Chapter 3
Belle
My breath fogged in the predawn chill as porters rushed in and out of Marcel’s warehouse, loading our wagons with bales of wool, casks of ice wine and salt, and small crates of precious amber mined from the hills.
I couldn’t believe we were leaving. That I was leaving.
I’d fought hard for it. Marcel, Cassius, Ella—they’d all said no, but I’d worn them down. My sister was the hardest. When she’d finally agreed to let me leave, her sad smile had cost me something I hadn’t expected to pay.
My feet were eager to be moving. Three weeks had passed since the attack on the farm, and the beasts had returned twice, each time pushing farther into the eastern side of the valley—closer to home. The sooner we got on the road, the sooner I could return with answers.
I repositioned my bow and quiver as one of the porters whisked away my small bag of clothes and books, raising his eyebrows at the weight as he heaved it into my wagon.
It was mostly books. Papa had brought them home from his journeys, and I treasured them more than anything I owned—save perhaps the hunting knife at my belt, a twin to Ella’s.
Hoofbeats echoed on the cobbles as three immortals rode around the corner, regarding us with disdain, their expressions as cold as granite. Marcel waved me over and nodded to their captain. “This is Lord Silas. He’ll command our escort.”
The male had silver-streaked hair and high cheekbones that gave his expression an almost cruel character. His black leather armor was polished to a mirror sheen, the silver clasps along his chest and shoulders catching the faint light like trophies.
“I don’t know why the king burdened me with this task,” he said coolly as he looked down at me. “But I’ll see it done.”
He spurred his horse forward to rejoin his men. Typical bloodsucker. A part of me was glad the sun burned their eyes.
Unfortunately, we needed them.
While the immortals Cassius had sent showed me nothing but contempt, the company’s huntsman was another story.
With dark, wavy hair, broad shoulders, and a square jaw, he had a pair of muskets slung over his shoulder and a pack the size of a boar.
He cornered me against the side of a wagon within moments of arriving.
“So, you’re what all the fuss is about.” He swept up my hand and pressed his lips to my skin.
“I’m Gregoire, the company’s huntsman and guide.
It’s a pleasure to be traveling with one so beautiful. ”
“Belle,” I said, extracting my hand from his.
His smile broadened. “You’re a splendid ornament to our expedition. Do you always dress as a man, or will you delight us with more womanly attire?”
I liked dresses—just not for riding, hunting, or anything practical. For that, I preferred a snug set of men’s britches and a vest.
I stepped close, looking up to meet his smile with my own. “I’m not an ornament, huntsman. I can read the earth and follow spoor, and I’ve guided hunts for the noble houses.” I unslung my bow in case he’d missed it. “I also shoot pretty well, if you intend to test me.”
He crossed his arms, flexing deliberately. “You’re a pretty girl, but hunting is men’s work, and I shoot a man’s weapon.” He inclined his head toward the muskets slung over his shoulder. “They say I’m the best shot in the kingdom.”
“What makes it a man’s weapon?” I asked, brows raised. “That it requires no touch or finesse? Or that all you have to do is press the trigger and pray?”
“My, you have a wicked tongue.” He glanced at Marcel, then leaned in, voice low. “I’ll tell you what. Since you seem to be keen, I’ll let you help dress my kills. It could be a fine chance to get to know each other.”
My stomach swam. “I’ll pass.”
“Well, then, ornament it is.” Grinning, he dumped his kit into an unsuspecting porter’s arms and walked to mount his chestnut gelding.
Marcel wandered over, stroking his bushy gray beard as he chuckled to himself. “Don’t worry, Belle. I’ve worked with Gregoire for years. He talks a lot, but he grows on you.”
He wouldn’t.
There were eight of us in total. Gregoire and I rode on horseback behind Captain Silas and his two men, Varos and Ardyn. Marcel drove one wagon, a hired hand the other, with a pair of boisterous porters riding at the rear.
Wagons heavily laden, we departed shortly after dawn. Ella joined us and rode as far as the border of the Bloodvale. The road north stretched between a pair of ancient stone watchtowers before carving its way over the saddle joining a pair of snow-dusted mountains.
As the others waited for us to say our goodbyes, Ella pulled me into a long embrace. “I wish you would change your mind.”
I pressed her to me, committing every detail to memory. The sound of her voice, the scent of her hair. “This is my chance to matter.”
“You do matter,” she whispered. “And you can make a difference here.”
“How?” I held her at arm’s length. “My sister wants me to stay, but I think the queen knows what’s best for the kingdom.”
Her look was pleading, trained from youth to drive straight to my heart. “I’m both, Belle. I can’t just be one or the other. It’s not easy letting you go.”
“It’s not easy going.” I gave my sister a sad smile and squeezed her hands. “I love you, but whatever my fate is, it’s not here in the Bloodvale.”
The certainty was as real as the warmth of Ella’s magic against my skin. There was something waiting for me out there, and I’d hunt it down.
She nodded, eyes misting. “Be safe.”
“We have three immortals with us, and we’re going around the cursed woods, not through it.”
Ella looked toward the mountains. “I think the curse is spreading. I don’t know how to describe it, but I can feel it. It’s like the trees are weeping.” She glanced back at me, her expression suddenly haunted, eyes wide and distant. “You have no idea what the screams of trees are like.”
The hairs on my neck rose. “Don’t worry. We’ll stay away.”
“Promise me you’ll come home,” she whispered, eyes pleading. “I need you to come home.”
Unlike Papa.
That part she didn’t have to say. His final goodbye had been carved into both of us.
“I promise.” I hugged her one last time, then turned my back on the person who mattered most to me in the whole world and the only home I’d ever known.
