Chapter 1
Chapter
One
AVELINE
Tears blurred my vision as I ran through the trees. Twigs and branches, left leafless and harsh by winter’s chill, slashed at my cheeks, chin, and forehead.
I clenched my jaw and wiped the blood on my sleeve.
The gamekeeper and his baying hounds were far enough behind that they might not hear my harsh breathing, but I couldn’t hide my scent or the sound of my bare feet crunching through dead leaves.
The dogs were closing the distance with terrifying speed.
Without any spells or potions, I had no way to prevent them from tracking me—not even a handful of herbs that might confuse them.
I’d simply seen a chance to run and taken it.
I wouldn’t make it to nearby Rivertown or even out of these woods before the hounds found me, but I refused to be captured without a fight.
They might tear me limb from limb, or simply corner me until the gamekeeper came to tie me up, throw me over his shoulder, and take me back to Forbright Manor.
Which fate would be worse? Probably the latter.
Death by hounds would be horrible, but my chains at the manor would certainly lead to a longer, more lingering, more miserable end.
You will not cry, Aveline D’Corsay, I told myself, even as dread and exhaustion made my chest tight and my breathing raspy.
Hot blood trickled down my chin. I’d bitten my lip too hard trying not to make a sound.
You will not cry now, or when the dogs find you, or if the gamekeeper drags you back to Forbright like a freshly slaughtered deer. You will be strong like your mother, so when you see her in the next world you can stand proud and say you were never defeated.
No daughter of Mariane D’Corsay, healer and priestess, would cry because of a man or in the teeth of the beasts he owned.
This deep in the forest, no lights guided my way.
Worse, I didn’t know this area well, other than the village of Rivertown lay to the south and east. My instincts drove me to run in the direction of the moon.
A day shy of fullness, it shone through the barren branches, bright and cold in a nearly cloudless sky.
I let it be my beacon away from the manor.
Any other destination would be better. A village, a hut, a cave…
I would accept any of these as a refuge.
Even the river, in whose icy, fast-moving waters I could choose my own end.
The cold had stolen all sensation from my feet and hands. My numb foot caught on something unseen. I fell hard and hit my chest and face on fallen branches.
The forest went silent and still. No baying of hounds. No whistle of wind. No rustle of leaves. Not even my own ragged breaths because all the air had been knocked from my lungs.
Icy terror rolled through my body from my feet to the top of my head.
Nobles the gamekeeper had trained his hounds to go quiet as they closed in on their quarry. Sir Henry Forbright told me so just two nights ago, and he was quite proud of it.
“They course in full throat, naturally,” he’d said, toasting me with a goblet of wine as I sat at the dining table to his right, tied hand and foot to a chair.
“But I told Nobles I want prey to hear and feel the cold silence of death just before the hounds get them. Deer or rabbit, fox or girl, they’ll know death has come by the quiet. ”
I swallowed a sob and scrambled to stand.
Moonlight revealed my bare feet to be bloody messes. Just as well I couldn’t feel them. I might lose them to infection or frostbite if I lived. If I didn’t live, well, the condition of my feet hardly mattered.
I took off again, limping on my twisted ankle. With this injury, whatever slim chance I’d had of escape had dwindled to nothing.
Ahead, to the left, I caught sight of an enormous dark shape that wasn’t trees. Some building made of stone, decaying with age.
I could all but feel the hot breath of the hounds on my back. I veered toward the dark pile of fallen stones without any thought of what I might do if or when I reached it. I simply wanted to run toward something instead of away.
Emerging into the clearing, I found a crumbling bridge and beyond it, ruins of a manor now little more than a pile of broken stone and a single tower.
My gut contracted and I stumbled, nearly falling.
Oh, Goddess—please, no. My desperate run had not brought me to Rivertown, but instead to the cursed ground of Geedhollow, ruins of an old manor built at an ancient crossroads.
Unmarked grave of a practitioner of the darkest of dark arts who, according to legend, had been slain by his own unholy beasts.
A den of monsters who slept deep in the ruins by day and hunted and ate travelers and foolish thrill-seekers by night.
I had seen it only once before during a walk with my mother, from a distance and in daylight.
Twigs and branches snapped behind me. Icy fingers of dread ran down my spine. I glanced over my shoulder. A half-dozen shadows flashed through the trees, heading directly for me.
The hounds. Oh, Goddess, the hounds. Nobles would be right behind them.
With no choice but to run ahead, I gathered my skirts, bit my bloody lip to block out the pain in my ankle, and limped for the ruins.
I made it only a few steps before an enormous weight landed on my back. The hound sank its teeth into my shoulder as it took me to the ground.
With a shriek, I landed on something painfully hard but brittle enough to snap and break under the combined weight of my body and that of the dog. The sound was a kind of meaty crunch. My chin hit something, and liquid—stinking, wet, and cold—splattered my face. My eyes flew open.
