20. The Game | Wilder
The hood blocked the light, but not the smoke that had him gasping for air.
His feet tangled beneath him, and he was practically dragged down three flights of stairs.
The hands beneath his arms chafed his flesh, but he bit down his complaints.
Maelys was here.
He was being rescued.
Relief soothed the burn in his chest.
“Just a bit more,” Oron ground out. His panting breaths drowned out Wilder’s grunt of surprise.
Who else had come to his aid?
“Can you ride?” Ridge whispered.
The pain in Wilder’s head evaporated at the sound of his friend’s concerned voice.
“I can manage.”
Their steps grew louder as they thundered against wooden floors, and then a shrill, whining creak had his teeth on edge as a door was pried open.
Fresh, night-kissed air brushed against his exposed hands and the tears in his tunic. The hood covering his head was yanked off, and Wilder blinked.
He didn’t immediately recognize where they stood, but when he turned and took in the wall behind him and the nondescript wooden door, he realized it was part of the original castle that had been built into the hill.
The smoke shifted to a light grey instead of pitch black.
There had been an explosion.
“How?” he whispered more to himself as he shook his head.
A body collided against his, knocking the breath from his lungs. Maelys’ golden-brown hair covered his nose and eyes as she pressed herself against him.
“I’m so—so relieved,” she cried, squeezing him tightly.
Wilder couldn’t hold her back. His hands were trapped between them.
So he did the next best thing and pressed his cheek against the top of her head.
“I can’t believe you all pulled off something like that.” He breathed her in. “Thank you.”
Ridge clapped Wilder on the shoulder as Maelys pulled away.
“We nicked some weapons off ruffians on our patrols. Said they got them from human alchemists,” he chuckled. “They called it dragon’s fire. I thought they were being hyperbolic, but it worked like a charm.”
Oron grunted behind him as a ring of keys clinked together.
“We’ll have those off you in no time,” he muttered, glaring at the shackles that still bound Wilder’s wrists.
“Would you hurry it up?” Dust complained. “I’m sure they’ve gotten the fires controlled by now.” By the lighter smoke, it appeared they had.
A horse whinnied nearby, and Maelys whispered something he couldn’t make out.
“We need to move,” she hissed. “The King knows you’re gone.”
There was a clicking sound and then a clatter as the shackles fell to the grass.
Wilder rubbed at his wrists. It was an instant relief when he could move his arms.
Ridge pressed a sword into his hand.
“Queen Aine stole this,” he chuckled. “Said you would probably need it.”
It was Wilder’s sword.
The heirloom blade passed down for centuries.
Dust and Oron shoved Wilder towards the nearest horse that Ridge waited beside.
“I got it,” Wilder grumbled as Ridge hesitated.
Wilder was a bit clumsy getting into the saddle, and he flexed his boots into the stirrup, adjusting to the oddity of his body.
“Double dose on the sedative,” Ridge chuckled as he slid into his saddle. “It’ll burn off soon.”
Wilder nodded as they set off through the brambles, with Maelys leading the way.
Dust and Oron brought up the lead, using their magic to blow their scent to the west as they worked south and then east.
The moon filtered through the canopy as they pushed deeper into the forest. It smelled of earth and decomposing leaves in this part of the wood, but almost imperceptible, he caught the scent of salt.
A stamping of hooves alarmed Wilder until he recognized the riders.
Cedric and Oak slid into position behind them. It was strange to see them out of their usual armor and wearing plain tunics and leather.
“No one followed,” Oak announced.
Maelys slowed their pace, and Wilder breathed a sigh of relief.
“We still need to keep a lookout,” Ridge said. “There have been attacks by the wulvers in this part of the Valewood.”
Wilder frowned. “Who are they attacking?”
“Anyone and anything that is not of their kind,” Maelys replied.
As they traveled beneath a beam of moonlight, her hair shone as if spun gold.
But it was the violent expression across her face that caught Wilder’s attention.
“Who’s leading them?”
“Maelor,” Ridge replied. “He became alpha of Igneous’ clan.”
Wilder nodded. That had been expected. Lyra had killed their alpha—for him.
