CHAPTER NINE #3
Anya regarded her, her green eyes flat as glass.
“Make sure you burn or bury the remains of your feast,” she said, tossing a disparaging glance around the table, laden with unfinished food.
“You’ll bring bears, or worse, on all our heads.
” With that, she left, and Sy started to follow, but he hesitated.
He needed to refill the water in his kit.
“I’ll catch up to you,” he said, and she gave him a long look before nodding and going on her own.
Keeping an eye on which way Anya went, he approached the nearest wagon and went through several barrels of wine before he found one full of water – what he hoped was distilled.
When he finished, he drank long and deep straight from the spigot.
The spell he’d penned for Anya had barely affected him enough to be notable, but he was still not completely recovered from the previous week.
As he wiped his mouth dry and adjusted his satchel, he noticed Anya had waited for him in the line of the trees. He also noticed that David was nearby, seated on a stone around a campfire with Bertrand and Claude.
Bertrand noticed him first and cleared his throat. “Hello, Sylas.”
“Hello, Bertrand.”
At his voice, David looked up, and Sy gestured under a nearby willow. After a moment’s hesitation, David rose and followed him.
“You told them I was looking for the phoenix.” Sabina had intimated as much, but Sy didn’t want to believe it. David said nothing, confirming its truth. His chest tightened. “David. You know what this prize would mean to me.”
“And what about what it would mean to me? Did you know my father’s factory is on the verge of collapse?”
Despite himself, Sy softened. “Is he ill again?”
“Better to ask when he isn’t,” David muttered, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
Sy knew David’s father had a tendency toward worry, and toward treating his workers with dignity, which had the dueling effects of leading his expenses to far outweigh those of his rivals, and his speed of production to lag behind – which increased the worry.
He hadn’t known this lag, or the worry, was catching up.
“He may have to sell it to make up the debt,” David went on. “He’s already spent half my inheritance on it, and the rest is sure to follow. And then there will be nothing to pay for my sister’s education. She could end up in the same place you are now. If she’s lucky.”
Sy couldn’t keep himself from wincing. “No, I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.” He took a step closer, imploring. “And you’re splitting the prize with some stranger? What Sabina did was stupid, but her instinct wasn’t wrong. She was trying to protect you, in her way.”
“Marking her territory, you mean.”
“You can’t deny it’s all a bit suspicious. The huntress. She’s… strange.”
Sy glanced behind David, to the opposite side of the glade. His partner had removed her borrowed gloves and was pressing her palms to the bark of a tree.
“We could have done it together, Sy,” said David. “We still can. We don’t have to be at odds.”
But David was the reason they were all here. He had feigned disinterest, but he knew what Sy was planning and had sent the rest of them on the prowl.
Sy wasn’t splitting the prize. Not with Anya, and not with David. “I’m afraid we do.”
David’s face fell. Whatever there had been between them, there was no coming back from this, and they both knew it. “Right. Alright. Best of luck, then.”
Before Sy could reply, David left him under the leaves of the willow.
Feeling emptier than he ever had, Sy caught up with Anya, who took him deeper into the cover of the trees. Close, but not too close. They spread their bedrolls and lay in the murmur of the camp; then, as the campfires were gradually extinguished, in the silence. The heavy silence. Ready to pounce.
He tossed and turned for hours beside Anya, who remained still as a stone. To distract himself from the quiet, he replayed every last conversation he’d had with David. Which had been the last they’d had as lovers? Which had been the last as friends?
But that was worse than the crouching night. So he turned to something else that had been bothering him, another itch he couldn’t scratch.
Sabina’s spell. Next to him, Sabina was the best scribe he knew. Though she swore she penned it accurately, the magic had misfired. But the spell also did something that shouldn’t have been possible, no matter how badly it was botched.
Beastly, Anya had called herself. He wouldn’t put it past Sabina to attempt a spell to make the hunter’s boast come true – but what spell, botched or no, could possibly turn a human woman’s tongue into a beast’s?
In the quiet, he rolled over to study his sleeping companion, her head nestled in the crook of her arm. What secrets did the forest hold? What secrets did she?
He couldn’t begin to imagine. But he was beginning to suspect they may hold the key to his freedom.
Before he could follow that logic further, the crouching silence pounced. A sharp, violent scream cut through the night, followed by a monstrous, blood-curdling roar.