Chapter 2 #2
Brennan. It’s Brennan’s voice. I’d know it anywhere.
I’ve heard it my whole life, barking orders at the guards, scolding me for sneaking extra sugar lumps to the horses, praising my aim when I finally hit the center of a target.
Brennan, who taught me to ride before I could read.
Brennan, who held me while I cried the night my mother died because my father was too lost in his grief to notice mine.
He's looking for me. He’s close by.
Hope surges through me, so sharp it’s almost painful. If I can make a sound—just one sound—he’ll hear me. He’ll come. He’ll—
The fae’s eyes snap back to mine, and the warning in them is absolute.
Don’t.
I scream anyway. The sound that escapes is nothing. Less than nothing. A muffled whimper that dies against the fae’s palm.
“Alleria!” Brennan’s voice is closer.
I’m here!
The words are trapped behind the fae’s hand, trapped in my throat, trapped in my chest where they beat against my ribs like a caged bird.
I’m right here. Please. Please! I’m here!
Tears spill down my cheeks, hot against the fae’s cold fingers. I kick out again, wild and desperate, and connect with nothing. I try to twist my head free. Its grip only tightens, sharp nails digging into my jaw until the pain makes my eyes water even more.
“Alleria? Can you hear me?”
Yes. Yes. I can hear you. Please don’t stop. Please keep calling. Please—
“She can’t have gone far.” Wil’s voice joins Brennan’s. “Spread out. Her horse won’t have run for long.”
The fae goes utterly still, and its lips move in a soundless whisper. The voices fade, growing distant, moving away.
“Alleria?”
Fainter.
“Alleria, where are you?”
Fainter still … then nothing.
The fae waits, head still cocked, listening to make sure they’re gone. Then it peels me off the tree and starts moving again.
I don’t know how much time passes. The light shifts from twilight to something darker, the shadows between the trees pressing close. The air grows colder and damper.
I need to keep fighting. I can’t give up.
I go limp, letting my full weight drag against the fae’s grip. It adjusts its hold and keeps moving. I twist and writhe, trying to slip free. It adjusts the way I’m positioned over its shoulder. I hook my foot around a tree trunk. It drags me loose without breaking stride.
I twist and rake my nails down its face. It catches my wrist and squeezes. The fine bones grind together. Pain lances up my arm. I whimper. The pressure eases, but it doesn’t let go until I stop moving.
I don’t try that again.
The fae hasn’t spoken again since those two words in the clearing.
Pathetic human.
I keep waiting for it to say something else, but it just keeps carrying me through the forest.
Did I imagine it? Did I imagine those words?
Was it just the adrenaline of the moment? Fear or shock? My mind playing tricks on me?
No. No, I heard it. I know I did.
But fae don’t speak. They can’t speak any more than a hound or a fox can speak. No one has ever mentioned speech. No one has ever suggested they can talk.
That face, though. Those eyes, looking at me with such cold contempt. The curl of its lip before it spoke.
I don’t know what this thing is. But it’s not what the stories said it is.
The light is almost gone when the fae finally stops.
We’re in a hollow, ringed by trees whose gnarled branches weave together overhead like the vaulted ceiling of a palace.
The fae releases me, and I slide down from its shoulder and hit the ground hard, too exhausted to catch myself. Damp earth presses against my cheek as I lie there gasping and shaking.
Everything hurts.
My wrist throbs where it squeezed me, a deep grinding ache that pulses with every heartbeat.
My ribs scream with every breath. My face burns where its fingernails dug into my cheek.
When I run my tongue over my teeth, I can taste blood.
My shoulder feels wrenched half out of the socket.
My fingers sting where I tore the skin trying to hold on to the trees.
Get up.
The thought comes from far away, muffled by pain, exhaustion, and terror.
Get up and run.
I push myself up on trembling arms. My muscles shake and my vision swims. When it finally clears, I find the fae standing between me and the only path out of the hollow.
The antlers spread above its head like a crown of bone.
Its chest rises and falls evenly, not winded from the race through the forest at all, while I can barely draw a breath.
It watches me with that unblinking stare. Patient. Predatory. Waiting to see what I’ll do.
I think about Brennan, Wil, and Nella, out there in the forest, searching for me.
I think about running.
I think about screaming.
But I’ve seen how fast this thing moves. I’ve felt how strong it is. I know with a cold, sick certainty that if I run, it will catch me. If I scream, it will silence me. And if I fight, it will break me.
This morning, I woke up excited.
I put on my hunting clothes and kissed my father’s cheek and climbed into a carriage, thinking about trophies and glory, and the story I’d tell at dinner.
Now I’m lying in the dirt, bruised and bleeding and utterly alone, and I finally understand.
I was never the hunter.
I am the prey.