Chapter Thirty-One
Calista
Almost there. I could practically taste the crown and those moon-blessed edicts… I just had to hold out a little longer.
The closer we drew to Frostcrag, the more the world sharpened into ice.
The air no longer just bit, it clawed at my skin.
Wind came down off the inland ridges like it had teeth, and even the trees looked different with their needles frosted in white.
Snow packed in the creases of the land, filling old hoofprints and making every dip a trap.
My breath turned thick in my throat, and my fingers stayed numb in my gloves no matter how often I flexed them.
Every step sent a bright lance of pain through my sore muscles, the ache deepening as the day wore on as if my bones themselves had grown tired of carrying me.
Everest stayed close enough that my sleeve brushed his forearm when the path narrowed.
He did not ask how I felt. I had a feeling he already knew.
We cut inland for safety, then angled back toward the coast when the terrain forced us.
The sea was a constant presence to our right, slate-gray and violent, throwing white water against jagged rock.
The shoreline here was harsher than Hollowcrest’s, all broken ledge and black sand, but it held signs that tightened my stomach all the same.
A charred skiff half buried in snow. Oar blades snapped clean, not splintered by a passing storm. Fishing net floats scattered like bones, their cords hacked rather than torn.
Everest crouched by a patch of sand where the tide had frozen in ripples. His nostrils flared, eyeing the dark smear.
“Pitch,” he muttered.
“Tar,” I corrected, because the word had become too familiar. Nightreef tar. Raider tar. It all smelled the same when it burned.
“Seems old.”
“Old enough to not matter?” I asked.
“Old but not enough to reassure me the raiders aren’t nearby.”
We walked on, scanning the horizon where the sea met the sky. More shapes lingered out there, too far to count and too far to name. Dark marks bobbed along the water that could’ve been fishing vessels or something far worse.
“Do you think it’s Tarrik?” I asked quietly, keeping my eyes forward. Saying the name felt like inviting him closer. “And the Blackwake or random raiders?”
Everest’s gaze tracked the distant line. “I can’t tell.”
His answer was honest, but it didn’t assuage my fears the slightest. For years, I’d been convinced the raiding we’d suffered had been unorganized, chaotic, but to know there was someone behind it, someone with vengeance in his heart changed something.
“Random raiders still kill.” His tone carried the flat certainty of a male who had seen it.
I should have been focused on winning. On surviving the Hunt.
Instead, my thoughts kept drifting north to a fortress of stone and frost where a king sat in a hall full of wolves.
At the image of him in that brutal place, surrounded by Court members who would smile while sharpening knives behind his back.
“They’re creeping closer and if those watchfires are lit along the coast…”
“They’ll be answered,” Everest cut in.
I looked up at him. “But you said yourself that the Conclave is distracted.” And after the cursed rite I’d invoked, surely Savage would be too.
His jaw flexed beneath the mask. “Frostcrag is never too distracted.”
That sounded like denial dressed as pride.
“And Savage?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “If the raiders test the borders while a dozen of his best warriors are chasing a bride prize through the snow…”
Everest’s eyes flicked to me, sharp and dark. “The king can take care of himself.”
“I know that.” I did know. He had proven it in a hundred ways already and still, I didn’t like it. “I’m only saying that even a strong king can be outnumbered.”
“The Savage King doesn’t get outnumbered,” he snapped. Then he went still, like the edge in his voice surprised him.
I blinked, heat flaring low in my belly in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. “Are you…irritated that I’m worried about him?”
His shoulders rose and fell. “No.” The lie was too quick.
I fought a smile and failed. “You are.”
He didn’t answer. He just picked his way over a slick shelf of stone and offered his hand without looking back, as if my feet might betray me if he didn’t.
I took it, letting his warmth swallow my fingers. “You sound jealous.” It was reckless, but the words slipped out anyway.
His grip tightened for one heartbeat. Not enough to hurt, but enough to warn. “Jealousy is for foolish males.”
“And you’re not foolish.” The satisfaction that sparked in my chest was embarrassing. “So it can’t be that.”
His head tipped toward me, and for a moment I could feel his attention like a blade laid carefully against skin. “Watch your footing,” he murmured.
I should have been chastened. Instead, I was oddly pleased to have riled him up like that.
“We’ll move inland for a while to avoid the biting winds.”
Or was it the sight of the approaching raiders he wanted to evade?
