Chapter 5
FIVE
ALLERIA
The first few times I fall, I try to catch myself, and get my feet back under me before he hauls me upright.
Now, I just let it happen. I let my knees buckle, my body pitch forward.
He yanks me up by the arm without breaking stride.
My shoulder screams every time. The joint grinds in its socket, tendons stretching past what they were meant to hold, and the pain shoots all the way down to my fingertips.
But fighting takes energy I don’t have anymore.
It’s easier to be dragged.
The cut on my palm won’t stop bleeding. Every time I think it’s finally clotting, I trip, my fingers curl, and the wound tears open again. I’m losing too much blood, and I don’t know why because it’s such a small wound. It drips down my fingers, leaving a trail behind us that anyone could follow.
Anyone except the people looking for me.
There’s a lightness in my head, a weakness in my limbs that has nothing to do with the exhaustion pulling me down.
I can still feel his mouth on my palm. The heat of his lips. The rough, wet drag of his tongue through my blood and the way the sensation spread up my arm and sank into places it had no right to touch.
The way my body responded to it. My back arching toward him. The sounds I made.
The memory keeps rising and every time it does, my stomach turns over and shame crawls up my throat. I shove it down. It comes back. I shove it down again.
Morning light filters through the canopy in pale, watery shafts. Yesterday, at this time, I was in my bedchamber, laughing with Nella. I was excited and happy, counting down the hours until the hunt.
Yesterday I turned twenty-one.
Today I don’t know if I’ll live to see twenty-two.
He hasn’t looked at me since we left the hollow.
Not once. I might as well be a sack of grain he’s hauling to market.
But even with me hindering him, he moves through the forest like he belongs to it.
His bare feet find solid ground where mine find only roots and loose stones.
Every few minutes, his head turns, scanning the trees.
The forest floor rises and falls beneath my stumbling feet. My ribs grind together with every breath—shallow, careful breaths because anything deeper sends pain lancing through my chest. I’ve started timing my inhales to my footsteps, searching for a rhythm that doesn’t make me want to scream.
It’s not working.
Twice more I go down hard, knees slamming into the earth. Both times, he drags me up without stopping or turning, without any sign that I exist at all. The second time a sound escapes me, but he doesn’t react. He keeps walking with one hand locked around my arm.
I could be dying, and I don’t think he’d notice … or care.
My vision grays out. The trees blur together, trunks smearing into shadows, and I have to blink hard to bring the world back into focus. Blood loss, hunger, and the fear that’s been eating me alive since yesterday, are burning through the reserves I have left.
But people must be looking for me.
I hold onto that thought. Wrap my mind around it and cling. Brennan and Wil won’t leave until they find me. They’ll find the hollow, and the broken collar. They’ll find the trail we must be leaving.
They will find me.
They have to.
Then, as though my desperation has summoned it, a horn breaks the silence.
The sound is long and clear, and echoes through the trees. A note that signals a search, not a hunt. I know that sound. I’ve heard it before during small game hunts on my father’s lands.
My heart slams against my broken ribs so hard the pain makes me gasp.
Another horn answers the first from further away. Then another, fainter still. Three horns. A coordinated search. Multiple parties working through the forest.
They’re looking for me.
A dog barks somewhere—that eager, excited sound that means it’s caught a scent. Men’s voices follow, too far away to make out words, but close enough to hear.
“They’re looking for me.” I don’t mean to say it out loud and it hurts to speak. “They’re going to find me, and then they will kill you.”
He stops.
The sudden halt sends me sprawling forward, and his grip on my arm tightens, fingers digging into the bruises he’s already left.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, choking back the cry that wants to escape.
His head turns toward the sounds and tilts slightly. A predator scenting prey.
The dog barks again. Closer now.
Hope surges through me so hard my knees nearly buckle.
Brennan. It has to be Brennan out there.
He won’t give up until he finds me. When I was seven and got lost in the palace gardens, he searched for me for hours until he found me asleep under a hedge.
He carried me back to my room without waking me, then sat in the chair by my door until morning.
He’s out there right now. Looking for me. Calling my name.
The dog barks again, and it’s followed by a man’s voice telling it to hold.
They’re so close. So close I could shout and they’d hear me. So close I could—
I draw breath into my lungs, ignoring the pain, pulling in enough air to scream.
He moves.
