Chapter 11 Merrit
Merrit
The forest wouldn’t stop tilting.
Every step jarred my ribs; every breath rasped like bark in my lungs.
My jaw throbbed where his fist had landed.
Blood slicked the side of my dress, hot at first, then clammy in the cold.
I kept moving anyway, dagger glued to my palm, thoughts slashing through my skull in a riot that made the trees blur until I wanted to claw my own head open and let them pour out.
Not prey, I told myself. Not tonight.
A twig snapped above me, and the cold dread of reality skimmed my spine.
I looked up and they were already falling—two shapes peeling from the branches like the night had shrugged them loose. No rustle, no warning, just weight and hands and the reek of blood and death.
A strong fist slammed into my chest, knocking me flat. The other caught my wrists and pinned them high, his knee grinding into my hip. Cold fingers fisted in my hair and jerked my head back so hard my vision burst white. Air stabbed my throat. A laugh rasped across my cheek.
“Divide-born trash,” the one at my wrists crooned. His breath was sweet with rot, with death. “But I bet your blood is warm enough.”
The other leaned in and dragged his tongue along the line of scarlet under my ribs. The sting made me buck so hard my teeth clicked together. He hummed like he’d tasted sugar. “She’ll sing sweeter when she bleeds.”
I bared my teeth and tried to spit in his face. He laughed and slapped me, open-palmed, a sting that lit my cheek on fire. Fingers tightened in my hair, wrenching harder, opening my throat. Fangs grazed skin. Not biting—yet—just a promise.
The thoughts in their heads were thorns in my skull. Split her open. Make him watch her bleed.
I went feral.
Slamming my knee up, I caught the one at my hip on the inner thigh hard enough to make him grunt. I twisted and sank my teeth into the wrist holding mine. Copper burst over my tongue. He swore, jerked, and I tore free: one arm long enough to drive down the dagger I’d managed to hang onto.
It hit muscle and skidded across bone, burying deep in his thigh.
I smiled as he howled, but my victory was cut short.
My blood-slick fingers slipped from the hilt when his companion brought his elbow down across my forearm, the shock making my hand go numb, and the dagger clattered off into the leaves.
“Little rat,” he hissed, knocking me off-balance and slamming me into the dirt. His weight crushed my ribs as his fangs scraped my throat—a cold promise that made the world tilt.
No. The thought slammed through me with brutal clarity, but no sound left my throat. My fingers twitched against the bracken, useless for the signs they wanted to make.
I was going to die. Right here in the forest with my throat open and their laughter in my ears. Not in a Court’s velvet cage and not in a bar where the rules made sense—here, like a rabbit whose legs had finally given out.
Then the weight on me vanished.
It didn’t feel like a choice so much as a natural disaster.
One heartbeat, I was pinned and failing; the next, the world ripped sideways, and the vampire at my wrists went airborne.
He slammed into a birch so hard the bark cracked.
The other reared back, fangs bared, and then a blur tore across my vision and dragged him off me like he weighed nothing.
Kieran.
Not the man from the head table, draped in finery and jewels. This was a monster unmasked, all civility scraped away to reveal the animal underneath. His eyes were wrong—no, not wrong, exactly. No, they were honest. Pure. This was the truth buried under layers of politics and polish.
All the icy blue was long gone, replaced with pure scarlet malice.
Blood streaked his temple. His coat hung shredded off one shoulder. His mouth split into a snarl that revealed fangs meant for rending flesh.
He didn’t posture. He didn’t speak.
Kieran hit the vampire who’d held my wrists with his whole body, and bone gave with a sound I felt in my own ribs. The man gurgled as Kieran’s hand locked in his hair, yanked his head back, and tore into his exposed throat.
The sound he made when he snuffed out the man’s life wasn’t civilized, either.
It was wet and obscene and full of a hunger that had nothing to do with wine and everything to do with survival.
Blood arced, spraying hot across my cheek and the leaves and the torn front of my dress.
The vampire kicked twice, heels plowing weak furrows in the earth.
I felt him in my head. Not like this. Saints, no. He said it would be easy. The thought cut off as his body went slack.
The second one lunged for Kieran’s back. I threw a rock, heard the crack of bone as it struck his jaw, but it barely slowed him. It didn’t matter.
Kieran spun, snarling, and let the sword fall.
