Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
S omething—or someone —had infiltrated her woods.
She could smell him on the wind, beneath the other scents. Rotting leaves. Lingering smoke. The pile of scat she’d used to track her kill. The blood coating her muzzle and spilling from the gash in the deer’s belly.
It had been five days since the incident. She didn’t dare call it anything other than that. Couldn’t.
Every time she thought about him, about what he’d done, about what she’d done, something so violent and ugly and agonizing tore through her that she vowed she’d just stay in her wolf form for eternity.
Could a Fae die from a broken heart? Or would the wound keep healing and re-breaking? An endless, immortal cycle of grief. She’d carried grief all her life, but this time it was worse.
It was so much fucking worse.
She hadn’t shifted into her humanoid form since it had happened. Had burned down the cabin—along with any dreams she’d had of what she and Ronin could have been there—and begun prowling through the Oread Woods, hunting and sleeping and running and forgetting. Or trying to forget.
She licked her chops, sniffing at the air. She knew the scent on the air, a congested, concrete-and-metal stink that reminded her of a city she used to live in. What was its name again? And had she lost the name so quickly in her quest to become more animal than Fae?
Her hackles raised and she growled a warning as the intruder’s scent grew closer, the dry needles cracking beneath approaching footfalls.
A flash of blue appeared between the pines, about a hundred yards away.
For a split second, she thought to turn and run, but her base instincts wouldn’t allow her to abandon her kill.
She stepped over the deer carcass, hiding it behind her mass of muscle and copper fur. No flames, today. She’d practiced with her power as well, during these long, blurry days. Learned to control her fire, to bank it when needed or to use it for warmth. She let the embers smolder within her, waiting. If needed, she’d call upon them to roast this interloper.
She bowed her head and bared her fangs as a Windrider with blond hair and sky-blue feathers stepped into the clearing. Instinctively, she knew he was a threat, though she couldn’t scent any Typhon steel on him.
She realized why when Hugo Skanisse raised a stun pistol at her.
“Hello, Mireille Valette,” he said in that high-pitched voice that grated across her bones. A familiar irritation. “Or should I say Mireille Valois .”
She snarled at him, incapable of forming words in her devolved state. She summoned her power and fire crackled along her limbs and torso. Skanisse waved a hand, sending tendrils of wind toward her. One by one, the flames snuffed out.
A seed of fear bloomed in her belly and she twisted around, poised to run.
“Ah ah ah,” Skanisse crooned, cocking the pistol. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. There’s a legion of Imperial soldiers surrounding us, waiting to strike on my command. You can either come with me willingly, accept your fate, or I can order them to put you down.”
She thought he was bluffing until a new wave of scents reached her nose. At least a hundred Fae, mostly Windriders, as well as the metallic, fiery tang of Typhon steel. Along with the rustling murmurs of shifting feet, the whine of swords arcing through the air.
“You might have even gotten away, had we not discovered those documents Sonya stole last week.”
She growled, sitting back on her haunches, blood and saliva dripping from her fangs. The tiny, non-bestial part of her, barely a drop within an ocean of wild rage, was wracked by guilt for endangering Sonya, who’d stuck her neck out for her so many times.
“Your ignorance of your own history was the only reason you weren’t locked up years ago. Though it did prove rather useful to take down Otto. You always were the most successful of my agents.”
Her eyes darted madly, seeking any escape, even as that tiny part of her wanted to ask Skanisse what had happened to Ronin. She knew she hadn’t killed him with her final strike. Had watched as he’d fled, blood gushing from his blistered eye socket.
Clanking echoed through the pines as the soldiers surrounded the clearing, their Typhon broadswords glinting in the sun.
“Time to embrace your cage, Mireille.” Hugo raised the pistol higher.
She leapt for him, refusing to go down without a fight.
He pulled the trigger.
The last sound she heard as the energy blast consumed her, paralyzing her limbs and crashing her to the ground, was her own whimpering whine.
So, she closed her eyes, and let the darkness swallow her.
It had always been her fate, after all.