We wound into the mountains, more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. Snow-dusted peaks, fields of tiny white and purple flowers, pines, birch, aspen. The slopes blazed yellow, green, and red.
The borders of the Bloodvale had been closed my entire life. Merchants traveled under royal writ, but the rest of us stayed put. Leaving had always been a dream—the kind you stop believing in.
Now I was free.
We camped in the chilly mountains that night, reaching the crest of the saddle the following day. The road descended the mountainside into a vast forest that stretched as far as I could see.
I guided my horse closer to the saddle’s edge, sweeping my gaze across the sea of trees.
The colors of fall had already started to separate the broadleaves from the pines, but the farther they were from the road, the more they faded.
No clear line, just a gradual surrender to shadow and gloom.
A deepening darkness, despite the cloudless sky.
The cursed woods. A dark blight in the heart of the forest.
A ripple moved through the treetops far below—not wind, not quite. Dozens of birds burst from the canopy, their raucous screams echoing across the distance in a panicked frenzy. My horse nickered and shuffled backward.
It was like something ancient and dark had lifted its head, daring us to come closer.
I turned my horse back to join the others, and we began our descent.
Two weeks later.
Stars filled the dark sky above us, dimmed slightly by the light of the cookfire.
Marcel sat by the crackling flame, updating his ledgers in its soft orange glow while the porters quietly joked among themselves.
I dropped my pack to the ground, then lowered myself gingerly onto the log beside him, hiding a grimace. After two weeks on the road, my thighs stung and my backside ached. I’d come to hate being in the saddle, and my mare certainly hated me—for what reason, I couldn’t fathom.
Half a dozen towns, and I had nothing.
Every village we passed was surrounded by earthworks and high palisades erected to keep the beasts away. Livestock were locked behind the town walls or quartered in the lower levels of the houses. The villagers wore haunted expressions, and when I inquired about the beasts, they drew away.
The truth was clear: they survived the beasts by cowering in fear.
I kept asking anyway, but the questions were hollow, the answers already known.
I unwound the old, tattered grip from my bow and began tightly rewrapping it, just to give my fingers something to do.
I’d left my books in the wagon. I’d read each of them twice already and didn’t have the heart to begin again.
When the bow was done, I could sharpen my arrows. It would be distraction enough.
“What kind of hunter won’t skin their own kills?” Gregoire grumbled from the corner of the camp as he slit the skin around the rabbit’s hind legs with his broad hunting knife. There was a wet tear as he yanked the skin forward, stripping it like a glove.
My stomach reeled, and I locked my eyes on the fire. “You’re the huntsman. It’s your job. I can’t help it if I’m the only one who caught anything today.”
“I was stalking a deer,” he muttered. “I’m sick of rabbit.”
I stripped the grip off the bow and began again. “There haven’t been deer for a week.”
The forest had changed subtly as we’d wound our way north. The fall leaves had lost their vibrance, and a dull gloom hung between the trees that lined the road. Their shadows seemed to always reach toward us in defiance of the sun.
I put my bow aside and stared at the crackling fire, trying to focus on anything but the sound of Gregoire dressing the meat.
“What a fucking waste of time,” Ardyn muttered as Varos relieved him on the watch. “We’re soldiers, not nursemaids.”
My jaw tensed. The bloodsuckers weren’t subtle about their displeasure and didn’t care who heard. I hated that they were the only reason I was able to sleep on nights like these when our little caravan was stopped between towns.
I looked up wearily at Marcel. “What’s the next village?”
He flashed me a soft smile, then adjusted his spectacles and traded his ledgers for his map. “We’ll hit a fork in the road in a day or so. Then we’ll head east to Abervine.”
I moved closer to peer over his arm. “What’s west?”
He gave me half the map to hold, spreading it flat between us, and tapped a town. “Harrowick. It’s too close to where the beasts range.”
I raised my brows. “How close? Within the cursed woods itself? They could know something.”
My eyes traced the dashed lines that had been penciled in along the perimeter of the woods. The limits of safe travel. They’d been redrawn many times as rumors of the beasts’ movements spread. It was precariously close to the road now and hadn’t been updated for a decade.
“It’s too close,” Marcel said, rolling up his map. “Silas will never agree to go that way, and frankly, neither will I. Our profit lies to the east.” He sat back. “We’ll find answers for you, just not in Harrowick.”
I nodded. I’d stopped believing that miles ago.
“Didn’t you find a charm in Brindlehollow?” he asked.
I released a weak laugh, then flipped open the top of my pack and pulled out the talisman I’d purchased, passing it to him. It was a boar’s tooth, carved with strange symbols and bound in a jumble of sticks, clay, and twine. “The villagers hang them by their doors or over cradles.”
He turned the tusk over in his hands. “Do these runes mean anything?”
I shrugged. “The old woman who sold it to me claims it’s a spell to keep the beasts away. She said that no one who’s bought one has ever been attacked.”
“Probably because they’ve never left the town’s palisade.” Marcel chuckled, passing it back to me.
“My thoughts exactly.”
And yet, I’d still paid two silvers for it. Practically a fortune in these parts.
I quietly traced the runes with my fingers as Marcel turned back to his ledger. I’d spent enough time around Ella and Castle Silverthorn to know what magic felt like—a faint tingle at the edge of sensation. The charm was dead, just a tooth and twine.
The people out here didn’t have answers. They hid. They deluded themselves, just like I was doing.
I shoved myself to my feet and trudged over to Marcel’s wagon, climbing up on the wheel to tie the charm to the corner of the roof.
The woods were quiet beyond the edge of the campfire, the silence almost a presence. I waited for a moment, listening, then headed back into the light, glad for the talisman swaying from the roof.