Bonus - A Hunt So Wild - Chapter One #2
Strange how perfectly sized it seemed. Strange how the moss grew thick and soft just there, like a cushion waiting. But she was too exhausted to question small mercies.
Briar crawled inside, her body screaming protests at every movement.
The space felt warmer than it should, sheltered from the morning wind that had been cutting through her torn dress.
The roots seemed to curve just right, hiding her from view while still allowing her to see out through a small gap.
Don't sleep, she told herself, even as her eyes grew heavy. They'll find you. You have to keep moving.
But the moss was so soft beneath her cheek. The temperature so perfectly balanced—not the cold that had been seeping into her bones, nor warm enough to lull her into security. Just... absent of discomfort. Her body, pushed beyond all human limits, began shutting down despite her terror.
No. She dug her nails into her palms, but even pain couldn't fight the exhaustion. Please, just a few minutes. Just—
The roots seemed to shift slightly, just enough to support her injured ribs. The moss released a faint scent, nothing magical or obvious, just something that made her breathing deepen despite herself.
Darkness took her between one breath and the next.
She woke to the sensation of something crawling on her skin.
Her eyes snapped open, but she forced herself to stay still, terror ice-cold in her veins. Something soft and barely-there traced along the cuts on her arms. Multiple somethings. Moving with deliberate, careful touches that—
The moss. The moss was moving.
Tiny tendrils had grown over her while she slept, delicate as hair, creeping across her wounds with purpose.
Where they touched, the sharp sting of her cuts had dulled to aching memory.
She could feel them exploring each injury like curious fingers, leaving behind a strange coolness that numbed the worst of the pain.
A tendril brushed across the deep gash on her palm, and she watched in horrified fascination as the wound looked... smaller. Still there, still angry, but no longer gaping. No longer bleeding.
Every instinct screamed at her to run, but more moss had grown while she slept—across her legs, around her arms, gentle but present. Like being held by something that couldn't quite decide if it was helping or tasting.
A tendril touched her face, tracing the scratch Cairn's nail had left, and that was enough.
She scrambled backward with a strangled cry, moss tearing away from her skin with soft, almost reluctant releases. The tendrils retreated into ordinary moss so quickly she might have imagined it, except for the faint green stains on her skin where the deepest wounds had been.
Briar tumbled from the hollow, biting back panic, her body protesting but notably less than it should. Her feet still hurt, but she could stand. Her ribs still ached, but she could breathe.
Behind her, the space between the roots looked smaller than she remembered, barely a shadow beneath the tree. The moss appeared perfectly ordinary, nothing to suggest it had been anything else at all.
Then she heard it, multiple fae, discussing search patterns and tracking spells. They'd been talking for a while, she realized. Close enough that they should have found her already, that they would have, if she hadn't woken when she did.
The temperature dropped with each step deeper into this part of the forest, where the trees grew so thick their canopy blocked out all warmth.
Briar's breath clouded in front of her, and the frost coating the bark bit through her palms when she steadied herself against trunks.
The silence here felt wrong, too complete, as though even the forest itself held its breath.
Her feet had gone numb again, which she counted as a mercy considering the blood she still left with each step.
"What have we here? Look who has wandered far from the garden."
A fae, a male Briar was unfamiliar with, stepped from behind a tree she would have sworn was empty shadow a moment before. His antlers branched above his angular face, each point sharp enough to pierce, and his eyes held that flat hunger.
"Running won't help," he said, matching her stumbling retreat with unhurried steps. His boots made no sound on the frozen ground. "This deep in the old forest, the trees themselves will turn you around. Drive you back to me. They know the natural order of things."
She tried anyway, spinning to run, but the trees had shifted while she watched him. Her shoulder slammed into bark that scraped her bare shoulder, adding another layer of hurt to her collection. The impact jarred her ribs, stealing what breath the cold hadn't already taken.
"I do appreciate the effort though." His voice came from directly behind her, close enough that she felt his breath stir her tangled hair. "Makes the ending so much more satisfying."
