Chapter 7
Belle
Silas had become a man possessed, and there was nothing to do but obey.
We disappeared into the forest after the wounded beast, moving as quickly as we dared. The trees closed in, their trunks dark against the faint streams of mist trailing over the ground. The air had grown colder, moist and heavy.
I knelt and touched a smear of blood on a leaf. Fresh and still warm. I adjusted my small pack and glanced at the trail ahead. Were we the hunters or the prey?
As if in answer to my thoughts, a familiar howl rose ahead, a feral cry ringing with pain. The men froze, weapons raised.
“Gods, was that the beast?” Marcel asked.
“Well, it wasn’t a wolf,” Gregoire whispered. “That’s for sure.”
My skin prickled as an answering howl echoed in the distance, then one after the other, five more calls, each from a different location, farther away.
I shifted uneasily. “Do they hunt in packs?”
No one responded.
If they hunted like wolves, then we were as good as dead.
“Perhaps we turn back,” Gregoire suggested.
“Shut the fuck up and keep tracking the thing,” Silas growled.
The shadows lengthened as the sun fell, and we delved deeper into the eerie woods.
Silas drove us on, bloodlust in his eyes.
When the beast’s blood stopped falling and Silas lost the trail, the lead fell to Gregoire, and then, when it grew faint, to me.
I drew on everything Siggy had taught me, looking for scuffs, snapped branches, tufts of fur too high to be any other type of creature.
The truth quickly became apparent: I could track the beast, but it was far from the only one out here.
The hours wore on, and the chance of being caught in the woods overnight neared certainty.
Suddenly, I stopped short, my neck prickling.
“What is it?” Silas snapped.
“It’s too quiet.” No rustling of rodents. No chatter of roosting birds overhead. Something was watching us.
Varos angled his head, his nostrils flaring. “It’s here—the wounded one.”
Silas moved like a ghost over the forest floor, then paused, motioning for Varos and the men to spread out and flank him.
Ahead, the trees thinned, and a slope led down to a clearing bordered by a towering spire of exposed bedrock that offered a view over the forest to the west. The ground had grown steeper, the roots gnarled enough to twist an ankle.
I slowly unslung my bow when branches rustled overhead, and then an enormous shadow dropped to the ground beside me.
I leapt sideways as the wounded beast lunged. My foot caught, and I lost my balance and wheeled backward, arms flying wide. Claws grazed my arm but didn’t find purchase as I tumbled down the slope, my bow slipping from my grasp.
Shouts erupted above, and my body slammed into a thicket of heather before I came to rest on top of my pack.
Untangling myself from its straps, I scrambled to all fours, my gaze landing on the tear marks along my sleeve.
My skin stung, and the bruises from earlier ached, but miraculously, I wasn’t bleeding.
An inch closer, and it could’ve laid bare my bone or ripped my arm clean out of the socket.
Marcel called for me from above, and Gregoire screamed somewhere close.
My gods, what were we thinking coming after this thing?
I crawled behind a tree trunk, my breath ragged. I was shit out of luck. My bow was partway up the hill, and my quiver had been crushed in the fall. Of the arrows that remained, only one hadn’t snapped.
My gaze swept over the clearing, landing on a narrow crevice at the base of the rock outcrop, too small for the beast. Could we fit inside?
The beast’s roar echoed through the clearing like a thunderclap, and a jarring thud crashed into the ground feet away.
I turned to face it as Silas and Varos charged down the slope toward me, their swords flashing in the setting sun, blows unrelenting.
Jerking away from me, the beast lashed out and struck Silas, its deadly claws slicing into his chest like steel through silk.
No.
A musket cracked from somewhere nearby, but the bullet went wide.
Crimson gashes painted Silas’s torn tunic, but the immortal struck back with lightning speed and plunged a short sword into the nightmare’s side. It bellowed with fury, but instead of slowing it down, each strike sent it further into rage.
It then caught Silas around the waist and hurled him twenty feet into the clearing.
Varos split, leaving me alone on the hillside. Where the hell was he going?
I darted out of cover and sprinted to where my bow lay, my arms pumping as I leapt over ferns. Please, Fates, don’t let it be broken.
Falling to one knee, I scooped it and nocked my last arrow. A hollow scream rang out, then was silenced. I turned and froze.
The beast crouched at the edge of the clearing, looming over Silas’s lifeless body with the captain’s head in its hand. It had been torn free, and blood seeped into the damp earth.
