Chapter Eighteen
Maddox
We’d been travelling for a little over three hours, and the forest had long since stopped feeling like a path and started feeling like a trap.
The Wildling Forest was nothing like the woods I’d known back in the human world, or even the forests near the Spring Court.
This was something older. Something that had never been tamed, never been mapped, never been touched by anything resembling civilisation.
The trees here were ancient beyond reckoning, their trunks so massive that it would take four men to circle them with linked arms, their bark covered in moss and lichen and strange, luminescent fungi that pulsed with a faint, sickly light.
The canopy above was so thick that it blocked out the sky entirely.
I couldn’t tell if the sun was still up or if night had already fallen.
We walked in a perpetual twilight that made my lion restless, his instincts screaming that this wasn’t natural, that nothing about this place was natural.
The only saving grace had been that we’d all grown accustomed enough to the murky light that we could make each other out now.
But that brought its own level of danger because now the shadows seemed even more ominous than before and my eyes were straining into the darkness between them, swearing I’d just seen something move.
Fizzle kept assuring us that we were heading in the right direction, that he could sense the Fifth Court growing closer with every step.
He’d fly ahead periodically, disappearing into the shadows between the trees, and then return to perch on Alyssa’s shoulder and offer cryptic assurances that we were on the right path.
But I couldn’t understand how he could tell.
To my eyes, it was just trees. Endless, identical trees stretching in every direction.
The same twisted roots underfoot. The same drooping vines overhead.
The same oppressive silence broken only by the sound of our footsteps and the occasional distant cry of something I didn’t want to identify.
Everything looked the same. Every direction looked like every other direction.
We could have been walking in circles for all I knew, trapped in some endless loop that would keep us wandering until we dropped from exhaustion.
If Fizzle abandoned us, we’d be lost within minutes.
Lost in a forest that was very much alive and very much aware of our presence.
The ground beneath our feet was soft with centuries of fallen leaves, muffling our footsteps in a way that should have been reassuring but only made me more nervous. If we couldn’t hear ourselves walking, what else might be moving through this forest without making a sound?
We knew we had a full day of travelling through the forest ahead of us.
That was Fizzle’s estimate, anyway, based on his knowledge of the old paths and his sense of how far we had to go.
If everything went well, if we moved quickly and nothing went wrong, we might reach the Fifth Court before nightfall.
That was the plan, anyway. That was what we were all silently hoping for, praying for, clinging to like a lifeline.
But hope felt thin in this place. The forest didn’t care about our plans. It didn’t care about our desperation or our determination. It was ancient and indifferent, and the things that lived in it were neither.
About an hour ago, my lion had alerted me to something in the shadows.
At first, I’d thought I was imagining it.
A flicker of movement at the edge of my vision.
A rustle in the undergrowth that didn’t match the rhythm of our footsteps.
The faintest suggestion of eyes watching from between the trunks.
My lion had gone still in my mind, every sense straining toward the darkness, his ears pricked forward, his nostrils flaring.
And I’d known, with the certainty that came from trusting my beast, that it was real.
Something was following us.
And in the hour since I’d first noticed, whatever it was had grown.
It wasn’t just one creature anymore. It was a pack.
I could feel them out there in the shadows, circling, watching, waiting.
My lion tracked them instinctively, counting the presences, noting their positions.
More of them joining with every passing minute.
A gathering of predators that was slowly, inevitably surrounding us.
At first there had been perhaps half a dozen.
Now there were at least twenty. Maybe more.
They moved through the forest with a silence that was almost supernatural, never quite visible, never quite audible, but always there.
Always present. A weight at the edge of perception that grew heavier with every step we took.
My lion was going mad with the tension of it.
He wanted to roar, to challenge whatever was out there, to force the confrontation that we all knew was coming.
But I held him back, kept him leashed, because I knew that’s exactly what they wanted.
They were waiting for us to break. Waiting for panic to set in.
Tank moved to my side, his footsteps almost silent despite his size.
His face was calm, but I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes kept flicking to the trees.
His bear was close to the surface too, I could feel it through the pack bond, a vast and dangerous presence straining against its chains.
“You feel it too,” he said quietly. Not a question.
“My lion sensed it about an hour ago.” I kept my voice low, not wanting to alarm the others.
Not yet. Though I suspected most of them already knew something was wrong.
The tension in the group was palpable. “Since then, it’s grown.
More creatures are being added to the pack. They’re surrounding us.”
Tank nodded, his expression grim. “The bear noticed around the same time. They’re not attacking yet. Just watching. Waiting for something.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for us to run. Maybe for us to tire.
Maybe for nightfall.” He glanced up at the canopy, though there was no way to see the sky through the dense leaves.
“Could be any number of things. Predators are patient. They’ll wait for the perfect moment to strike.
The moment when we’re weakest. The moment when they’re sure they can take us down without losing too many of their own. ”
I absorbed that, letting it settle into my tactical mind. We were being hunted by something that thought strategically. Something that planned. That wasn’t the behavior of ordinary animals. That was the behavior of something intelligent.
I looked over my shoulder, my eyes finding Damon in the middle of the group.
My brother was pale, his skin sheened with sweat despite the cool air.
His eyes darted constantly between the trees, never resting, never settling.
Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead, and even from here I could see the tremor in his hands.
The chains on his wrists clinked softly with each step, a constant reminder of what he carried inside him.
He was terrified. And not just the normal fear that came from walking through a dangerous forest with predators at your heels. This was something deeper. Something that had been carved into his psyche by trauma and blood and the screams of dying men.
This was too close to what had happened to him when he first arrived in Nymeria.
“Best course of action is to continue as we are,” Tank said, following my gaze to Damon.
“Running could provoke whatever’s following us.
Prey runs. Predators chase. Right now, they’re uncertain.
Watching to see what we’ll do. We need to get to the Fifth Court, but we can’t afford to turn this whole journey into a fight. We’ll never survive.”
He was right. Of course he was right. Tank was always right about these things. But knowing the smart play and being able to execute it were two different things entirely, especially when every instinct I had was screaming at me to shift and face whatever was out there head-on.
“I’m going to speak with Dean,” Tank continued. “Make sure he’s in the picture. Can you talk to Alyssa? Let her know what we’re dealing with?”
“Of course.”
“And keep an eye on Damon.” Tank’s voice softened slightly. “If anyone’s going to freak out, it’s going to be him. This is too close to what happened before.”
I winced. We’d found the remnants of Damon’s squad in a forest like this one. What was left of them, anyway. The memory of that scene, the blood and the torn flesh and the expressions of terror frozen on dead faces, rose unbidden in my mind. It wasn’t something I was keen to experience firsthand.
But we had to still be at least six hours from the court, and with every passing minute, the confrontation that was building in the shadows seemed more inevitable than not.
Tank moved away, heading toward the front of the group where Dean was walking with his hand on his sword. I slowed my pace, letting Alyssa catch up to me. And as I did, Damon drifted over too.
This close, I could see the strain on his face even more clearly.
The way his jaw was clenched so tight it had to be painful.
The way his eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a second before darting away to scan the shadows.
The way his shoulders were hunched, his body curling in on itself like he was trying to make himself a smaller target.
“Something’s gathering in the trees,” I said quietly to Alyssa. “They’re stalking us. Have been for about an hour.”
Alyssa hummed in agreement, her eyes flickering to Damon and then back to the forest around us. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper, and the two words she said were the last ones I wanted to hear.
“Fae hounds.”