Chapter 2
TWO
ALLERIA
“Brennan?” I whisper-shout his name. “Wil?”
The only reply I get is more rustling. My heart rate picks up. I should stay where I am and wait for them to find me … but the noise is so close.
Placing the arrow back in the quiver, I sling the bow over my shoulder and tie my horse to a tree. Once I’m certain she’s secure, I turn and push through the undergrowth toward the sound.
Brambles snag my sleeves, low branches catch in my hair. Every nerve in my body is pulled taut, but I keep moving.
It’s probably a fox. It’s fine. It’s not a bear or a boar. The fae hunting reserves don’t keep any other wild game on their lands. Anyway, Brennan will come crashing through the trees at any moment now, red-faced and worried, and I’ll feel foolish for being so afraid.
“Brennan? I’m over here.”
Still no answer. Maybe they can’t hear me over the sound of their horses' hooves. Or they don’t want to let the fae know their location.
I push aside a curtain of hanging moss—
And stop, the air stalling in my lungs.
The fae is ten feet away from me.
It’s wrenching its head back and forth, the muscles in its neck and shoulders straining beneath that strange gray-green skin.
It hasn’t noticed me yet, completely focused on trying to get its antlers free from a snarl of branches.
The twelve points are hooked deep in wood and vine, holding it fast. Every movement it makes drives the tines deeper.
Those antlers that looked so magnificent in the enclosure, so perfect for the walls of my bedroom, have become a snare trapping the beast in place.
I don’t know if I make a noise, but it freezes, nostrils flaring as its head lifts slightly, scenting the air.
The world shrinks to just the two of us. The fae tangled and trapped, me with a bow over my shoulder, and a quiver of iron-tipped arrows on my back. My pulse thunders in my ears, nearly drowning out the harsh rasp of the fae’s breathing.
This is it. I’ve found it!
Without the hunting party, I’ve found the quarry myself. And it’s trapped. Helpless. Ten feet away with nowhere to go!
I’m moving before I’ve finished the thought, sliding the bow into my hand and reaching back to pull out an arrow.
I nock it in the bow, and draw the string back to my cheek.
The motion is smooth and confident. I’ve done this a hundred times, both in training with Brennan and on hunting trips for small game.
The bow settles in my grip, and I sight along the shaft, until I find the broad expanse of the fae’s back, aiming for its heart.
My fingers ready for release. The fae turns its head. And I see its face.
In the enclosure, it kept its back to us. I saw its height, its antlers, the peculiar coloring of its skin. I saw the iron collar locked around its throat, and the way it stood so very still, refusing to acknowledge our presence.
What I didn’t see was its face. I didn’t think I needed to. It’s an animal, prey to be hunted. Why would I need to see its face?
But now it’s staring at me. And there’s nothing animal-like about it.
Its features are all angles and edges, with cheekbones that are high and sharp, like blades beneath skin that catches the dim light strangely, almost luminous in the forest gloom.
Its jaw is cut at angles that seem wrong somehow compared with a human’s, though I can’t quite pinpoint why.
Its eyes are narrowed and almond-shaped, the pale gold of autumn wheat.
They catch what little light filters through the canopy and throw it back like a cat’s eyes in darkness.
Those gold eyes meet mine, and the intelligence in them roots me to the spot. This isn’t the dull awareness of an animal. There’s no panic, confusion, or fear in them. It’s looking at me the way a general surveys a battlefield.
Calculating, assessing, taking my measure and finding me wanting.
My grip on the bow wavers. The string digs into my fingertips. Tension burns in my shoulder, my arms, the muscles of my back. My body knows what to do. I’ve trained for this. Draw, aim, and loose. But my fingers won’t obey me. They’re frozen on the string, and I can’t make them let go.
Why can’t I let go?
Shoot!
The thought echoes through my head, shrill and demanding.
Shoot it! That’s what you came here for. This is your kill. It’s your trophy. Your birthday gift. Father chose those antlers for you. He’s waiting to hear the story. Just loose the damn arrow. Just—
The fae’s lip curls back from its teeth.
“Pathetic human.”
The words slam into me. My stomach drops. The forest tilts around me, and for a dizzy, lurching moment, I’m certain I’m going to fall, that my legs will give out, and I’ll crumple to the ground.
It spoke.
The fae spoke.
Two words. Two words that dripped with contempt, cold fury, and disgust. Its voice was low and rough, and the accent was strange—the vowels drawn too long, the consonants bitten off hard.
