Hunted (Curse of the Immortals #2)

Chapter 1

I was Artemis, Guardian of the Forbidden Forest and protector of familiars. I was feared. I was ruthless. I’d always been the hunter, yet here I was, fleeing for my life. Hunted.

The forest blurred around me as I ran, my boots slapping the worn path through the forest. Smoke still clung to my lungs, heavy and acrid. My throat burned with every breath, and my eyes stung with tears I refused to shed.

King Oberon believed I was responsible for killing pureblood galeons.

Hunters had infiltrated Perga, shot poisoned arrows at me and set fire to my home.

And now I was on the run with Ace, Orion and my wolf familiar, Nala, while the galeon murderer was still at large, free to frame me for more deaths.

The forest closed in around me, dense with smoke and shadows. I continued to run with my lungs on fire and every breath dragging ash and fear deeper into my chest.

Ace carried Nala in his arms, her body limp, breathing shallow, her thick fur matted.

She hadn’t been wounded, but the smoke had nearly suffocated her before Ace got her out of my burning cabin.

Her silver fur, usually sleek and bright, was now dulled by ash.

I reached out to touch her, just to feel the rise and fall of her chest. She was still breathing.

Orion flanked me, silent and grim. Neither man had spoken since we fled town.

I glanced back. Somewhere behind us, my cabin crackled in the blaze.

We hadn’t had time to think. Just fight, kill, and run.

Smoke threaded through the forest, chasing us into the heart of the woods, but it was the absence of pursuit that unnerved me more.

We’d killed the men who’d come for us. But in my experience, silence meant danger loomed in the shadows.

It wasn’t just the king’s men intent on seeing me dead, after all. A group of rogue hunters had also tried to kill me, but their reasons were more mysterious.

Mysterious as in I had no phaaning clue what I had done to piss them off.

Ace gritted his teeth as he adjusted Nala's weight. She was on the smaller side for a gray wolf, but that didn’t make her light. His arms had to be screaming, but he didn’t slow. Not after we’d escaped and not after we’d learned my own twin brother had connections to the rogue hunters.

Paul was the centre of this.

My brother had snuck me and Ace into the coroner’s office so we could learn more about the immortal galeons turning up dead.

When the coroner had arrived unexpectedly, Ace and I hid and Paul swooped in and offered to take the coroner out for a drink.

He offered a distraction, a borrowed hour, so Ace and I could escape unnoticed.

We weren’t there looking for trouble, after all. We only wanted answers.

But what we found only raised more questions.

Everything about the immortals’ deaths pointed to something impossible. Me.

With the unique iridescent feathers for fletching, the arrows used in the murders were undeniably mine. Worse, the same poison that had nearly destroyed my familiar's bond to me and still left her struggling, had been found on the arrows.

Ace and I barely made it out of the Death House when the guards came crashing down the hall. We thought we’d succeeded. We’d slipped in and out with no one the wiser of our identities. But by the time we returned to Perga, everything had changed.

Queen Titania told us the king suspected me in the murders.

The coroner was dead.

And my brother was missing.

No word. No note. No sign of where Paul had gone or why he hadn’t come back. Just silence, and a growing sense that we’d stepped into something far darker than we’d realized.

We went to his cabin hoping to pick up his trail or at least some clue of what had happened. Only, it wasn’t empty. It was full of stolen goods from Perga’s winter storage and cloth eerily familiar to that used by the rogue hunters. Before we could process what it all meant, we were attacked.

These were the king’s men, not the rogues, but whomever was behind this elaborate plot wasn’t just tying up loose ends. They were hunting us now.

And I was exhausted.

Orion’s stride shortened, his gaze flicking back through the trees. He slowed down, his brows angling down, his eyes squinting. I knew that look. It was his stubborn face.

“No,” I snapped, grabbing his arm. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I have to,” he said, voice low but steady. He shook his arm free from my grasp. He kept jogging beside me, but his pace slowed even more. “If anyone survived that fire, they’ll head for Wast. Someone has to stop that message from getting back to the king.”

“Rye—”

“I’m not letting them catch you, Em. You’re being framed for killing galeons. The king wants your head. You need to run. I don’t.”

I hated that he was right, and I hated the tightening in my chest that came with it.

Ace said nothing, but the muscle in his jaw ticked as he kept pace, still cradling Nala in his arms like she was something precious to him. Maybe she was.

