Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What makes you think you know where the Fox is?” my little captive demanded as she tried to keep pace with me. My stride was plenty longer than hers even though she was tall for a human, but the persistent creature managed to stay at my side.
“There is very little in this world that cannot be found when you are watching closely enough.”
“That’s not an answer,” she huffed.
I had to hand it to her, lesser humans would be out of breath by now from the pace I’d set, but she was fit enough. It was funny how some humans worked all their lives to be strong, yet I could still snap their necks with my bare hands in two seconds.
“I climbed a ridge the other day and watched the trees for signs of smoke. It came thrice from the same place and that was where I found the spirit. Where there is fire, there is smoke. Where there is smoke, there is likely the Fox. So we will seek it in the area I last saw the smoke and hunt for it from a viewpoint if it cannot be found there.”
“Great, how about you drop the patronising tone next time you answer a question?”
I ignored her griping, pushing though a mass of vines and finding a mossy hill dropping away beyond. The dark was heavy here, the canopy so thick above that it blotted out most of the sunlight, and there was a weight to the air that spoke of magic.
I wondered if the human could sense it too. My eyes drifted to her and I noticed her boot slip on the moss as we began our descent. My hand flew out, landing firmly on her back to steady her and her palm fell on my arm, gripping tightly as she righted herself.
“Watch your step, lightwing,” I muttered, glancing at her hand on me, the buzz of her humanity skipping beneath her fingertips, dancing against my skin. Even a fall could kill her kind if they hit their head hard enough.
Her eyes met mine, two bright violet fires blazing with the intensity of the stars. That unique tone to her irises seeming brighter here beneath the canopy of the trees, something sparking in her gaze which appeared so much older than she possibly could have been.
She snatched her hand away from me and walked on without a word of thanks, taking the lead down the hill with assured footfalls. I followed, head tilted down, a wild animal at her back. If only she knew who stalked her footsteps she would run and never stop running.
The unusual interaction irked me. I should have let her fall.
“How will you lead the way when you have no idea of the direction we are heading?” I called to her. There was a hill near here that I had found a few days back which should give a good view across the forest and hopefully a glimpse of the Fox’s smoke.
“Poor, dumb Fae,” she cooed, and my teeth locked together. “You’re the one who gave me the answer, has your aged mind forgotten it already?”
The scent of smoke reached me as I joined her at the base of the hill and I cursed myself for not having noticed it first.
“Perhaps I’m testing you.”
She gave me a dry look that said she didn’t believe my bullshit for a single second and I marched on past her, taking the lead once more.
The brush was dense here, slowing our progress, as if the forest was willing us to turn back.
..or at least that was how it appeared to be treating me.
But when my gaze fell to the human who should have been helplessly stumbling along in the path I was forging, I found her striding between brambles which slithered aside for her boots and passing beneath vines that lifted to accommodate her of their own accord.
“Playing favourites, are we?” I grumbled at the trees, but only the shiver of the leaves above my head came as answer.
Between my sword and sheer force, I cut a path toward my Fox and at last found it waiting for me.
Luck was clearly on my side today, the spirit wandering right into our path without us needing to seek smoke from the treetops at all.
It appeared I might not even need to use my bait this time to lure it, but no matter, the human would come in useful for the next one.
Maybe she really had been touched by a little lightwing spirit before I’d found her and granted with its fortuity.
The Fox was curled up sleeping in a clearing, the grass flattened out from how many times it had slept here before.
Coiling up from its fiery fur was a gentle plume of white smoke.
Perhaps it only happened when the creature slept because I had not seen the smoke rising from the trees often enough to believe it was constant.
I crouched low, assessing the area for traps, expecting the forest to strike at me before I could lay my hands on my prize.
“It’s beautiful,” Ferris breathed, lowering down at my side. “Fire embodied.”
I remained silent, letting the doe-eyed human focus on the Fox’s splendour while I concentrated on how to seize it.
I sheathed my sword and took a knife from my hip, creeping closer, ready to hurl it at the beast and claim it at last. My foot snapped a twig and I stilled, the Fox’s head flying up and its eyes meeting mine.
I hurled my blade, but it was gone, the knife driving into the ground right where it’d been.
“Shit,” I growled as the Fox darted off into the trees, a swish of its burning tail signalling my loss. I yanked my knife from the ground as Ferris sprinted past me, snatching a handful of dry pine needles from the forest floor and disappearing into the brush.
“What’s your game?” I bit out and chased after the Fox, forcing a path through the tangled thorn bushes and earning myself a line of scratches along my arms.
I quickened my pace, hearing Ferris just ahead as I broke into another clearing between two enormous oak trees with high roots that covered most of the ground. Ferris was bounding between the roots with ease while I was forced to slow down, my bulk making the task harder.
There was no sign of the Fox and I guessed Ferris had given up when she abruptly sat down on the ground between two large roots.
I caught up to her at last, overtaking her and throwing a glance at the ground where she was crouching over something.
She’d bundled the pine needles together and was striking two flints above them, but I didn’t have a thought to spare to her madness as I continued on, barrelling off into the closely-gathered trees beyond the oaks.
I forged deeper into the forest, but there was no more scent of smoke to follow now. No flicker of a burning tail. Disappointment burned on my tongue like acid, a curse tumbling from my lips as my hopes diminished.
I hunted the area, desperate to find my Fox, furious I’d lost my chance at it yet again. But just when I was about to give up for good, the scent of smoke reached me once more and I turned keenly, racing through the trees, pushing on with an unforgiving determination.
Everything depended on me returning the amulets to the Great Elm at the heart of the forest.
