Chapter 1 #2
Errol gave her curl a short tug and then mercifully released her. “Mother and I agreed,” he said with that broad smile that, for some reason, still made her skin crawl. “When we return back home, you will marry me.”
Fawn held back a laugh. Then she held back a look of horror as she realized he wasn’t joking.
“What?”
“It is tradition,” he said. “Like your hair.”
“And old tradition,” Fawn said, her mind whirling. “And that’s for older brothers! You’re two years younger.”
“Well, I’m the only brother he has,” Errol said. His smile dimmed. “Had. Anyhow, Mother agrees it is for the best. You have no one else. And you should stay in the family.”
Stay in the family. Fawn wanted to shudder. Like she was some sort of heirloom.
Seconds passed. Errol looked disappointed, and Fawn realized that he had been expecting her to be happy about this. Which just went to show how little he knew her. Fawn’s head was not full of marital bliss; it was plagued with Errol’s soft flesh tearing under her teeth and nails.
“I see you need time,” Errol said in a rare moment of grace. He stepped back into the tree line, watching her as he walked. “Come back soon. We are finished with dinner.”
Right, Fawn thought. Can’t have those pots go un-scrubbed.
She nodded stiffly, waiting until he vanished into the trees before letting her disgusted expression play out on her face.
Nobody actually followed that tradition unless they wanted to, or unless the woman would be destitute otherwise.
Fawn had expected to make a living at the washhouse or work as a cleaner.
Maybe they did want her to stay in the family.
But Fawn had always felt like they viewed her as a nuisance who didn’t play her role correctly.
The only other option made her grimace: Errol actually wanted her.
It sounded impossible. He could have any woman in town—if they ignored his mean streak.
Which, thanks to his high status and good looks, they absolutely would. So why her?
The night darkened. Fawn looked up at the moon, which cast just enough light to see, then back down at the Skullstalker footprints.
She hadn’t told Errol everything. The hunters who passed through the other day said they had seen the Skullstalker at a nearby clearing for the past few nights.
It had been so immersed in something that it had not noticed their presence, and the hunters had been glad for that.
Especially after Fawn told them that he liked to chase his victims.
That had been Renly’s mistake. He tried to run. The Skullstalker had chased him down and ripped into him like a gleeful cat tearing into a mouse.
Fawn reached into her coat and gripped her knife.
The idea was ridiculous. Suicidal, even.
But she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t just let herself get carted back home to be married off to Renly’s younger brother without doing something about Renly’s killer.
She wanted, just for once, to give herself over to her violent fantasies.
Not for her own satisfaction, of course.
For justice. At least, that was what she told herself.
She took off into the woods, ignoring the path Errol had trodden on his way back to the camp. The clearing wasn’t far; she had picked berries in it mere hours ago.
After a few minutes, she broke into a sprint. Quiet and fast, only stopping when she neared the clearing and realized how hard she was panting.
She crouched low, creeping through the trees.
Then she saw him.
A Skullstalker, his distinctive skull mask tipped up toward a single shaft of moonlight shining into the center of the clearing. He was standing in its white glow, his arms out as if he was absorbing it. Maybe he was. Fawn knew so little of these monsters.
Fawn’s heart stuttered as she crept closer. The Skullstalker was smaller than she remembered, so small that he might even pass for a massive human. That is, if he didn’t have the features of a monster: the claws and horns and fangs, and those horrible purple eyes.
Well. Eye. One of his eyes was scarred over from what the Circle had done to him when they captured him.
And one of his horns was broken. He had healed unfortunately fast in the past few weeks.
The scars from the malblossom rope scored his body with white lines instead of the angry dark blue she would expect.
His tail was unaffected, sweeping the forest floor.
Fawn winced. She had been hoping he was more injured than this so he was easier to take down. But she was too close now.
Then, like a miracle: the Skullstalker closed his one remaining eye and started mumbling, his horrible skull face still tilted up into the shaft of moonlight.
Fawn wanted to cheer. She brought her knife out of her coat sleeve. She approached the Skullstalker’s bad side, no eye to see her coming. If he just kept his eye closed, if he kept mumbling…
Fawn ran as silently as she could. No battle cry, like she had done when she attacked him over her husband's corpse, so wild with rage she couldn’t hold it in. She raised her knife and leapt, aiming the blade at his spinal column—
—only for the Skullstalker to step neatly aside.
Fawn flailed. She slammed into the ground with both feet, agony exploding in her ankle so intensely that she cried out, her knife clattering out of her hand.
The Skullstalker loomed over her, blocking the moonlight.
Fawn gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t go down without a fight. Maybe if she got lucky, she would take out his other eye before he ate her.
The Skullstalker leaned in. Fawn prepared herself to drive her thumbs into that purple, glowing eye.
But before she could, the Skullstalker spoke one word in an excited voice that had been plaguing her nightmares:
“Wife!”