But animals don’t speak.
The trophies on the walls at Huntsman Dell—they didn’t speak. Lord Vessen’s stories, the creatures in those stories didn’t speak. Lady Harwick’s tusks, the ones she’s so proud of, that creature didn’t speak.
They’re animals. Everyone says so. Dangerous animals, magical animals, but animals. They can’t—
The fae lunges sideways.
Wood explodes. Vines snap like whips. The antlers tear free in a shower of splinters and broken branches. I stumble backward, my bow coming up, hands shaking so badly I can barely hold the arrow in place.
Not that it matters.
Two strides. That’s all it takes. Two strides and it’s on me so fast I don’t even have the chance to run.
One heartbeat it’s tangled in the branches, the next it’s right there, towering over me, so close I can see the individual strands of its matted hair, the fine grain of its skin, and the cold fury blazing in those strange eyes.
Long fingers lock around my wrist and twist. Pain shoots up my arm, and I cry out.
My bow clatters to the forest floor, and before I can stop it, the fae rips the leather strap holding my quiver in place like it’s nothing.
It falls to the ground, arrows spilling free.
I open my mouth to scream, and its other hand clamps over my face.
Fingers seal my lips. A palm crushes against my nose. The fae spins me around and hauls me back against its chest, one arm locking around my ribs, lifting me until my boots leave the ground. Its body is hard against my back, all bone and muscle with no give at all.
I can’t breathe!
Panic explodes through me. I claw at the hand over my face. I kick backward. The arm around my stomach tightens. My lungs scream for air. Black spots swim at the edge of my vision, crowding inward.
I’m going to die. Right here. Right now. Suffocated by the thing I came here to kill.
The hand over my face shifts slightly. Just enough to let air rush in through my nose. I suck it down in desperate, shuddering gasps.
Then the world spins as the fae tosses me over its shoulder and starts to move.
It carries me through the forest like I weigh nothing at all.
I grab for a tree trunk as we pass close to it. My fingers scrape bark, find a grip, and the fae rips me away so hard my arm feels like it’s tearing from the shoulder socket. My fingers are torn free, taking skin with them, and I’m dragged onward.
I try to scream. I put everything I have into it, filling my lungs with as much air as I can. And then my stomach bounces hard against its shoulder, winding me, and the sound that escapes is pathetic, a muffled whimper.
This is how I die.
The thought cuts through my panic with a horrible clarity. I’m going to be dragged into the forest by this thing I came to kill, and no one will ever find my body. My father will wait for me at dinner tonight, and I won’t come.
I thrash wildly, fueled by grief and terror, and a desperate animal need to survive. I throw my elbow back, aiming for the back of its head, and I’m rewarded with a grunt—the first sound it’s made since those two words—but its grip doesn’t loosen. I rake my nails down its arm, tearing at its skin.
It stops moving.
Hope flares in my chest—
It spins me around and slams my back into a tree.
The impact drives every whisper of air from my lungs.
My spine hits bark. My head snaps back. The world goes white, then black, then white again, and when my vision finally clears, I’m pinned against the trunk with the fae’s hand clamped over my mouth again, my feet dangling uselessly in the air, and its face inches from mine.
That burning gaze bores into me.
Up close, its face is even more alien. The angles are too sharp, the proportions subtly wrong in ways that make my eyes want to slide away.
Its skin is smooth, with faint patterns beneath the surface—whorls and spirals like the grain of ancient wood or the veins of a leaf.
The iron collar around its throat is thick and dark, so tight that it’s rubbed the flesh beneath it until it’s raw and weeping.
But it’s the expression on its face that stops my heart.
Hatred. Pure, burning, bottomless hatred. I can see it in the set of its jaw, the flare of its nostrils, the way its eyes have narrowed to slits. Every line of its body is rigid with it.
It wants to kill me. Not just hurt me. Kill me. It wants to make me suffer, make me scream, and it’s taking every ounce of its will to hold back.
Part of my brain, the ancient, wordless part that knows what a predator looks like, is screaming at me to stop moving. Stop fighting. Play dead. Do whatever it takes to survive.
The fae stares at me for a long, terrible moment. My heart slams against my ribs. My breathing is loud in the silence of the forest. Tears spill from my eyes.
I don’t want to die.
Then the fae’s head turns and tilts slightly. A second later, I hear it too. Voices, distant but unmistakable. My name, carried on the air.
“Alleria!”