Chapter 25
After we’ve gone our separate ways to calm down, I go in search of Hunter. We need to talk. But he isn’t in his room, nor is he in the great hall.
Eventually, I find Hunter outside in the training yard, hitting things. The storm has quieted, leaving only the soft shiver of falling flakes over the crates, targets, and straw dummies. It’s surreal to see him here, in the space Tristan and I have used for practice over the last couple of months.
Someone has strung three frozen sandbags from a wooden beam in the middle of the yard. They sway heavily on their ropes like hanged men. Hunter attacks them with a practice sword, as if they’re Fox Soldiers like the ones we met on the battlefield in Ellyll. A knot forms in my stomach.
I don’t announce myself. I stand beneath the long shadow of a ruined arch and watch him work.
Snow gathers in his tousled blond hair and melts at his temples, then trickles down the hard plane of his cheek.
His breath steams in ragged bursts as he twists and strikes with the energy of a man who’s been betrayed. It breaks my heart to see him this way.
After his brush with death, he’s not ready for this much physical activity. His skin still has the pallor of the drowned and he coughs between swings. He strikes, pivots, strikes again. The sandbags jolt on their ropes, creaking, and spitting a dusting of snow with each impact.
Hunter’s grip fails and his sword clatters to the ground, but that doesn’t slow him down. He attacks the sandbags with his fists instead. The first blow lands with a dull thump. He grunts and hits it again, and again. As I watch, his knuckles grow red and raw with the impacts.
I know I should intervene before he hurts himself, but truth be told, I’m afraid. Afraid of hurting him even more by saying the wrong thing. Afraid of chasing him away. But everything is already such a disaster that I doubt it’s possible to make things worse.
One of the ropes frays with each hit, threads popping. Hunter kicks it once, hard, and the rope tears free. The bag crashes to the ground and splits, spilling frozen grit across the snow. Hunter stands over it, chest heaving.
“You should rest,” I say quietly.
Hunter startles and turns. When he sees me, his face grows tense. “Go inside, Sienna. You’ll freeze standing around out here.”
I shrug and step out of the shadows to approach him. “I’ve been cold for months. But a few days ago, you nearly drowned.” The second sandbag turns in a lazy arc, brushing my shoulder as I pass.
“What do you want me to do?” he snaps, the words misting white in the air. “Lie down? Take a nap? Brave men boarded that ship with me. Believed in me. And I—” He breaks off, eyes dark with grief. “I brought them here to die.”
“This won’t bring them back,” I answer softly. “Hurting yourself won’t help.”
He looks past me toward the direction of the roiling gray sea. “I was a fool to follow you.”
“I never asked you to.”
“And you never need to. That’s the whole point, Sienna.”
We stand in the hush of falling snow, the flakes large and fluffy as feathers. I ache for him, for all the ways I’ve hurt him. But we will never get out of this pit of darkness if we can’t speak plainly to one another.
“Talk to me. Please.”
Hunter kicks his fallen sword. It skitters a few feet before landing in a snowbank.
“About what?” His laugh is low and humorless. “How your grandmother is our sworn enemy? How the Wolf and I nearly cut each other to shreds? How I’m here on a fool’s errand and every decision I make seems to end in death?”
“Yes. All of it.”
He drags a weary hand through his damp hair. His shoulders are shaking with exhaustion. When he finally speaks, the anger has cooled to a hard, steady heat.
“I don’t know who I’m more furious with. Your new queen. The Wolf. Your father. Myself.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “Or you.”
The pit in my stomach deepens. “I know. And I deserve it.”
“I should hate you.”
I nod. “You should. But I need you to hear why I’m doing this. Why I’ve sided with Annwyn.”
He looks away and shakes his head in disappointment and disgust.
“Nothing about Annwyn is what we thought.” I step closer, my voice urgent. “This place is not a realm to be conquered. There are fae in the cellars and old magic lingering in every ruin.”
He raises his eyes to study me. To him, the fae are still folklore and fairy tales. But I need him to see how wrong we’ve been. About everything.
“Yes, the people here are …” I search for a polite word. “Thorny.”
Hunter raises a skeptical eyebrow at me.
“But they love this place so fiercely, they’d rather die protecting it than flee to the south.
Gwyllion used to be so much more than this crumbling castle.
I’ve seen the paintings. I’ve read old books about what Annwyn was like two thousand years ago, when the fae and humans lived in peace. It was real, Hunter.”