I choked on a sob. Varos was nowhere in sight, while Marcel was upslope, frantically ramming a lead ball down the barrel of his musket.
The beast stood to its full height and tipped its head back, releasing a piercing roar that shook me to my core. It tossed Silas’s head aside and turned its furious gaze in my direction. Then it snarled and bounded forward on four legs, heading straight for me.
“Belle, run!” Marcel’s voice sounded distant.
There was no time to run. I either killed this beast or it killed me.
My hands trembled, but as soon as my fingertips touched the coarse texture of the string, the tremors stilled, and my focus became tethered to the beast’s head.
I snapped the bow up and drew, the sinew humming under the strain. Ice churned through my veins. “Fly true, little hunter.”
The bowstring sang. The beast’s head jerked back as the arrow sank deep into the socket of its left eye.
Momentum carried it forward, its dead claws raking the earth. It fell two strides from my feet, shaking the ground one last time.
I lowered the bow. My body shook with cold. Slowly, the sounds of the woods returned. The creaking of branches, the rustling of leaves. Footsteps. Shouts.
Someone pulled me into a crushing hug. “My Gods, Belle. Are you hurt?”
Marcel.
When I didn’t respond, he held me at arm’s length and inspected me from head to toe.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the monster lying before me.
“Belle?” he asked.
Slipping free of him, I crouched over the beast and gripped the blood-slicked shaft of the protruding arrow. A quick yank freed it with a wet hiss. Gagging, I wiped it on the heather, then slid it into my quiver. It was still my last one. My lucky arrow.
“I’ve never seen a shot like that,” Marcel whispered as Gregoire joined us.
I shook my head. “Neither have I.”
Varos, blood matted across his face and chest, drifted into the clearing where Silas’s body lay. His eyes locked on me in silent accusation, as if I’d struck down his captain myself.
Marcel pressed a waterskin toward me. “Drink this.”
I gulped down the sweet, cool water, then dried my lips with the back of my wrist, trying to get control of the tremors still shaking through my body. We were alive.
Drawing in a slow breath, I shuffled across the slope and into the heather to retrieve my fallen backpack. The sooner we got out of these woods, the better.
A shadow swept over the ground, and I froze, snapping my head up to peer into the orange-hued sky. Not a cloud in sight. Dread trickled down my spine. “Did anyone see that?”
“See what?” Gregoire asked.
“We should find cover,” I said, hurrying back to the group. “It’s getting dark.”
“I vote we run back to Harrowick,” Gregoire said. “The beast is dead. No way it can warn the king now.”
“Fucking good-for-nothing coward,” Varos snapped.
Marcel shook his head. “It’s not safe—not in these woods. We’ll lose the path in the dark. We should take up a position in the clearing. At least we’ll see them coming if they return.”
We’d die in the woods or die in the open just the same. I pointed to the crevice in the outcrop. “Maybe we could all fit in there. If more beasts come, I doubt—”
A rush of wind hit me from behind, and I stumbled.
“What was that?” Marcel asked, spinning about.
Vast wings filled the sky above. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.
The word left me before I could stop it. “Dragon.”
The beast soared overhead, its tail whipping in its wake.
It spread its wings wide, then slammed down in the clearing on four powerful legs, sending a tremor through the ground that threw me to my hands and knees.
A trail of spines ran down the beast’s muscular neck, flashes of red among the gunmetal scales.
Every movement was deliberate and graceful, as if the air itself made way.
“Stay down,” Marcel whispered, pressing on my shoulder.
The dragon flicked its gaze to Silas’s mutilated body. Tucking its powerful wings, it stepped forward and ground the captain under its foot, then prowled toward the fallen beast lying at the base of the slope, each footfall heavy and deliberate, yet as agile as a mountain lion.
It flipped the beast over with a single talon, and a low, agonized snarl slipped between its bared teeth.
The beasts hadn’t only been calling to each other—they’d been calling to the dragon.
Varos bolted for the trees with immortal speed, leaving us. The giant swung its head, tracking his movement like a bird of prey. Varos was steps from the cover of the woods when a stream of flames billowed from the dragon’s mouth, enveloping the immortal in a bonfire of heat and light.
I muffled my scream with my palm as his blackened body crumpled to the ground, little left but a pile of sizzling flesh and bones.
He was dead. Silas was dead. We were alone.
“Run for the outcrop,” Marcel ordered. “I’ll distract it.” Before I could protest, he lunged for his musket and raced up to the edge of the slope in the opposite direction, shouting and waving his arms.
“Marcel,” I choked out, horror taking me.