Chapter 55
Chapter
Fifty-Five
“How do you know that?” Aowen snarls, pushing the thorn in harder.
Timothy sucks a pained breath through clenched teeth, lifting his bound hands higher. “I overheard a conversation between him and my father the night they made their plans to frame me.”
“It was Torvil,” I rasp out. “All three times?”
“Three times?” Timothy shakes his head, a thin line of blood crawling down his grimy neck. “I only know about—” He angles back, hissing. “Can you take this dagger away from my throat. She needs to hear this. Please.”
Aowen slowly backs away, then sits on a nearby branch, her elbow propped on her knee and her thorn leveled at Timothy’s head. “I’ve got a wicked throwing arm. And killer aim. Please, test me.”
Vesper flits down from the trees and perches on Aowen’s shoulder, narrowing her beady eyes. “Food. Dismembered food.”
Timothy recoils, and I smile as I stare down at him. “If your information is useful, the pixie won’t eat you. Probably. Now, explain why Torvil wants me dead. He needs me to become king.”
“He doesn’t, actually,” Timothy says. “He only needs the seed of novillum inside you. That’s what the poison would have done—extract the seed from your body. Killing you would have been a mere side effect.”
“Oh, a mere side effect?” I scoff. This doesn’t make any sense. “I was in Tír na Lune for weeks. He had ample opportunity. Why did he wait until Lughnasadh?”
“It took him until then to replicate it. He learned of the poison after that anti-monarchist attacked you in the crypt. He wasn’t trying to kill you, either.
Or, well, he wasn’t only trying to kill you.
After all, your death would have only meant the delay of the Wild Hunt for another Season.
But destroying the novillum itself? Without it, no king can claim power. ”
“Is that what Torvil wants? To destroy the novillum and end the monarchy?”
Timothy frowns. “He didn’t share the intricacies of his plans with my father. But he did say—”
A deep growl shakes the forest, far enough away that it’s hard to tell whether it was a báshound or a necrowolf.
Aowen swivels toward it. “Go see.”
Vesper’s off the second Aowen finishes her request.
Timothy’s stunned into silence, quivering, searching the shadowed crevices beneath the thick canopy surrounding us.
“Timothy,” I snap.
“Right.” He brushes hair from his face, and something glints on the rope around his wrists.
A cloudy diamond. Like the one on the bracelet Torvil gave me.
Aowen notices it the same moment I do, then leaps to her feet.
“You fucking idiot!” She pulls Timothy up, then slices through his bonds and throws them as far downstream as she can.
But the water isn’t moving fast enough to pull it away quickly.
“You’ve brought them right to us!” She grabs him by the shirt and hauls him down to her face.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“I didn’t know,” Timothy babbles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Please,” I say calmly over Aowen’s shoulder. “Finish what you were telling me.”
Something very large crashes through the underbrush, snapping branches and crunching leaves. A harrowing roar trembles my bones. It’s closing in. And swiftly.
“We need to get out of here. Now.” Aowen clears the site, tossing the remains of our snack into the creek, shifting piles of leaves around.
“He said he would rule,” Timothy says to me, “but that there would be no queen. That even if you made it to the Wild Hunt, he would ensure it.”
“What does that even mean? And how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
Timothy laughs, a bitter puff. “I’m dead either way. What would I gain by lying to you?”
“Let’s go!” Aowen tugs me away from Timothy.
“Come with us!” I scream as she drags me through the shallow water. “We’ll protect you from him!”
Timothy shakes his head. “Every predator in the Eldergrove is looking for you. I think I’ll take my chances with—”
His refusal transforms into a blood-curdling scream as a báshound bursts through the trees and snaps its jaws around his leg, knocking him to the ground. It rakes a clawed paw across his stomach, then dips its head down, eating him as he bats uselessly against its snout.
I clap a hand over my mouth, and Aowen pulls us up behind the trees on the other bank. I squint, noticing something on the opposite side.
“Wait,” I whisper-shout. “Wait!”
