Chapter 32
Ash
“I’m just saying.” Orion’s voice carries through the dark like he’s trying to personally offend every creature within a mile radius. Or let them know we are here. “If we’re going to die out here, I’d rather die doing something interesting.”
“Define interesting,” Finnian says without looking up from the path.
“Fighting. Fucking.” Orion ticks them off on his fingers. “Anything that isn’t walking in a straight line for six goddamn hours.”
“We’ve been walking for three hours.”
“Time moves slower when you’re bored. That’s science.”
“That is absolutely not science.”
“It’s Orion science. Which is the only kind that matters.”
I keep my eyes on the path ahead because I will not laugh at him. It only encourages him more. The moss still glows faint blue-green, lighting our way through the dark, but it’s dimmer now. Tired, maybe. Or warning us.
It’s hard to tell.
“You know what I miss?” Orion continues, because silence is his mortal enemy. “Punching things.”
“You punched a tree twenty minutes ago,” Kieran says from behind us.
“Trees don’t punch back. Where’s the fun in that?”
“The tree seemed to disagree. It nearly took your hand off.”
“The tree was asking for it. Did you see how it was standing there? Menacingly?”
“It was a tree.”
“A menacing tree.”
Finnian sighs. The sound of a man who has had this exact conversation four hundred times and will have it four hundred more. “Perhaps if you channeled this energy into vigilance instead of arboreal violence—”
“Did you just say arboreal?”
“It means relating to trees.”
“I know what it means. I’m judging you for using it.”
“Someone has to maintain standards of vocabulary.”
“Someone has to get laid.”
“Orion.” Kieran’s voice could freeze fire.
“What? I’m just saying. We’re all thinking it. Weeks of running and fighting and almost dying and I’ve gotten off twice in such a—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll freeze your tongue to the roof of your mouth.”
“Kinky.”
“Orion.”
I should intervene. Should play peacemaker or at least tell them to shut up before they wake something that’s better left sleeping.
But there’s something about their bickering that steadies me. The rhythm of it. The familiarity. These three men, snarking at each other in the dark, and me walking through the middle of it like this is normal.
Like this is home.
Because it is. Orion poking at the guys. Trying to pick fights. Finn entertaining him. And Kieran threatening to end it with more violence.
I really do have a type.
“For the record,” Finnian says, “I could get laid whenever I wanted. I—”
“What, Finn?” I turn and walk backwards. I should not encourage this. “You read a lot. Is it erotica? Do you need me to talk you through it?”
He blushes harder than I’ve ever seen him blush.
“Books,” Orion finishes. “You prioritize books. Over sex. Which is why you’re the way you are.”
“Excuse me, what way am I?”
“Repressed.”
“I am not repressed. I am selective.”
“You’re selectively repressed.”
“That’s not—” Finnian sputters. “That’s not even a coherent criticism.”
“Doesn’t have to be coherent to be true.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
“He’s not repressed.” I wink at Orion. “Far from it.”
“Then we fuck!” Orion claps his hands.
Then the forest goes quiet.
Not peaceful quiet. Not sleeping quiet. Wrong quiet.
I stop walking.
The moss beneath my feet flickers. Dims. Goes dark.
“Ash?” Kieran’s voice is sharp now. All the playful ice gone and replaced with the real thing.
“Something’s wrong.”
The words barely leave my mouth before I feel it. A pressure against my skin. A weight in the air that wasn’t there before.
My body knows before my brain catches up. Legs locking. Breath stopping. The animal part of me that remembers being hunted on savannas before we learned to make fire. That part goes very, very still.
Something is here.
Something that eats things like us.
Orion’s hand finds the small of my back. Not pushing. Just there. “I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I.” Kieran’s shadows pool at his feet, reaching outward, searching. Then they recoil. Snap back to him like they’ve been burned. “My shadows won’t…something’s blocking them.”
“The Crown is...” Finnian presses his fingers to his temples. “I can’t interpret it. Just noise. Static. Like something’s scrambling the signal.”
The forest holds its breath.
No insects. No wind. No rustling in the underbrush.
Just silence, and the dark, and the creeping certainty that we are not alone.
Something flickers in my peripheral vision. White. There and gone.
Don’t look. Don’t acknowledge. Don’t invite.
The rules older than language. Older than fire. Written in the marrow of every creature that ever survived a night in the dark.
I feel it watching me. Its attention presses against my skull like a thumb. It wants me to turn. Wants me to see it fully.
I don’t.
“Move,” I whisper. “Slowly. Don’t run. Keep your eyes ahead. And if you hear anything, ignore it.”
We move.
Four bodies pressed close, feet finding the path by memory more than sight. The moss stays dark. The trees seem closer than before, branches reaching down like fingers.
Orion’s grip tightens on my back. He saw it, too.
“Ash.” Kieran’s voice is barely a breath. “Ahead.”
I look.
It stands in the middle of the path.
At first glance, a deer. White as moonlight. Beautiful in the way that dangerous things are beautiful.
Then I really look.
The proportions are wrong. Legs too long, jointed in places they shouldn’t be. Neck bent at an angle that would snap a real deer’s spine. The head turns toward us with a motion that’s too smooth, too deliberate, like something practicing how necks work.
And the eyes.
Forward-facing. Predator eyes. Set in the skull of something that should be prey.