I search his eyes, trying to make him believe. His eyebrows are drawn together, like he’s not sure what to make of me. But I know this man. I can see the cracks of doubt in his warm brown gaze and in the curve of his mouth.
I reach out and touch his arm. “That’s why the people here still fight, even though they’re worn down to rags. They dream of making Annwyn safe again. Of stopping the endless war.” I look past him to the Spires. “And my father will destroy what’s left of them.”
Hunter chews the inside of his lip for a long moment while he considers my words. “Your father is up to something. He wants to take Annwyn, and it’s more than just a family legacy.” He heaves a weary sigh. “It doesn’t help that he hated your grandmother, and now she sits on a throne.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I swallow hard. My father is like a fox in a henhouse. Nothing is safe until he’s taken his fill. “But, Hunter, Grandmother is dead. I promise you that. The queen may wear her face, but she’s not the same woman.”
He draws a breath and coughs, then leans his arms on one of the sandbags. Snow has gathered along his shoulders and in his hair. “I don’t trust her.”
“And you shouldn’t.” My voice is firm. “She’s no saint. The Dead Queen has ulterior motives, I’m sure of it.” I swallow. “But so do I.”
“Such as?” He turns his head to watch my face.
“We may need her now. But, someday, I will destroy the Dead Queen.”
He studies my face for a long moment before nodding. He knows me as well as I know him. I don’t mince words, and I am not one to threaten lightly. When I promise to do something, I do it.
“So,” he straightens. “You are a basilisk waiting for an opportunity to strike?”
“I can’t let her keep Grandmother’s face for all eternity.”
“No,” he agrees. “She deserved better.”
“She did.” I clear the knot in my throat.
“We’re allies now because we have to be.
Annwyn’s living need the dead to protect them.
At least until we can survive without her.
When it’s over, when the border is safe and my father is dead, I will end her.
” I straighten, meeting his eyes. “Then we’ll give Annwyn back to the living. ”
His gaze flickers. “Does the Wolf know you plan to kill his queen?”
“Tristan knows what I am.” My heart stills. “He knows I’m loyal to no one but myself.”
Something sad crosses Hunter’s face. “You sell yourself short.”
I scoff. “Says the man who I left on a battlefield to die.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I think you pretend to be selfish to hide the hurt in your heart.”
My eyes flicker away from him, too embarrassed to admit that he hit close to the bone.
He isn’t deterred. “You say you can’t trust anyone in this world the way you can trust yourself. But here’s the thing, Sienna.” He leans toward me, meeting my eyes. “You can trust me.”
“I want to.” The words come out in a whisper.
I straighten my spine and face him. “And I need you to trust me now, despite everything that’s passed between us.
We must save Annwyn from my father, Hunter.
There’s more at stake than any of us truly understand.
I can feel it in my bones.” I press my hand to my chest, where my heart beats with certainty.
“I know my father is up to something. I’m sure the Dead Queen is too. And we can’t let either of them win.”
“Why?” His question is so sharp, it takes me aback. “Why bother saving this place?” He gestures toward the crumbling castle. “What’s here that’s truly worth saving? Truly worth risking everything for?”
It’s a valid question.
The world around us is dusted in shades of white, and the silence is all-consuming.
Large, fluffy snowflakes stick to Hunter’s hair, his shoulders, his eyelashes.
It’s … beautiful. The thought surprises me.
For the last couple of months, I’ve hated this place with its frozen landscape and icy people, but somehow, I find my heart has changed.
Hunter watches me as I raise my face to the gray sky. Snowflakes kiss my cheeks as they float all around me, like the gentle caress of a moth’s wing. It’s peaceful.
“All I’ve seen of Annwyn is snow,” I admit. “But as cold and inhospitable as it is, it’s also beautiful.”
Hunter scoffs. “It’s not beautiful.” He turns back to hit another sandbag. “This place is miserable.” He punches. “Cold.” He hits it again. “Dead.” He kicks the sandbag and it swings wildly between us.
“That’s what I used to think too,” I say, almost to myself.
Hunter turns to squint at me. His breath puffs out in bursts of fog. “Used to?”
I pause. Somehow, I’m no longer at odds with this place.
I no longer hate it. Something in my chest tugs, insisting I be honest with myself.
Amid this frozen, stormy landscape, I’ve found that I care about Annwyn.
I admire its fierce loyalty, its wild lore, and the magic that winds through every folktale, every cellar, and every ruined castle corridor.
I care about this land. And I care about its stubborn, headstrong people too.
How they managed to worm their way into my Fox heart, I will never understand. But here we are.