The path I sought might have been layered in death, but it was what I wanted more than any other thing. No material item or petty desire could outweigh the reason I had come here. The boon would be mine.
I shoved through the brush and stumbled beyond the tangle of thorns, finding myself back between the two oak trees. The smoke wasn’t coiling up from the Fox after all, but from Ferris’s fire.
I was about to unleash my inner demons upon her and punish her for the mindless action, but then I saw it. The Fox, pawing its way toward my captive.
Ferris knelt before the flames, offering her hand out to the spirit like she expected the monstrous beast to come and nuzzle her palm.
The spirit drew closer, its eyes alight with the fire and the need to consume every flame.
I frowned, seeing more to the spirit than I had allowed myself to before.
It didn’t seem like a vengeful monster in that moment, at least not when it came to her.
Perhaps there was something to Ferris’s beliefs about them after all.
My human was no ordinary creature, it seemed.
She was clever, sharper than I had been in my moment of desperation.
She’d lured the Fox right to her with her wits and now it was looking at her as if she might be the answer to all its problems. But we weren’t here to comfort the spirits of the cursed forest. We were here to capture them.
So while she was seeking a bond with the Fox which was regarding her with gentle intrigue, drawing closer to her outstretched hand, I took aim.
“I won’t hurt you,” Ferris whispered to it just as I threw my knife.
It spun end over end, then slammed directly into the Fox’s chest, making it yelp in pain before it vanished in a swirl of smoke.
An amulet fell to the forest floor in its place, a fox carved in fine lines upon its front and smoke coiling around it before finally slipping inside, making the locket glow like embers before it fell dark.
I smiled wickedly, picking up the amulet and relishing in my victory as I placed it around my neck.
The flood of a fiery power ignited in my veins, embers flickering along my limbs and winding through my chest. The beast connected to me in a flood of furious flames but they didn’t burn me, their heat a balm instead of a bane.
I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t even notice the branch swinging for my head.
Ferris whacked the thing against my skull hard enough to knock me back a step.
I snatched her wrist with a growl, forcing her to drop the branch and baring my teeth at her, reminding her who she was striking at.
“The Fox was mine,” Ferris snapped, feral rage burning through her as she glared at me like she might truly be a match for a prince of the Fae. Not that she knew my true heritage.
“Don’t be a sore loser, lightwing. Your plan was pretty but your execution was poor. Touching the spirits won’t make them yours.”
“Fuck you,” she snarled, trying to yank her wrist free of my grip, but I didn’t let go.
How easily I could break her bones, just the right amount of pressure and I could snap her wrist. Did she have no sense to protect herself from me?
Did she not understand the threat I posed?
She’d made it clear enough that she was no fool, so why then did she challenge me as if I were some mortal man?
I lifted her clean off the ground by her wrist, reminding her of my strength as her legs kicked at me. She struck me in the thigh and I held her further away from me, shaking my head.
“My guess is, you have survived this long out of sheer luck. And you only still live because I decided it. You’re not here to offer me your opinions on the Great Hunt, you are here to be my tool, and while you are not being useful to me, you’d best keep your mouth shut.
” I dropped her and her feet hit the ground hard but she didn’t fall.
She didn’t cower or drop to her knees to grovel as I’d hoped, but instead, she laughed.
She laughed openly at me, mocking and cold.
“You can’t silence me and need me in the same sentence.
You said it yourself, I’m alive because you’re keeping me so.
That means you have to put up with me as I am.
And I will speak my thoughts whenever I like, bastard.
I might just be bait to you, but I’m far more than that.
I’m human, and we’re more than your kind could ever hope to be. ”
I scoffed a laugh back at her. “How so? Do your people possess our strength? Our ferocity? Do you outlive all other beings? Do you possess magic in your veins that can wield the very forces of the world we live in?”
Her jaw flexed and she stepped toward me, eyes never leaving mine. Despite her humanity, she appeared surprisingly powerful in her stature. “We possess none of that meaningless tripe.”
“Tripe?” I echoed, affronted by her insanity. “What more is there to this world than power?”
“Humans have fallen for that trap too, but many of us know the real meaning of life. The brevity we have gifts us something you’ll never understand.
We live for each moment, we wring the goodness out of our days and we strive to make everyone we love know they’re cherished because we don’t know when we might lose each other.
It makes life meaningful. You, on the other hand, hold no meaning.
You cherish nothing but your precious power and in the end, you’ll find yourself hollow. ”
That word struck me like an anvil to the chest. Hollow.
Hollow.
Hollow.
Hollow.
No one used that word lightly; she was inferring I was just like the undead who walked this plane with us. The thought was one I’d had myself. How could she possibly see the emptiness in me? How could a creature like this know anything of what my long life had led to?
“Your silence says I’m right.” She turned her back on me, heading for the trees, moving fast like she planned on running from me again, the forest once again bending around her like it found amusement in aiding her against me.
I clasped the amulet of the Bear, turning it in my palm to face the forest and urged it to show itself. The locket shuddered and a thunderous flood of power rattled through me as the Bear spilled from the amulet, pouring free in a swirl of water that formed its huge figure.
Ferris glanced back and I didn’t need to make the spirit chase her, her eyes hardened and she fell still.
“Back to my prison then,” she conceded. “For now.”
“For as long as I bid it,” I hissed, hatred spilling from me. Yes, I despised her now for how easily she saw through me. How starkly she had bared the truth.
I hated her because she was right. Her brevity was, impossibly, her greatest gift. Because in a timeless form, there was only one fate on offer when you had walked the path I had. And that was an empty, lonely nothingness.