It made his chest ache when he thought of that memory.
“What else?” Wilder asked.
He was starved for information about his court. He hadn’t been locked up too long, but it had felt like a lifetime.
“They sent a list of demands to the High King, and he refused to respond. Their attacks have grown in frequency,” Maelys said. She gripped the reins tighter as she spoke. “He hasn’t even sent word to outliers of the danger.”
That wasn’t surprising in the least.
As long as it didn’t impact the nobility, King Oberon wouldn’t deign to intercede.
“We’ll alert all we pass,” Wilder replied.
It was the least they could do.
They moved silently through the wood, and with each step they took, Wilder felt the last few days melt away.
He was free.
Their path veered this way and that as the moon steadily rose higher.
It was strange for them all to be together without Otto. Wilder couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been there.
Maelys jolted to a stop.
There were several large pieces of timber blocking their path.
“Is it a trap?” she whispered, her head swiveling to scan their surroundings.
Ridge slid from his mount and threw the reins to Maelys. He approached the timber on steady legs.
Wilder’s mount stomped its feet and took a step back.
“Ridge … careful,” Wilder warned.
Ridge reached the blockade and squatted down.
“They were buried here,” he said.
Dust approached from the rear, squeezing in between Wilder and Maelys.
“It’s most definitely a trap.”
Oak dropped from his saddle, his boots but a whisper against the forest floor, and led his horse off the path. “We should scout on foot. They obviously expect us to go around.”
“I agree,” Wilder sighed. “It could very well be cautious creatures now that wulvers are on the attack. But we should investigate it, nonetheless.”
Maelys dismounted before walking the horses to the nearest tree and tying them up.
Drawing her sword, she turned and faced Wilder. “You and Ridge with me. Dust, Oak, Oron, and Cedric, you take that way.”
Their group split and took opposite paths.
It was quiet in the wood, too quiet.
“There’s danger,” Ridge whispered.
Maelys nodded. “The animals are all bedded down. Even the nocturnal ones.”
Wilder raised his hand, swirling the wind and bringing the scents of the forest to him.
A putrid, hair-raising scent hit his nose.
“Wulvers,” he ground out, drawing his blade.
A tiny bell chimed, its shrill peeling eliciting a wince from them before they set off at a run.
Someone was being attacked, and by the sounds of it, it was pixies.
Snarls and laughter had the hair on the back of his neck rising as they raced towards the sound.
An owl hooted nearby, and Maelys thanked it.
“The others heard the bells. They’re on their way,” she said steadily, despite the speed at which they ran.
Trees flashed by as they weaved this way and that, hurtling over fallen logs and moss-covered rocks.
The wooded, earthy scent of the forest was drowned out by the coppery tang of blood.
Just ahead there was a gap in the trees, and Wilder could make out the shifting of shadows.
He pointed. “Just there.”
The air turned heavy and warm as they slowed their approach.
Tiny screams were met with vicious snarls.
Breaking through the gap in the trees, they realized they were too late.
Tiny bodies lay broken and discarded. Wings of glass were shattered and glinting in the moonlight.
An entire pixie hive, massacred, while the beasts that did it laughed.
Wilder didn’t know where to look. Everywhere he turned, there was blood.
“Well, what a surprise,” a nasty voice crooned. “A decent meal has arrived.”
Wilder stood between Maelys and Ridge, his sword at the ready.
“What have you done?” he snarled. “They were innocent!”
Maelor stepped into the white light of the moon. He was far more human than the others of his kind. His face was rounder, his nose less of a snout.
“Is this the emissary the High King sends? A disgraced prince and two elves?”
His chuckle was met with a few others as red eyes glowed in the darkness.
There had to be at least half a dozen wulvers. They would be outnumbered until Dust, Oak, Oron, and Cedric could arrive.
Wilder wondered how far they had traveled in the opposite direction until they heard the bells.
He listened intently to the forest for anything that would signal their arrival.
He heard nothing.
“Where’s your little mermaid?” Maelor asked, scanning them and then the forest. “Oh, that’s right … she was taken.”
Wilder’s grip tightened around the hilt of his sword. Maelor was goading him. He knew this and yet still felt the effects of the words blister his veins.