His hands hit the vampire’s chest with a crack of ribs.
Fingers dug in like claws, forcing past bone and sinew until they closed on what beat beneath.
The man screamed, high and animalistic, as Kieran tore his heart out in a spray of gore, the muscle still twitching in his fist.
His dying thoughts hit harder than the blood. Promised—easy kill. Wrong. Wrong—
The words broke apart into static, collapsing in on themselves as Kieran crushed the heart to pulp in his palm and dropped the body like trash.
He bared his fangs in a smile that was nothing like human.
Silence thundered, vibrating through my pulsing temples.
I lay there panting in the dirt, dress shredded open at the side, ribs leaking warmth into the cold night.
Fangs had scraped my throat without piercing, and the ghost of it was worse than the sting.
My hands shook so hard I could hear my bones chatter.
The torches at the tree line guttered and spat resin.
Somewhere distant, the horn for the Hunt sounded again, a hollow note that made the birds shudder from their roost.
Kieran stood over me, chest heaving. Blood slicked his mouth, painted the notch of his collarbone, ran in a dark ribbon down his wrist, coating his fingers.
He looked at me as if I were the only thing in the forest, and also as if the forest had to go through him to get to me.
The wild edge in his eyes hadn’t faded. If anything, it focused.
He dropped to a knee in front of me, sudden enough that my breath caught.
Up close, he smelled like the cold edge of winter.
His fangs gleamed. His hand lifted—and before I could flinch, he brought his thumb to his own mouth, pierced it on one long fang, and pressed the bead of blood to the worst of the wounds at my ribs.
The heat of it burned through me like fire, bright and searing, until I thought I might arch away from the touch.
Then it shifted, a molten rush beneath my skin, the edges of the wound knitting even as it throbbed.
Pain dulled, twisted into something that wasn’t quite agony and not quite relief—too raw, too consuming to name.
My breath dragged in like I’d been drowning and only just remembered air.
My hands shook, but I forced them into signs, jerky and uneven. “I killed one. Before you came. That dagger saved my life.”
His gaze snapped to mine. Shock flared in the red of his eyes, then burned away, leaving only something darker—pride, jagged and brutal. His mouth curled, blood streaking his teeth.
“Good,” he said, his voice low. “Better they rot by your hand than you by theirs.”
His gaze raked over me, from blood-slicked fingers to the ragged edge of my torn dress. The snarl on his lips didn’t fade; it deepened, pride tangled with fury. He looked every inch the predator he was—one who might just devour me next.
Kieran’s hand lifted again, thumb streaked with his own blood.
He dragged it across the gouge at my ribs once more, pressing harder this time, forcing more of that fiery heat into the wound as if sheer force of will could erase every mark they’d left on me.
My breath hissed through my teeth. He didn’t stop.
“I’m fine,” I signed, jerky, trying to push his wrist away.
He caught my hand instead, pinning it flat against my stomach as if daring me to argue.
His eyes burned scarlet, jaw flexing like he was holding back words—or fangs.
“They marked you,” he growled, low and savage.
“A single bruise is too much. I did not bring you here to suffer at the hands of my Court.”
His gaze slid higher, to my throat. The scrape where fangs had kissed my skin without piercing. The muscle in his jaw jumped, and before I could stop him, he reached, fingers brushing the edge of the wound. My pulse leapt against his touch.
The blood on his mouth was close enough to taste in the air.
I signed with my free hand, clumsily, “I wasn’t bitten. It’s fine.”
He leaned in anyway, close enough that the heat of his breath swept the line of my scar.
His thumb lingered under my jaw, tilting my face up into the cage of his shadow.
His mouth was still painted red, his chest heaving with leftover rage, and for a single, shattering moment I couldn’t tell if he meant to seal his lips to mine—or sink those teeth into my throat.
The world narrowed to him. To the iron heat of his hand, to the furious rasp of his breath, to the throb of my pulse hammering against his thumb.
Mine.
The word wasn’t his voice, not really—it was something I wasn’t even sure I heard, more a spark that burned across the raw edges of my mind. A glimpse. A slip. Then it was gone, the rest of him sealed away again like always.
My breath hitched, chest burning, and still, I couldn’t move. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, slow and dangerous, until it hovered just below my lip. Blood smeared from his hand onto my skin, hot and sticky. The copper tang filled the air between us, making me dizzy.