She snarls, but stops pulling.
“Look.” I point toward the underbrush where a pair of glowing green eyes watches the báshound devour poor Timothy Hopnell. A meal is a meal, apparently. Even in the midst of a hunt for a different quarry.
I take a step backward and—
Snap.
The báshound’s head whips over its shoulder. It’s Anguis again—no scar. His hairless muzzle is coated with blood, and viscera dangles between his enormous teeth.
I choke back an urge to vomit as Anguis burbles a warning growl, scanning for us. His mist-and-ink eyes land on me with the force of a physical blow. The bellowing roar he unleashes shakes the trees, the stones, the very ground beneath my feet.
Aowen grapples at my shoulders, stuttering run run run over and over, like her brain is caught in a petrified loop.
The báshound crouches backward, poised to spring for us, and my stupor breaks.
His massive paws crash down on our side of the bank as I turn Aowen around and shove her in the back.
We barrel around thin white trunks, leap over fallen branches and slip on wet leaves, but even in the harsh daylight, the woods are full of unseen obstacles and we fall at least four times and the báshound snarls behind us and his hammering footfalls are growing so close that I swear I can feel the heat of his breath on my—
An enormous shadow bursts through the trees. I scream and pull Aowen to the ground.
Skadi soars over us, then slams into Anguis’s side, throwing him across a clearing into a stiff birch.
A figure leaps down from Skadi’s back, and my heart catches in my throat.
Lachlan.
He’s the brightest object beneath the dappled green canopy, his white armour gleaming as he prowls toward the báshound and arcs the tip of his sword through the air.
Skadi stalks behind him, her tongue lolling out of her panting, skeletal mouth. Rotted flesh flakes from her chest, and the bared, sinewy muscles of her right flank bunch and flex as she walks.
Anguis pushes himself up, shaking off leaves and twigs, then snarls at his advancing enemies.
I can barely watch, hands flat on my face, peeking through spread fingers as a vicious battle breaks out. Blood and fur flies, jaws snap, and metal thunks into flesh.
I train my gaze on the blur of white, Lachlan dancing through the fray, stabbing and slicing with such precision it’s like he’s choreographed the entire fight. Aowen is as transfixed as I am.
Soon, Anguis is a swaying, snapping mess of dark red wounds against wrinkled grey skin. He releases a pitiful wail, collapsing to the forest floor as his misty eyes slip closed.
Lachlan plunges the tip of his sword into the dirt, then leans down on the pommel, sucking in heaving breaths.
Skadi comes over, bumping him with her two-toned snout as he scratches behind her good ear.
There’s a slash on his neck, blood seeping beneath his chest plate.
Another crimson bloom seeps through the mail at his ribs.
I want to comfort him. Hold him and clean him and bandage his wounds.
But my wants stopped mattering the second the last blast of the Bannrhorn faded. Maybe even sooner than that.
Aowen does not share my hesitations; she runs over to Lachlan and wraps him in a deep hug that spikes my envy so high, my eyes sting.
Next to them, Skadi rolls onto her back, her bony paws flicking through the air. Aowen laughs, then crouches down to pet her belly.
My eyes collide with Lachlan’s and the rest of the world falls away.
Mud cakes my face, my jacket is torn, I smell of púca piss, and my braided crown is half-dismantled. I’m sweaty and blotchy and dirt-splattered and bloodied. I have likely never looked worse.
Lachlan stares at me as if I am the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“How did you find me without the diamrhán?” I croak.
He gifts me a weary smile. “I don’t need magic to find the other half of my soul.”
Before I can respond—god, what would I even say to that?—a piercing hawk’s cry arrows through the forest.
Andraste, Desmond’s gryffalcon, swoops down into the clearing with Vesper clinging to her neck feathers. The lavender pixie is waving and chirping, proud of her excellent deed.
Lachlan’s gaze shutters, the moment between us passed. “Come, Your Majesty,” he says as he guides me toward the majestic winged beast.
“Your king is waiting for you.”