“She’ll be back,” Maelys replied. “But you won’t be alive to see it.”
Maelor began pacing. “You know, I heard something curious about her, and I didn’t think much of it until I saw her magic.”
Wilder didn’t fancy having a conversation with this beast, but the longer he talked, the longer it gave the rest of their group to arrive.
“What’s that?”
Maelor shook a long, clawed finger in the air beside his head. “That she entered into a bargain with the High King.”
“And that is important to you?” Wilder asked.
Maelor shrugged. “It is important to us all, is it not? A mermaid aligning herself with elves … that kind of imbalance—” he sucked a breath through his teeth, and the sound elicited a low whining in the wulvers nearest him.
They twitched where they stood, their reflective red eyes narrowing on Wilder and his friends.
Wilder chuckled and shook his head. “You’ll be relieved to hear the bargain was to help the balance. Lyra agreed to break the tidal tithe.”
Maelys shifted on her feet and glanced at Wilder, not wanting to take her eyes off the threat for too long. “I feel like we shouldn’t be sharing information,” she said between gritted teeth.
“That’s good to hear,” Maelor replied, his voice an octave lower. It rumbled in the space between them. The wulvers began disappearing into the shadows as they retreated. “But there’s a debt to be settled.”
Wilder sensed the others approaching like a wind sweeping through the trees.
“A debt?” Wilder tilted his head to the side.
“The mermaid was in your custody when she struck down our alpha. We seek vengeance.”
Maelor squatted on his haunches and picked up the remnants of a pixie wing. He chomped down on it, and it sounded like a wine glass being crunched beneath a boot.
Wilder’s stomach rolled, and bile rose in his throat.
“You’ve found more than enough vengeance. You’re done.”
Wilder blinked, and Maelor was back on his feet. “Are you acting on orders of your High King?”
“No.”
Claws glinted in the moonlight as Maelor flexed his hands. “Then you have no authority here.”
Cedric, Oak, Dust and Oron appeared in the darkness behind them, their weapons already drawn. Wilder felt their presence, then sighed with relief.
Wilder raised his blade, pointing it right at Maelor’s chest. “You will stop your assault on my kingdom, or I will take your head.”
A low rumble shook Maelor’s chest. He took a step forward and let loose a howl.
The wulvers launched themselves across the empty ground.
Teeth met steel.
Wilder grunted as Maelor’s body made impact with us. They collided against the trunk of a tree, and Wilder slung Maelor off him.
Maelys impaled a wulver on the end of her blade as Ridge used vines to hold it in place. Maelor growled as he threw himself at Wilder.
Wind whipped from Wilder’s fingertips, slinging Maelor back a few feet.
Maelor threw himself against the gale, his claws ripping up the earth and roots as he struggled forward.
The sounds of battle were muffled behind the sheer force of wind Wilder hurled at him.
Wilder pulled back his magic.
Cedric and Oron battled back to back, their blades swift as they swept through the air. The black blood of wulvers sprayed where they met flesh.
Dust and Oak flanked the group, battling several wulvers into the center where Maelys and Ridge cut them down.
A twig snapped in the brush behind Wilder, and he whirled in time to see a wulver launch itself across the shadows.
One moment Wilder was standing there, blade in hand, facing down an attack. The next he was on the ground, a moon-white body on top of him.
The man screamed as the wulver's jaws clamped down on the arm he had outstretched.
He had dealt the killing blow.
Had Wilder been standing where he had been, the wulver’s jaw would have clamped around his throat.
From beneath the pile, Wilder raised his sword, stabbing the beast straight through the heart and slinging it off of them.
Black blood rained down on them, the atrocious scent enough to make Wilder gag.
The sounds of battle cut off.
Wilder rolled onto his side to see Otto holding his mangled arm to his chest.
“This isn’t the end,” Maelor hissed. “The humans will know of your plan.”
He disappeared into the darkness.
“Otto!” Maelys shrieked, racing to his side.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ridge asked.
A frown tugged his lips down as he scowled at Otto.
Otto grimaced, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “Saving Wilder.”