flared and pulled at her.
Not the weak reaching it had been doing all night, but something urgent, desperate, guiding.
It yanked her forward like a rope around her ribs, and she followed without thought, crawling over stone, squeezing through spaces that scraped her raw.
The flowers bloomed brighter where her blood dropped onto stone. The warmth pulled harder, almost painful in its intensity, as if something on the other side was calling it home.
Her fingers found empty air where stone should be.
A gap in the rock, barely wide enough for shoulders.
The warmth sang, pulling her toward it. She didn't think, just pushed herself through, stone tearing at her already ruined dress, scraping skin raw.
For a terrifying moment she stuck, the rock pressing from all sides, her chest too tight to breathe.
Something exploded behind her with enough force to shake the cave. The percussion drove her forward, and she tumbled out the other side, landing hard on moss and morning dew.
Looking around she realized she had emerged on the far side of the hill, gasping, bleeding, but free. Behind her, through tons of rock, she could still hear the battle raging, the singing of Thaine's terrible blade and Sarelle's crystalline laugh being cut short.
Briar ran until her legs gave out, stumbling through underbrush that tore at the remains of her already shredded dress. The hunting horns had gone quiet, but that brought no comfort. Silence meant they were tracking, not talking.
Her bare feet were numb now, which was better than the agony they'd been an hour ago.
She'd stopped looking at them after seeing how much blood she was leaving with each step.
The warmth in her chest remained dead, that brief moment of connection in the cave feeling more like cruel mockery with each passing moment.
She needed shelter. Just for a moment. Just to catch her breath.
The forest here grew differently than near the castle.
It felt older somehow, and wilder, the trees massive enough that their roots created natural hollows.
She stumbled toward one such giant, its trunk so wide she couldn't have wrapped her arms around it if she tried.
The roots arched up from the earth, and there, between them, a small hollow barely large enough for her to curl into.