Chapter Twenty-Five
Calista
Everest’s hand slid to his knife before the entire form coalesced. Mine went to the crescent at my back.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Alma murmured, cheerfully. She lifted empty palms. “Please. If I wanted you caught, you would already be chewing Nightreef tar.” Her smile sharpened. “I’ve been behind you since the river mouth.”
Everest cursed. “She is Mistvale, that’s for certain. She could walk past our own shadows, and we wouldn’t notice.”
“Flatterer.” Alma’s eyes skimmed over me just as I studied her, scanning for weaknesses. Then her gaze flitted to Everest at my shoulder, and back to me with a little spark I didn’t like. “I’m here to repay a debt.”
“Why should we believe you?” I hedged.
She pinned me with a look that reminded me of Ma. It was the same one she gave me when I’d hopelessly knotted a net for the thirtieth time. Like I was somehow stupid and also hopeless.
“You think I’m hanging around, losing time, for fun?” She scoffed. “This changes nothing about the Hunt, but I would rather pay a debt now than have it looming over me when you and I are the last ones to the throne.”
I shared a look with Everest.
“Talk,” he barked then nodded to the path ahead.
She fell in on my other side, light on her feet.
“Ironcliff’s Hadria is still north of us on the ridge, pushing too hard.
Her hunter is bruised, but too proud to admit it.
Tidebreak’s Vessa, you already met. She’s still in the game and as of sundown, was heading for the river forks.
Nightreef’s Kel is setting traps with her hunter. ”
“Hunters aren’t allowed to trap daughters. It must be a lawful bind.” Everest’s voice was sharp.
“Right,” Alma said, drawing the vowel out. “Which is why I’m certain they’ll say they’re using them for trapping game. None the less, I have a feeling any ankle will do.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Rhosyn cut Myra’s arm in a stupid squabble over the king, and now they’ve split up.”
My gaze lifted toward the trees, unbidden. “Is that all?”
She nodded. “I hoped you’d have some information in return.”
“Obdisianhelm is out,” I offered. “It sounded like a tusk-bear found her.”
She shuddered.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“Speaking of bodies… I heard Thornwild is down a hunter.” Alma’s gaze flicked to Everest. “Your king’s Black Wolf is bad for everyone’s health.”
“That’s the idea,” he replied drily. “Now, enough of the chatter, we need to keep moving.”
We headed over the rocky shore into the thick firs inland where the wind smelled like sap instead of salt.
Everest paused long enough to tuck me behind a boulder, despite my complaints, while he studied the slope of the land.
Then he pointed toward a gap in the hills.
“We’ll cross that low pass, then turn north.
With luck, we’ll reach the fields in two hours. ”
“Luck,” Alma chirped. “Unlikely. Not with the unladylike manner the daughters have been behaving thus far.”
“What exactly did you see?” Everest growled.
“Oh, nothing… just Myra Bolt attempting to shove Ashfen’s Pyra Soot from a slick embankment. If the female hadn’t been so quick with her grappling hook, she would have made a meal for the gloamthreshers off the coast.”
A chill scurried up my spine at the reminder of the enormous beast that had nearly taken our longboats off Hollowcrest Isle. I’d be more than happy to never set eyes on one of those again.
“The Wolvryn daughters are showing their teeth.” Alma grinned, flashing her own canines. “I suppose their simply too frightened of the Black Wolf to draw your blood.”
Everest grunted.
At the sight of her still nubby fangs, I wondered if she already felt the pull of the moon. I couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy that reared up with the thought. Smothering it back down, as I had my whole life, I turned my attention to my guard.
His eyes tracked to the tree line, then the sky before returning to Alma. “It’s time we go our separate ways, Mistvale.”
She sketched a dramatic bow. “As you say, Black Wolf. Besides, I move faster alone. I do, however, have one last gift for the Hollow.” She pointed with her chin.
“Nightreef doubled back. If you keep to the fir shade another half mile then cut left at the fallen cedar with the split crown, you’ll miss the tar patch. ”
“Noted,” I replied.
Then she tilted her head toward the copse of firs beyond. “By the way, the Black Wolf looks at you like a cliff looks at a storm.”
“What in the moons does that mean?”
A quick spin on her heel was her only response. Alma took off at a jog and faded into the trees like mist meeting the wind.
Goddess, she was the most mercurial female.
“Pay no attention to her.” Everest released another grunt of irritation. “I’m going to bring back food. Stay under cover. If you see the iron red of Ironcliff or coral black of Nightreef, you run. If you see both, you climb.”
“Why?” I still hated how he ordered me around.
He shook his head with a frustrated sigh.
“Ironcliff is strongest on flat ground where they can box you in with shields, and Nightreef loves low cover and grapples from below. High ground breaks both tactics: grapples miss and shields can’t press.
They’d be forced into single-file, and you’d have a clean escape line along a ridge, boulder stack, or tree line. ”
He wasn’t wrong based on the little I’d witnessed so far. “How very observant of you.”
Before I could say more, he was gone, a dark shape sliding through the green.
I kept my gaze fixed on the spot he’d disappeared long after the trees had swallowed him, Alma’s parting words circling like a hawk over my thoughts.
A cliff and a storm.
Not opposites. Not enemies, exactly. Just two forces bound for collision, as inevitable as tide against stone.
I shoved the thought down before it could take root. I had no use for softness now. No use for wondering what it meant that the Black Wolf watched me like impact was only a matter of time.
So I forced my mind where it belonged, to Suri and Ma. To the Moon Crown. To the three edicts I would have to spend wisely if I survived long enough to claim them.
But alone with my thoughts for the first time since the Hunt began, my mind kept circling back to the same jagged pieces.
Ma. The gloamthresher. The tusk-bear. The lunar rage.
Different shapes of ruin, all wearing the same face beneath the skin.
A beast turned wrong. A mind unmade. A power that should have protected, instead devouring what it touched.
It couldn’t be coincidence. There had to be a thread running through all of it, dark and buried though it was.
And if there was, then my edicts could not be spent only on Hollowcrest’s survival.
They would have to cut deeper than that.
Deep enough to save Ma. Deep enough to stop whatever sickness was spreading through Lunaris before it swallowed more than one Court whole.
Before long, Everest reappeared, slipping through the firs with two rabbits in hand.
Within minutes, he had a small fire crackling and his catch roasting on a spit.
He sank his knife into the tender flesh and the flames hissed and sparked beneath. “It’s almost ready. We must eat quickly and move.”
My stomach growled. I was fairly certain I could eat the entire thing in seconds. “That will not be an issue.”
“Good. Because if Alma was right, then Nightreef could be close by. And Thornwild—”
“But you killed Bram.”
“And surely, they will replace him before long.”
Curses, that had not been explained in the rules.
Another question popped into my mind as I chewed. “Why does Thornwild’s Alpha hate the king so much?” It seemed important, and I hoped this time to obtain a real answer. “Bram’s threats seemed almost personal…”
“Savage came mere seconds from killing Trystan before he finally bent the knee.” He shrugged, but I could feel the tension rolling off my guard.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about male pride.
” Everest handed me a strip of meat. “Now eat. It’s nearly nightfall and we need to cross the fields before moonrise. ”
Moonrise.
Before the veil thinned and Selraya’s inexorable pull made monsters out of Fae.