Chapter 13 #2
The best death a Hunter can have is a quick one in battle, he lectured me more than a few times.
“I’m sorry it was not quick, Father,” I tell his chilling body.
From within his nearby belongings, I withdraw several vials, as my own are all filled now. I shove the fur he handed me into one of the largest ones. I have clues, evidence, and I will find some answers after this ghastly task is completed.
New, he said. The beast is new. That thought frightens me.
If he declared it new, that means it’s not in the journals, that it’s new to us.
This, combined with the influx of faeries in Regina Centrum, has me ill at ease.
Are these two things connected? Are they simply all misbehaving or murderous because he was old and I am not intimidating?
I carve a circle into the earth around my dead father, and now, I let the tears race freely. He was never the father I wanted, or even the father I needed, but he was my mentor in learning to be the Hunter. He died seeking clues to help us—to help me now—stop the beast.
I crouch over his body and extend my arm, so my palm rests just over the spill of his guts.
“Teine,” I whisper, not fully expecting the fire to come to me.
It does, though, a spark that pulls from the very blood of my body with a slash of pain.
It shudders under my skin like a drop of hot coal in my palm, and then I exhale, and the fire washes over my father, charring him as I watch his last earthly moments.
Everything recognizable is lost to flame and smoke, and I cannot back away. I have always stepped back when he set a body to blaze, not wanting to draw the ash and smoke of a dead man into my lungs. That option is no more. I cough at the bitter taste assailing my nose, flooding my mouth and throat.
All his lessons tangle and entwine in my mind like a litany as I burn the body of the last Hunter.
My own body cramps yet again, and I shudder from the force of it.
I’m not sure what’s happening to me, but I know that I have only three options—go to Maudite Castle to ask for the dowager duchess’ aid, ride toward Fleuriste and Maria’s house of physicians, or ride to the city where my mother and sister wait.
Regina Centrum is not the closest, but I have never felt at ease around Isabeau’s mother.
I stumble to my horse, shove all my samples into my bag, and urge the already tired steed to take me to the city.
I try to watch the woods, and although I could swear I see several creatures watching me, I cannot tell what they are—or whether my eyes deceive me.
Sweat streams from my every pore, and chills ripple over me like a stormy tide.
I ride as quickly as I can, and I am grateful when I approach the housing block. A man, unknown to me but wearing the uniform of a soldier, sees me and asks, “Where are you headed?”
I see his uniform with relief. “Fleuriste House.”
He gives me a look of sympathy and says, “Hunter.”
“Yes,” I whisper, telling a stranger what no one should yet know. “Need to go home.”
The next clear thought is that several soldiers are escorting me to the door, and then we are inside. I don’t know what words they exchange with my family. A fever sweeps over me.
I am pulled into a torrent of pain and fire as if my own body were the one blazing in Brimmond Wood.
My next clear thought as I am dragged out of my fever by clenching pain is that I have fought no creatures. I have no wounds or injuries. Did the toxins from the sword infect me? My bones ache as if sleep has broken something deep in the meat and marrow of my . . . everything. No limb is untouched.
I am alone.
I swing my feet to the floor and try to stand. Each step is akin to hundreds of stitching needles driving into the soft skin of my feet. I drop to my knees and begin to crawl to the door.
“Need to check on Mother. Ry. Get up, Hunter,” I lecture myself, seeking my father’s voice in my memories, wanting to hear him ordering me to “get up.”
Yet each draw of air brings agony. My lungs expand inside my chest as if they’re too big for my chest bones to cradle. In that instant, I am certain the edges of my bones carve slices into the thin bag that is my lungs.
“Gab?” My twin stands there. “Did something get a bite of you?”
Rylan’s face fills with worry. Her hand comes down on my brow, brushing my hair back and feeling the fever that rages in me.
“No bites. Something wrong, though,” I whisper.
Rylan half lifts me from the floor and back into my cocoon of blankets. “Do you need Clarissa?”
“Nothing to stitch or mend.”
Rylan leaves the room in a whoosh of silk and storm.
Minutes or hours later, Mother comes to see me.
Bowls of ice chips and cloth strips to cool the fever, needles and sinew to stitch whatever ails me, cleaning liquid to burn away poison, and of course, a small set of knives and forceps to remove anything lodged in the skin.
She ought to summon a healer, but I am grateful for her presence all the same. My heart hurts as much as my body.
“Father . . .” I can’t make my mouth say the words. I choke on them. I am not ready, not to tell her and not to be Hunter.
“He’s gone, then.” The countess looks calmer than I can bear.
“I’m so sorry. His last words were of you.”
“Liar,” Mother says with a fond smile. “His last words were undoubtedly about whatever he hunted.”
I look to the side, hating that she knows that, hating that I must lie, hating him for dying.
“This pain will end,” the countess says as she wipes fever sweats away gently. “Come morning . . .” She looks to the window, tracking the moon. “Perhaps evening.”
I can’t force more words through my now painfully dry lips. I do try, but all that comes out is a rasping noise. Morning seems so far away, and my mind swirls with questions. The Hunter journals said only that my body would change. It mentioned nothing of this debilitating pain.
Neither did Father.
Mother smiles sadly. “Your father’s pain was unbearable. He used to say that only dying would hurt this much.” She folds her hands together into a tight fist. “Did it? His death?”
“No,” I lie. “Not awful.”
Mother takes a clean cloth and wets it in a different bowl, one free of sweat. She squeezes the cool clean water into my mouth; droplets slip between my now cracked lips and land on my swollen tongue. It does little to ease the fire burning in my body, but I drink it down as best I can.
“It will end,” Mother says again. “Your body is healing your scars and injuries and making you strong enough to fulfill your duties.”
Tears I don’t want to spill leak from my eyes. The scars inside won’t heal, not now or ever. I watched my father die, and I burned him to ashes. Nothing can erase that scar, not even this magic. I am monstrous already.
“You are the head of the house now, Gabrielle Fleuriste. The new Hunter.” Mother looks at me as if there is pride in becoming more imperiled, as if being this is a good thing.
Once she leaves the room, a flicker of a thought comes to me: At least I have not passed this burden on to anyone else. I am well and truly the Hunter. This pain and duty are all mine.