She meant everything to me.

“Don’t do this, Rye. More hunters could be right behind us.” Whether they’d be rogue hunters or the king’s men was a question I didn’t want answered right now. Or ever.

“And we need the balm,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

The balm? Why would we need the—

Right.

I’d been shot with another laced arrow before we escaped. The last time this happened, I’d come the closest to dying in my immortal life. Orion’s healing balm had provided enough relief for my supernatural healing to catch up.

My arm still stung from the arrow wound, but none of the effects of the poison were setting in like last time. And I knew why.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“It was a poisoned arrow,” the healer said.

“I’m fine,” I repeated. I didn’t want to reveal what I’d figured out.

I couldn’t voice the truth—so terrible and shocking, it carried an automatic death sentence if anyone else figured out I was a pureblood phaanon.

Ace had probably already pieced it together, because nothing slipped by him, but would Orion figure it out?

Did he still think I was a pureblood galeon?

“Let me see.” Orion caught up and grabbed my arm. We both stopped running.

Ace snarled but also stopped. He set Nala on the ground gently and shook out his arms. Sweat dripped from his face and his hair stuck to his forehead.

“You’re right.” Orion pressed around the wound, his brow furrowed. “Maybe the arrow wasn’t poisoned.”

“Told you.” I shouldn’t sound so smug, not when I knew the true reason the arrow had no effect.

“I’m still going back,” Orion said.

“Why? Those hunters were burning down cabins and attacking us. Some of them may have survived. They may have seen you leave with us.”

His set jaw told me he heard my words but wasn’t listening.

“It’s dangerous,” I said.

He shook his head and looked back in the direction we’d come from.

“That’s exactly why I should return. Like I said before, I might have a chance to intercept any surviving hunters before they alert the king of your survival, and there could be injured townspeople.

I can’t help anyone by running away with you. ”

“Ry—”

“I’m a healer, Emi. I don’t leave the wounded behind.” He looked over and nodded at Ace. “Take care of her.”

Pffft. I could take care of myself, thank you very much. I bit down on my annoyance and attempted a smile.

Ace chose that moment to glance in my direction. His gaze snagged on my mouth, and he smirked. Nothing got by him.

“I’ll try to find you guys once I figure out a way to help Nala,” Orion said.

Before I could say anything else to point out the stupidity of returning to a town that was just attacked, Orion took off, jogging back the way we’d come.

Dread settled over my shoulders. The path Orion had taken stared back at me while the birds darted among the tree branches overhead. He was making a big mistake.

“Such a phaaning Boy Scout,” Ace muttered.

“What does that even mean?” I’d never heard that expression before.

“Did you learn nothing in school?” Ace asked. “Boy Scouts were a group of overly, well-behaved boys.”

“I was schooled on the streets, Ace,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes as if trying to figure out whether I spoke the truth, but he knew I did.

He’d been with me when I confronted Marcus from the orphanage.

He knew about my awful past. My twin brother and I had been dumped on an orphanage’s doorstep as babies, but the establishment hadn’t been a kind place to grow up.

Once we had enough of the verbal and physical abuse, we left and survived on the streets.

That was when I discovered my inability to die and when Queen Titania found us.

“And I highly doubt history contains any group of boys that could accurately be described as overly well-behaved,” I continued.

“You’re so judgemental.”

“Am I wrong?” I remembered all the shenanigans Ace and my brother got up to when we were all younger.

Ace shook his head before kneeling to pick up Nala. Instead of carrying her in his arms again, he slowly adjusted his hold so she lay across his shoulders. She didn’t make a sound.

A painful, invisible band of pressure tightened around my chest.

If Orion wanted to be stubborn and return to danger, that was his choice. He was a grown man. The most important thing right now was Nala, and she couldn’t heal if we were constantly under attack. Ace started running again, and I hurried to catch up.

We ran until the air scraped my throat and my muscles screamed. We ran until my lungs burned and my limbs grew shaky and weak. We ran until I couldn’t run anymore.

I admitted defeat and stopped to suck in air. “Ace.”

He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. Our gazes locked and he slowed to a stop.

“Is she still breathing?” I asked. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t feel my bond with her, and it made my skin crawl. I stepped forward and rested my hand on her side. Her chest expanded a little.