His hand caught her shoulder, fingers digging into the bruises Cairn had left, spinning her around with casual strength. His smile revealed teeth that belonged on something that ate meat, not something that walked upright.
"Let's see what made Eliam so—"
The ground beneath them erupted with a sound like breaking bones.
Massive thorns, each as thick as her waist and sharp as fresh-forged steel, burst from the frozen earth with violent force.
One tore through the side of her dress at the hip, and she felt its edge draw a line of fire across her skin as it passed.
Another exploded up between them, missing her face by inches.
The scent of disturbed earth and something else, something green and growing and wrong, filled her nostrils.
But the fae—
The thorn caught him through the middle of his torso, punching through his abdomen and emerging from his back in a spray of dark blood that steamed in the cold air.
It lifted him three feet off the ground, his feet kicking uselessly, his expression shifting from predatory satisfaction to complete shock.
She staggered back, unable to tear her eyes away from the gruesome sight.
More thorns burst upward around them in a rough circle, each one three to four feet of organic spear, their surfaces smooth as glass but pulsing with faint golden veins.
Another erupted precisely where she'd been standing, and only her stumble backward had saved her.
Another to her right, the edge of it catching her calf as it rose, leaving a shallow gash. The pain dropped her to her knees.
"What—" he gasped, his hands scrabbling against the thorn piercing him, unable to find purchase on its unnaturally smooth surface. Dark blood ran from the corner of his mouth, staining his perfect teeth. "You're human—you can't—what IS this?"
She didn't know. The warmth in her chest had transformed into something else entirely, burning with confused fury, lashing out like a wounded animal that couldn't distinguish friend from foe.
The thorns looked wrong even to her eyes, not like natural growth but like something had forced them into existence through sheer violent will.
They pulsed with that golden light, almost like a heartbeat, almost like breathing.
"Get it OUT!" he snarled, his glamour failing as his control slipped.
The face underneath was all sharp angles and too many teeth, beautiful in the way broken glass was beautiful.
When he tried to dissolve into shadow the thorn pulsed brighter with golden light and he reformed, screaming.
The sound echoed through the frozen forest, too high to be human, too anguished to be anything but real.
Briar scrambled backward between the thorns, her leg screaming protest with each movement, leaving a trail of her own blood that mixed with his where it dripped from above.
Whatever had just happened, whatever had burst from inside her and made this violence manifest—she needed to be gone before more fae came to investigate.
The forest grew darker with each step, older, the kind of place where sunlight forgot to reach. Blood ran steadily down her calf from where the thorn had caught her, each step leaving red prints on the frozen ground. She couldn't keep going like this—the blood trail would lead them straight to her.
Briar stopped, leaning against a tree. The garnet silk had already been torn in so many places. She grabbed a hanging piece near the hem, gritting her teeth as she pulled. At first the fabric resisted, then finally gave with a sound that felt too loud in the otherwise silent forest.
She wrapped the strip around her calf, pulling it tight enough that she gasped at the pressure.
Her fingers shook as she tried to tie it, the silk slippery with blood, but she managed a knot that would hopefully hold.
The bleeding slowed to a seep rather than a flow.
It would have to be enough. it wasn't like she had a choice.
Pushing off from the tree, she continued forward, her gait uneven but steadier.
It wasn't long before the ground began to slope downward, subtle at first, then steeper.
Briar had to brace herself against trees to control her descent, her feet slipping on the loose leaves and frost, each slide sending her heart racing, before she managed to catch herself.
The incline grew worse and she turned sideways, trying to edge down more carefully, testing each foothold before committing her weight. Her bandaged leg trembled with the effort, the silk already dark with blood seeping through.
Her foot came down on what looked like solid ground, but the sharp edge of a hidden rock pierced through her bare sole.
Pain shot up her leg like lightning, and her knee buckled instantly.
She pitched forward, hands grasping at nothing, and then she was rolling, tumbling down the steep incline in a chaos of leaves and stones and sky.