I was face-to-bloody-face with a broken skull, its jaw hanging by shreds of tattered flesh. I’d landed on a human carcass—or what remained of one. Another corpse lay a few feet away, this one mostly intact except something had torn out its belly. Horror stole the breath from my lungs.
The dog shook my shoulder in his jaws. Others sank their teeth into my legs. The rest circled me, growling, waiting for their chance to bite and tear. I screamed, the sound high-pitched and full of agony. The bloody skull’s mouth gaped as if it screamed along with me.
Goddess, please don’t let this poor soul be the last sight I see before I cross the Veil…
Something enormous and snarling slammed into us. The lead hound was suddenly gone, its teeth ripped out of my shoulder. Hot blood sprayed my face—mine or the dog’s, I didn’t know. The hound’s yelp cut off abruptly.
Another impact, and the dogs chewing on my legs were gone too. Yelps, growls, and snarls filled the cold air, along with the stomach-churning sound of breaking bones and ripping flesh. And in the distance, a man shouted in alarm, his words indistinct.
Dizziness threatened to sweep me away. With a groan, I tried to push myself up, intending to get to my knees and then maybe to my feet, but my arms and legs didn’t seem to want to obey.
Trembling violently and sick to my stomach, I managed to roll off the corpse. I ended up on my side, where I could finally see what was happening around me.
My breathless scream died in my throat.
Forbright’s prized hounds lay in pieces, scattered across the grass around two enormous black beasts more than twice the size of oxen. The last two dogs died in the monsters’ jaws, their crushed bodies flung aside with chilling snarls that sounded like they came from the bowels of Hell itself.
One beast took off into the forest in pursuit of Nobles, whose shadowy form was crashing through the undergrowth back in the direction of Forbright Manor. The other turned to stare at me, its eyes glowing bright red.
My chest heaved with shallow, ragged breaths. A sudden ringing in my ears nearly drowned out all other sounds. Darkness closed in, but I fought to stay awake.
I didn’t want to be eaten. I didn’t want my bones to lie on this bloody frozen ground until I decayed to nothing, like these unfortunate men who’d ventured into Geedhollow for unknown reasons and become a meal.
For a moment, just a moment, I wished I’d walked past that unlocked window and waited for another chance. Maybe one would have come tomorrow, or next week, or a month or a year from today. Or never. But I wouldn’t be here, bloody and alone, staring into the eyes of a hellbeast.
Hard on the heels of that thought came a stab of shame.
I wouldn’t regret my decision, even now.
I would not. Courage had driven me from the manor tonight, not cowardice or foolhardiness.
The courage that had coursed through my mother’s veins ran through mine as well, and no woman of our line would succumb to fear—especially at the end.
The creature returned from the forest at a thundering gallop that reverberated through the frozen ground. From its jaws, it dropped something heavy and round that rolled to a stop at the other’s feet: Nobles’s head, his expression frozen in terror.
The hounds’ deaths sickened me. They had been trained from birth to hunt and kill on command and had never known anything else. It was not their fault, but they had killed people before and could not be cured of their bloodlust.
Nobles, on the other hand, could burn for all eternity. My only regret was that he seemed to have died quickly.
The monsters approached, heads lowered and nostrils flaring, their thick black fur matted with blood.
While their heads and faces reminded me most of wolves, they were not lupine.
Their scythe-like incisors and sharp teeth appeared designed for tearing flesh and their claws were terrifyingly long, like those of a bear or wolverine.
Strangest of all, each had a pair of long, curled horns reminiscent of rams. Each horn bore a gold ring.
One of the horns on the beast closest to me had been broken off halfway.
My breaths gurgled in my chest and my side ached. I might have broken ribs. And surely my legs were mangled, and my shoulder too, and frostbite might have claimed my feet and hands. I certainly couldn’t feel them anymore.
Even so, I didn’t give up, and I didn’t look away, even as the monster with the broken horn came within biting distance of my face. Its hot breath smelled of viscera.
The beasts wore thick gold chains around their massive necks. From each dangled a round amulet made from black stone carved with runes I didn’t recognize. Were these monsters the familiars of some sorcerer or wizard?
With a numb, bloody hand, I reached up to clutch my own amulet before remembering my mother’s precious gift to me still lay in Forbright’s fireplace where he’d thrown it. My arm fell back to my side.
The monster with a broken horn crouched beside me. I raised my chin and met the creature’s glowing gaze.
“I hope you choke on me,” I rasped. “And may my flesh leave you hungrier than you were when you found me.”
The other beast raised an enormous paw larger than my head. Gore dripped from its claws. I braced for a killing blow.
Instead, all my pain receded and soft warmth washed over me, banishing the cold. I exhaled in a long sigh. Thank you, Goddess. She had granted me a gentle death, at least. Soon I would be at my mother’s side, at peace, and beyond Henry Forbright’s reach forever.
I slipped away into the dark.