One moment his hand is around my arm, the next it’s clamped over my mouth. His other arm locks around my ribs, and he hauls me off my feet. My scream dies against his palm. I thrash, kicking at empty air, and his grip tightens until pain whites out everything.
For a moment, there’s nothing but agony. Red and black pulsing behind my eyes. The taste of blood floods my mouth. I think I might be screaming, but I can’t hear it. I can’t feel anything except the fire in my chest and the iron band of his arm crushing my ribs.
When I can see again, I’m on my knees behind a massive oak tree. His body is pressed against my back, one hand still sealed over my mouth, and his arm still wrapped around my ribs.
I can’t move. Every inhale pushes the broken bones of my ribs against his forearm, sending fresh waves of agony through me. But through the pain, I hear voices, and this time I can pick out individual words.
“—blood on this branch. And the ground’s torn up. Something fell here. See the handprint?”
Wil! That’s Wil’s voice. The low, careful tone he uses when he’s tracking. Wil, who taught me how to read bent grass and broken twigs when I was twelve. Who showed me how to see the story the forest tells.
He’s reading the trail right now.
“What about the fae?” I think that voice is the huntmaster, Cowen.
“Aye, less often. It knows how to cover its tracks. But hers are here. She’s still alive.”
Tears burn my eyes.
I’m right here. I’m right here, Wil. Behind a tree. Look. Please. Please look.
“We keep searching until we find her.” Brennan’s voice cuts through the others, hard as iron. “We bring her home. Understood?”
A chorus of voices agrees with him. The dog barks again.
I try to scream, to force sound past the hand over my mouth. My jaw works, my throat strains, and what comes out is nothing. A muffled whine that dies against his palm.
From somewhere deep within, I find a hidden reserve of energy and bite him. My teeth find the fleshy part of his palm, and I bear down as hard as I can.
He hisses, then his lips brush my ear.
“Call out,” he murmurs, “and they die first.” His voice is low and rough.
He’s not even making a threat. There’s no menace in his voice, no anger. It’s a flat statement of fact.
If I scream, he will kill them.
I go still.
The dog barks again.
I could do it. I could bite harder, thrash harder, and make enough noise to draw them in this direction. Brennan would come running, sword drawn, ready to fight for my freedom.
And then he would die.
The men out there have swords and bows and dogs, and none of it would matter. He’d cut through them like a scythe through wheat. I’d have to watch Brennan and Wil fall. He’d make me watch all of them die, one by one.
Then, at the end, I’d still be here. His captive, with their blood on my hands.
The choice isn’t to scream or stay silent.
The choice is their lives or my rescue.
I close my eyes. Tears spill down my cheeks and pool against his hand. My whole body is shaking with pain, grief, and a rage so deep I can feel it in my bones.
But I don’t make a sound.
“This way,” someone calls. “Trail leads west.”
West. Away from us.
“You’re sure?” Wil doesn’t sound certain, the tracks he’s been following must be telling him a different story.
“Dog’s got something. Come on.”
The footsteps move away.
No. No, don’t go. Please don’t go. I’m right here. I’m right here.
But I don’t move or try to make a sound. I remain kneeling in the dirt, with tears running down my face and listen to my only chance of rescue walk away from me.
As they go, they talk about me, worrying about whether I’m hurt, and which direction to try next. But underneath it, I can hear what they’re really saying.
They think I’m already dead. Finding me alive would be a miracle they don’t quite believe in.
The fae doesn’t move from where we’re crouched behind the oak. My knees go numb. Hunger cramps come in waves, my stomach twisting around nothing. His body is warm against my back, and I hate that some part of me notices … that I’m grateful for the heat even while I’m screaming inside.
Until I hear Brennan call my name again.
Just once. “Alleria!”
I want to answer so badly it hurts, and my throat opens around a scream that would bring him running. I want to tell him I’m here, I’m alive. The words pile up in my throat, beat against the hand over my mouth, and die there.
I can’t reach him. I can’t reach anyone. I can’t do anything except kneel here and listen, knowing that I’m choosing this. I’m choosing silence. I’m choosing their lives over my potential freedom.
I hate him for it. I hate him for making me choose.
Eventually the sounds fade. The dog’s barks grow distant, the voices thin out and disappear. We stay there until the last echo dies, and there’s only the sound of our breathing. Then he loosens his grip.