32. But we’re not dead #3
Torren’s mare had become a little snot about being in the lead. Seren, thankfully, didn’t care that much and often dropped back a few paces without Cypress directing her to.
“So we’re not going the long way, but we’re also not taking a shortcut? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Torren shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“And you’re not lost?” Cypress hedged.
“I don’t get lost,” Torren scoffed and turned in his saddle to look at her. “I know exactly where we are, Duchess,” he winked, and then righted himself.
Cypress repressed a screech as a flush crept over her face and neck. As much as she wanted to ignore the way he made her insides light up, she couldn’t.
She liked him.
Eugh.
Cypress shook herself and refocused on the road and the next few days ahead. Once she and Torren got to the Keep, they’d sneak in, find the Scepter, and leave all without Caelith or Cade seeing them.
That is, if everything went to plan.
Given their new companion, the process of trying to sneak into the Keep unnoticed may pose a bigger problem than Cypress previously assumed.
Perhaps… Perhaps Cypress had been a little hasty with her declaration to keep the Hound. If Deja followed them all the way through Grethnah, she’d announce their presence before they even got remotely close to the walls of the Keep.
She let out a sigh and tilted her face toward the sky. The light of yet another day had already faded, painting the edges of the clouds pink, orange, and purple.
How would she make the Hound stay out of sight once they reached the boundary?
Deja reappeared with the barest warning. Her shadow fell across the road before she slammed into the ground, her jaws full of what looked like several animals. As one, Cypress and Torren stopped their horses at her entrance.
An unknown number of furred legs dangled from Deja’s mouth. One leg with large talons on the end of a clawed foot, a tawny wing stuck out at a weird angle, and a furred mane were all just barely visible between Deja’s teeth.
The Hound opened her mouth, and her catch dropped to the ground with a heavy thump.
After a moment of staring at the heap, Cypress realized it wasn’t several animals. Just one. A griffon.
“Do you think,” Cypress started.
“That she killed it? Yes, Lass. Yes, I do.”
Cypress tried to swallow the rising panic in her gut, but ash coated her mouth and throat. “Well,” she rasped. “At least we know we don’t have to hunt for her.”
Torren snorted. “Yeah. I suppose, though I don’t think the griffins will take kindly to one of their own being killed.”
“I didn’t think there were that many left?”
“Not many that travel into Grethnah, sure. But Griffins are alive and well within the Wylds.”
Cypress hummed. Of all of the things for Deja to hunt, a Griffin was probably one of the worst choices.
“Well, I suppose this is as good a place as any to break for the night,” Torren said. His grey eyes, nearly charcoal today, roamed over their surroundings.
“There's a Ring just over there,” he said, then was on the move with both of the horses in tow without waiting to see if Cypress followed.
Cypress did, and after a moment glanced back at the Hound to see what she would do.
Deja wagged her great feathered tail once, then picked up the Griffin carcass and trotted after Cypress and Torren.
While she knew that the Hounds were terrifying creatures of the Hunt, and had for centuries terrorized both Faerie and Grethnah, Cypress couldn’t help but see Deja as nothing more than an abnormally large dog. Well. Enormous, really.
Everything Cypress had observed about Deja had made her draw the conclusion that she was just a dog, cursed by fate. Deja reacted like one of the stray dogs found at the Keep. Starved for attention and eager to please.
Out of curiosity, Cypress turned around once more and looked at the large Hound.
“Deja, stay,” She ordered while pointing her fingers toward the ground.
Immediately, the Hound sank into a sitting position, tail daintily wrapped around her toes. Cypress took an exploratory step away from the hound.
Still, Deja sat pretty in the middle of the path, limbs of the Griffin once again sticking out in wildly different directions.
“Oh, you’re a smart girl, aren’t you?” Cypress cooed, moving farther away from the beast, testing how far the limits of Deja’s patience were.
She made it nearly the whole way to the edge of the Faerie ring, and Deja still sat pretty and tall where Cypress told her to sit, carcass clutched in her maw.
“Oh, stop teasing the beast, Lass.”
“I’m not teasing. I’m… testing. Training. How do you think she knows her name already?”
“Who knows? None in Faerie has been bold enough to adopt one of the hounds of the Hunt,” Torren said while he unbuckled the girth strap to his saddle.
Cypress leaned against a tree and called to the Hound. “Come on, Deja.”
With her feathered tail wagging, the Hound trotted over to near the middle of the Faerie ring, sprawled across the grass, and then set upon the carcass of the Griffin.
Bone cracking and crumbling between Deja’s large teeth filled the circle with horrendous noise while Cypress and Torren finished with the horses.
By the time a hot meal was in Cypress’s belly, the Hound was fast asleep on her side. From nose to the tip of her tail, Deja crossed the diameter of the circle. If the beast were to stretch, Cypress thought that her limbs would breach the ring.
“By nightfall tomorrow, we’ll be in Westshade. What are you going to do with the Hound while we’re in Human lands?”
“Hope that she listens to me and stays out of sight.”
Torren sighed. “Lass, I told ye.”
“What else can I do? It’s not like I can force her to do anything.”
“Maybe not naming the beast could have been a good place to start.”
“What does naming it have to do with anything?”
Again, Torren sighed, and the muscle on the side of his jaw feathered.
“If you think I did something to make Deja find us and become oddly attached to me, you’re sorely mistaken,” Cypress said and crossed her arms.
“No, of course not, Lass.”
“And yet, you’re acting like an ass.”
“You didn’t need to claim her as yours, Lass. You could have walked away.”
Cypress scoffed. “Yeah. Sure seemed like I could have walked away when she was growling with every step I took.”
“If she follows you into Grethnah, word will spread. We won’t get the scepter, and more of my people will die!” Torren shouted.
“I understand that,” Cypress said through her teeth. “I didn’t ask her to follow us!”
Torren shook his head. “It’s on your head if this all goes to shit.”
Cypress threw her empty metal mug at him.
“You’re an ass,” she said, then grabbed her bedroll from beside the fire and marched over to Deja.
The hound cracked one amber eye and silently lifted the edge of her wing. Cypress crawled in without another word to Torren and arranged her bedroll.
Sleep was slow to come, but when it did, Cypress dreamt of fire, blood, and blades.