We crested a ridge and dropped into a thin stand of pines that smelled like frozen sap. Snow muffled our steps. The world went quiet in the way it only does when the weather is about to turn violent.
Everest slowed, then lifted a fist.
I stopped, heart stuttering and hands inches away from my blades.
Voices carried through the trees, low and urgent. Two females, close enough to hear but far enough not to see.
Everest moved us behind a thick trunk and angled his head, listening.
I recognized one voice at once. Harsh, bright, like flint struck against stone. Rhosyn from Thornwild. And the other, a touch deeper and breathier, with a constant undercurrent of anger. Stormhallow’s Myra.
From the sound of it, they were running nearly parallel to us, which made sense with the throne only two days away. The closer we drew to the crown, the more often we were bound to cross paths with the other daughters.
Everest’s gaze flicked to me, a warning without words. He placed a hand lightly at my back pressing me into the shadows, then eased us closer.
The two females emerged ahead, moving fast along a narrow track stamped into the snow. Rhosyn’s arm was bound with a strip of cloth, stained faintly brown with old blood. Myra’s hair had come loose from its braid, wild strands frozen to her cheeks.
They didn’t see us, and luckily the wind was blowing from the west, carrying our sent out to sea. So we followed, careful and silent. Their voices carried again, clearer now.
“I’m telling you, Pyra is dead,” Rhosyn said, breath steaming in the air. “Ashfen’s hunter found her by the heat spots. He left what was left of her for the gloamthreshers to argue over.”
Myra made a sound of disgust. “Frost take her. She always thought she could outsmart the land.”
“And Lune,” Rhosyn continued, voice dropping, “Gloomheath’s Lune is gone too. Not missing. Dead. Her hunter came limping into a watch path at dawn with blood on his hands and that look in his eyes.”
My stomach tightened. I didn’t know those females, but the words still hit like stones. I invoked the Blood Hunt. It was my fault they were dead.
Myra swore softly. “So their hunters are loose.”
“Yes,” Rhosyn said. “No daughters to protect now so no reason to hold back.”
Everest’s hand pressed harder at my back, a silent insistence that we were done listening. But I couldn’t stop.
“Hadria withdrew,” Rhosyn added, and there was something bitter in her tone, like even admitting it tasted wrong. “Ironcliff’s daughter tore her knee on the ridge. I saw it myself. It was bad, her bone was all wrong. With her hunter dead, she turned south.”
Myra exhaled. “So she’s out for now.”
“Out,” Rhosyn confirmed. “Which means the list is shorter now. Alma. Vessa. Kel. Halla. You. Me. And Hollowcrest.”
Hollowcrest.
Me.
My fingers went cold despite Everest’s warmth.
Myra gave a low laugh. “Halla and Vessa are so far behind they’ll never catch up.”
“Don’t get arrogant,” Rhosyn snapped. “Arrogance is how females die.”
Myra’s voice turned sharp. “And yet you’re right on my heels.”
“Because you’re loud,” Rhosyn shot back. “And because your hunter is five breaths behind you with a knife in his hand.”
My pulse leapt. Everest’s head turned, scanning the trees, the slope, and the wind. It couldn’t only be Stormhallow’s hunter nearby. Others would not be far if those two were this close. Any Court would be thrilled to capture either as a bride and elevate their standing.
We should have slipped away immediately. Instead, my mouth betrayed me with a whisper. “Six other hunters.”
Everest’s eyes narrowed behind the helm. “More, now,” he murmured, a whisper of moonlight glinting across the mask. “Because two have nothing left to guard.”
I swallowed hard. “We need to keep going.”
Everest didn’t answer immediately. His shoulders had gone stiff as he gazed up, his posture tightening as if something inside him was listening to a different sound than the females ahead. The moon.
Then I saw it. A flicker in his eyes. Not the pale blue, steady gaze I’d come to know, but a flash of brilliant silver like moonlight caught in ice.
It was gone in an instant, swallowed by shadow again, and yet my heart stopped all the same. I had seen that flash before.
Not in Everest.
In Savage.
A brief, violent shimmer when his restraint slipped and something older pressed near the surface. His Wolvryn.
My breath caught.
Everest’s fingers curled once, then forced themselves open. His inhale went deeper, slower, as if he was counting.
“What was that?” I whispered, eyes darting between his and the bright moon overhead.
He didn’t look at me. “Nothing.”
It was not nothing.