Chapter 13
Elle
Dawn came like a blade through silk—sudden, sharp, and irreversible.
I’d barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the ghost of Kaelren’s hand hovering near my face, heard his voice saying before I do something we’ll both regret. What did that mean? What would he regret?
“Stop overthinking,” Peeble muttered from my shoulder. “You’ll give yourself a headache.”
Too late for that.
The Autumn Court saw us off with all the ceremony of escorting condemned prisoners to execution. Merithra stood at the border, looking almost sorry—which, coming from her, was unsettling.
“Try not to die immediately,” she said. “It would be anticlimactic.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“The plan hasn’t changed,” Kaelren said as we gathered at the border, his voice all business, his back rigid, deliberately not looking at me. “We continue to the Heartspire to see the Bloom. It’s our best option for—”
“For completing my transformation in a controlled way,” I finished. “I remember the plan.”
He’d been like that since we’d gathered at dawn—all clipped orders and cold efficiency, the man from last night completely buried under layers of control.
Fine. If he wanted to pretend nothing happened, I could pretend too.
Except I couldn’t stop noticing the way dawn light caught in his silver eyes, or how his marks seemed to pulse in sync with mine when we got too close, or how his jaw clenched every time someone said my name.
“The Heartspire is still several days’ travel,” Vashael added. “If we can avoid the Hunt that long.”
“We won’t,” Kaelren said flatly. “Merithra’s protection ends at her borders. The moment we cross, they’ll come.”
“Ready?” Vashael asked, appearing at my side.
“Absolutely not.”
“Good. Honesty is refreshing.” She glanced toward Kaelren. “Whatever happened between you two last night, work it out fast. Tension like that gets people killed.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Right. And I’m the Queen of the Summer Court.” She moved away before I could respond.
The Autumn Court’s borders shimmered as we crossed them, Merithra’s protection falling away like a discarded cloak. The moment my foot touched unclaimed ground, I felt them. The Wild Hunt. Not just their presence but their hunger, pressing against my consciousness like fingers probing for weakness.
“Move,” Kaelren commanded, his voice clipped and cold. Still not looking at me. “They’re already coming.”
Our eyes met for half a second—just long enough for me to see the storm behind his carefully controlled expression—then he looked away first, jaw tight.
Right. We were doing this, then. Pretending.
We’d barely made it fifty yards into the forest when the first horn sounded—not heard but felt, vibrating through bones and blood. The trees around us shuddered, leaves falling like tears.
“Bees won’t help us,” Bryx said, Kevin buzzing anxiously around his head. “The Hunt drives them mad.”
“Then we run,” Sarnyx said, thorns already extending.
“Running just delays the inevitable,” Eltrien murmured, and there was something in his voice—resignation? Recognition? “The Hunt never fails.”
Another horn, closer. Through the canopy, I caught glimpses of them—riders that flickered between solid and transparent, neither fully there nor fully gone. Their mounts were worse, horses made of mist and darkness that moved through trees like they weren’t there.
“This way,” Nimor called, materializing from shadow. “There’s a ravine—”
The hounds found us first.
They came from everywhere and nowhere, massive things with too many teeth and eyes that glowed like dying stars, bodies that seemed to phase in and out of existence with each stride. When they howled, reality itself rippled, trees bending away from the sound.
“You know what would be great right now?” Peeble muttered. “Literally anything else. Sarnyx’s cooking. A corruption infection. Listening to Kaelren explain tactical formations for six hours.”
“Form up!” Kaelren commanded, and the crew instinctively fell into defensive positions. “Back to back, don’t let them separate us!”
“Don’t look at them directly!” Vashael warned, but one of the hounds had already locked eyes with Bryx.
He froze mid-step, compound eyes going wide with terror. “No, no, no—” His voice rose to a panicked buzz. “Kevin, I’m sorry, I should have—”
“Bryx!” Sarnyx grabbed him, shaking him hard. “It’s not real! Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real!”
But it was real to him. That was the hounds’ power—they didn’t just show you fear, they made you live it.
Another hound circled toward me, and I made the mistake of meeting its void-like gaze.
Suddenly I wasn’t in the forest anymore.
I was back in Grandmother’s house, watching her take her last breath, but this time I was frozen, unable to reach her bedside.
Unable to say goodbye. Unable to tell her I understood now, understood what she’d tried to protect me from.