It blinks.
Sideways.
The membrane slides across those terrible eyes and I watch my own reflection disappear and reappear in the wet shine of them. It’s seeing me. Really seeing me. Not as a queen or a Fae or a threat. As meat.
Then it smiles.
Deer don’t have lips. Don’t have the facial muscles for expression.
This one smiles anyway. Too wide. Too many teeth. Teeth that don’t belong in any herbivore’s mouth.
“Run,” I breathe. Because sometimes the fear strikes hotter than fight.
We run.
Not tactical retreat. Not strategic withdrawal. Pure animal flight, branches whipping our faces, roots catching our feet, the dark alive around us with things that move wrong, things that watch, things that pace us through the trees with patient, terrible hunger.
My thorns flare. Blue-green light stuttering beneath my skin like a dying heartbeat. I reach for the forest, for the wild magic that should answer to my blood, that has always answered—
Bow. Bend. OBEY.
The command hits the trees. They shudder, lean toward me, almost—
Something else pushes back.
Cold. Old. Amused.
The trees straighten. Turn away. The path stays dark.
“It’s not listening,” I gasp. My voice sounds wrong. Small. “Something else is holding the leash.”
“What do you mean not listening?” Orion hauls me over a fallen log. “You’re the fucking wild queen, we are in the wi—”
“I’m aware!”
The forest I was born to rule just chose another master.
White shapes in the trees. More than one now. Five. Seven. I lose count.
They’re not chasing us.
They’re pacing us. Matching our speed. Drifting closer when we slow, falling back when we sprint. Patient. Playful.
Herding us.
“Kieran.” I can barely get the word out. “Can you—”
His shadows lash out at the nearest shape. The darkness reaches, stretches, and passes through empty air like the thing isn’t even there.
“I can’t touch them.” His voice cracks. Kieran’s voice never cracks. “They’re not made of anything I can reach. They’re not—” He swallows. “They might not be real.”
“They feel pretty fucking real,” Orion snarls.
One of them laughs. That broken-instrument sound, like wind through a shattered flute. Like it heard him. Like it thinks he’s funny.
The path keeps twisting. Folding back on itself.
That rock. I’ve seen that rock. That twisted tree with the split trunk. We passed it two minutes ago. Three minutes ago. I don’t know anymore.
“We’re going in circles,” Finnian breathes.
We’re not going anywhere. The forest won’t let us.
Somewhere in the dark, something laughs.
Finnian stumbles. Goes down hard, his knee cracking against a root, and the sound he makes—pain and surprise and terror. I’ve never heard him make that sound.
I grab his arm before he can completely lie on the ground. Yank him upright. Blood runs down his cheek where a branch carved a line deep enough to show white beneath the red.
“I’m fine,” he gasps. He’s not fine. His weight sags against me.
“Keep moving.” I don’t recognize my own voice. “Finnian. Keep. Moving.”
His eyes find mine. Blood running down his face. The Crown flickering at his temples like a dying signal.
He nods. Squares his shoulders. Keeps moving.
That’s my scholar. My impossible, stubborn, brilliant man. I am not losing him in this forest.
Orion crashes through a wall of brush and we follow, thorns tearing at clothes and skin. Blood running down my arms from a dozen small cuts.
My lungs burn. My magic screams against whatever’s blocking it.
And then—
Light.
Distant. Flickering. Warm yellow through the trees.
“There!” Orion doesn’t wait for confirmation. He grabs my wrist and pulls.
We crash through the underbrush. Branches snapping. Breath ragged. The weight of something close behind us—
I stumble out of the tree line and hit the ground hard. Dirt and grass and the smell of woodsmoke.
For a long moment I just breathe. Face pressed to earth that feels blessedly normal. Safe.
Footsteps approach.
“Oh, look at you.”
That voice. I know that voice.
I lift my head.
“Morrigan?” But it’s not her. Not quite.
“Badb.” Orion looks up before letting his head fall back.
Badb walks past us. Toward the forest. Toward the white shapes I can still see hovering at the tree line, watching with their wrong eyes.
“Did the babies scare you?” she coos. Actually coos. Like she’s talking to kittens. “Did you chase the little Fae? Was it fun? Was it?”
One of the creatures makes a sound. Not a deer sound. Something between a purr and a scream.
Badb laughs. “Yes, I know. They look so tasty. But these ones aren’t for eating.” She reaches up and scratches the thing under its horrible chin. “Maybe next time, sweetlings. Go on now. Go play.”
The shapes melt back into the dark.
Gone.
Like they were never there.
Badb turns back to us. Silver eyes glinting in the distant tavern light.
“Well?” She plants her hands on her hips. “Are you going to lie there bleeding all night, or are you coming inside?”
I push myself up onto my knees.
The tavern sits ahead. Warm light spilling from the windows. Smoke curling from the chimney.
“Inside,” I manage. My voice sounds like someone dragged it over broken glass. “Inside sounds really fucking good.”
I don’t look at my hands. They’re shaking and I don’t want to know how badly.
None of them mention it. But Orion’s palm settles against my spine. Kieran’s shadow brushes my ankle like a cat. Finnian’s shoulder presses against mine.
We walk toward the light together.
I don’t look back at the forest. I already know what I’d see.
Some things are better left in the dark.