The portal opened behind me, lightning crackling, and I was falling through—but Grandmother’s hand reached out, accusing: You left me. You left everyone.
“Elle!” Kaelren’s voice cut through the vision like a blade. His hand caught my arm, hauling me upright with bruising force. “Fight it. You’re stronger than fear.”
The hound snarled, frustrated its hold had broken. It lunged.
Kaelren’s corruption met it mid-leap. Black tendrils of decay spread from his marks, wrapping around the hound like chains. The creature’s howl turned to something almost like pain as its ethereal form began to solidify, to rot, to become something that could be hurt.
“Now!” he shouted.
Sarnyx’s thorns struck true, piercing through what was now partially solid flesh. The hound dispersed into mist, but we could all hear its whimper echoing from somewhere else, somewhere between.
“They can be fought,” Vashael said, her pollen already creating golden clouds of illusion around us. “But not for long.”
She was right. For every hound we drove off, two more materialized from the shadows. They were testing us, wearing us down, driving us toward—
“It’s a trap,” Eltrien said suddenly. “They’re herding us.”
“Where?” I demanded.
“Does it matter?” Nimor materialized beside me, more solid than I’d ever seen him. “We can’t fight them all.”
One hound lunged at Bryx, who had finally broken free of the fear-vision but was still disoriented. It left three parallel scratches across his chest that bled light instead of blood—not physical wounds, but something worse.
“Those are essence wounds,” Eltrien said, pulling Bryx back. “They’re tearing at what makes him him.”
“Oh good,” Peeble said. “Because regular deadly wounds would be too boring.”
The riders appeared then, surrounding us in a perfect circle.
They’d stopped herding us—we were exactly where they wanted us.
The Hunter himself dismounted, and looking at him was like trying to focus on a migraine—painful and impossible.
He was beautiful and terrible, ancient and newly born, everything and nothing all at once.
“Elle of Earth,” his voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You run from judgment.”
“I run from bullshit,” I shot back, my marks flaring brightly at my collarbones. The Root responded to my anger, roots beginning to push up through the forest floor around my feet. “What crime am I guilty of besides existing?”
“Existing as an abomination,” he replied simply. “You are becoming something outside the pattern. Something that breaks the wheel.”
“Good. The wheel sucks.”
“Oh brilliant,” Peeble hissed. “Yes, definitely sass the ancient death god. What could possibly go wrong?”
He laughed, and birds fell dead from the trees around us, their small bodies hitting the ground with soft thumps. “Such defiance. It will make the hunt sweeter.”
He raised his hand, and the hounds tensed to spring—
Nimor didn’t wait. He charged.
Not at the Hunter—that would be suicide—but at the nearest hound, his shadow-form wrapping around the creature like chains of darkness. The hound howled, thrashing, snapping at something it couldn’t quite catch, and the Hunt’s attention divided.
“Move!” Kaelren commanded, already dragging me backward.
“Nimor!” I screamed, but he was already fighting three hounds at once, his form flickering wildly as they tore at his essence with teeth and claws that shouldn’t exist.
Two more hounds peeled off from the circle to join the attack on him. Then another. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and he knew it—but he kept fighting anyway, kept drawing their attention, kept buying us seconds.
“He’s buying us time!” Vashael shouted, golden pollen already creating illusion-clouds around us. “Don’t waste it!”
The Hunter’s attention snapped back to me, and his spear—which hadn’t existed until it did—materialized in his hand. “The shadow-walker cannot save you. Only delay—”
Nimor screamed—not in pain but in defiance—and exploded into pure shadow, engulfing half the hounds in darkness so complete it seemed to eat light itself.
“GO!” Kaelren commanded, his hand like iron on my arm, hauling me into motion. “NOW!”
We fled.
Behind us, I could hear the battle—Nimor’s howls of rage, the hounds’ frustrated snarls, the Hunter’s cold commands. But Nimor had done it. He’d given us an opening, a chance.
The forest became a blur of motion. Kaelren led us along paths that appeared just long enough to use them, through hollows that existed in spaces between spaces.
My marks burned with heat and desperation, and I felt the Root responding—opening ways that shouldn’t exist, bending trees aside, creating passages through barriers that should have been impassable.
“Keep moving!” Vashael shouted from behind me. “Some of them broke off—they’re gaining!”
I could feel them—three, maybe four hounds that had abandoned the fight with Nimor to pursue us. Their presence was like ice down my spine, their hunger pressing against my consciousness.