Epilogue #2
“You lost the race,” a high-pitched voice crooned. “Me win!” The smallest owl I’d ever seen swooped down on tawny wings and landed on top of the person’s head.
The figure laughed and shook their head no, jostling the owl back and forth as they approached a trunk with purpose.
They ripped down a tree branch, cracked it over their knee, then poked and prodded at the snow.
Falling to their knees, they cleaned away the white, revealing jagged metal teeth glinting in the night.
A jackalope struggled in the trap, still alive.
“The horror,” the owl squawked, swiveling its head around to look away. What a strange creature.
Unlike the owl, the person didn’t hesitate.
Crack.
They snapped the jackalope’s neck—a swift, unflinching action—then bowed their head, praying over the carcass.
I jolted. A strange warmth spread deep in my stomach, because unbridled strength shone in the movement. Duty and domination, I recognized. They didn’t want to act, but they did it anyway, because they had to.
The person stood up with a grunt, struggling to keep the coyote carcass across their shoulders, hold their board, and keep the owl balanced on their head as they gently handled the dead jackalope.
Arms full, they moved with shocking strength and agility toward the Commune walls. There was something mesmerizing in the swaggering canter of their steps. Self-assurance and strength practically oozed off them. The same energy had them throwing death-defying flips on the mountainside.
The tip of my tongue tingled. Awareness hummed across my skin.
I inched forward.
Lift your head. Let me see. Yes, just like that. Turn toward me so I can see thee—
I stifled my gasp.
A teenage girl scowled. Firelight caressed bronze skin; her almond eyes were a startling shade of light brown. Golden amber. Her face was round, cheeks full of adolescence. A long brown braid hung down her back, silky pieces wisping around her head.
The most captivating part: three scars covered the right side of her face in streaks of raised white from eyebrow to jaw. The longest of them glowed silver with storm magic. She has been marked by a powerful magical being.
I inhaled deeply, and she smelled of weakness—human.
Who would mark such a magicless creature? Strangely it also shimmered in a bright white light around her, a shade only fae could see, as she casually readjusted the predator draped across her shoulders like it was a silk shawl. She was being tested by someone, monitored with magic.
Who is she?
The storm magic inside my chest ached as it churned hotter like it was attempting to tell me something.
The air was rich with pine and the lingering scent of something intoxicating—her.
A profile of notes that bewitched the senses and befuddled the mind.
I licked my lips, mouth uncomfortably dry.
She smelled like my . . . destiny. No, it can’t be.
Syxzals were so rare they were practically a myth.
The only way to know for sure was to have her blood. The old stories said thou could hear destiny singing in your ear with the taste of a single droplet from your syxzal.
A beast howled out in the night, and the owl cried out with terror, but the girl didn’t so much as flinch. Slamming her boot down on the mechanism beside the gate, she turned and backed into the city, eyes scanning the forest with cold cunning as she reengaged the door.
I shivered with awareness.
The way she existed with her surroundings was nothing short of . . . exhilarating. I waited a beat and then slipped through the shadows, following the magnetic pull. I couldn’t have fought it even if I wanted to.
One street over, on the outskirts where the poorer citizens lived, she hung both carcasses on a front porch and put her board away inside.
Returning, she pulled a wickedly sharp blade from her waist holster and carefully cleaned it off with a rag.
Untying her blood-covered boots with the owl balanced on her head, she paused in the entrance, checking the street like she could sense my gaze.
She disappeared, locking the door multiple times behind her.
I crouched in the dark and waited, barely noticing the passage of time. Her scent still lingered in the air. I inhaled greedily, half mad with delirium.
Before dawn cracked over the horizon, she stalked back outside and carried her prey down the street. I followed in the shadows.
The owl sat silently on her shoulder.
After dropping off the carcasses at the mess hall in the center of the city, she stopped back at her house.
Minutes later she emerged in full hunting gear.
Citizens milled around her, walking much slower as they went about their provincial morning.
She sped past them as she headed back out into the wild.
She slunk through the forest, setting dozens of traps at the bases of trees, and then she crouched behind a snowbank and waited, for hours. She watched the trees with wide, alert eyes, like a dire wolf hunting in the brush, blending fully into her surroundings.
I didn’t just watch her. I consumed her with my eyes.
Never had a human appeared so at home among nature’s talons. Unlike the rest of her species, she did not shy away from the danger. She melted into it and adopted its ferociousness.
Hours later, she stood up and stretched with three small carcasses slung over both her shoulders.
Her owl flew above her head, spiraling in the sky as she ran inside the walls and back to her house.
Disappointment stabbed through my heart because her day was surely over and I wouldn’t see her again for—Her front door opened.
I stopped.
Why is she dressed like that? Her neck and wrists were exposed under her skimpy shawl. Extremely inappropriate. A strange flush filled my cheeks as a bead of sweat streaked down my spine.
The bronze arch of her graceful neck was beyond indecent. The delicate bones of her wrists were just there for everyone to see. I stumbled, nearly faint with the urge to carry her to safety. No, my syxzal would never show herself in such a state.
Anyone in the Commune could feast upon her bare flesh. The impropriety was nauseating, and icy winds gusted down the street in cyclones of snow as hot coals burned inside my gut.
Whistling happily in her state of abject ill repute, she practically skipped down the snowy street, the owl once again on her shoulder as she slipped outside the walls. Ire fought with confusion as she took a different path than earlier.
It can’t be.
“There you are—what took you so long?” A gangly, pathetic human boy bounced on his feet. He nervously looked around, jumping as tree branches swayed. Unlike her, he reeked of fear.
She tipped her head back, the delicate arch of her naked throat catching the sunlight. Wind howled louder as a flush warmed my cheeks. The boy feasted on her exposed skin like a starving louse, his lack of etiquette repulsive.
Somehow unaware that she was being completely disrespected, she laughed, offering him her hand. Wrists and all.
They touched bare fingers, and a sickness like nothing I’d ever felt stabbed through my empty rib cage. Sweat beaded across my forehead because his dirty oils were rubbing against her precious skin. My etiquette teacher would have passed out by now, and I had half a mind to do so myself.
The display was beyond vulgar. They might as well just be screwing in front of me. She could not be mine.
Her reputation had been compromised, and he’d proven himself to be a tactless, uncouth swine of the lowest breeding. To add to the indecency of the moment, the girl led him below the swaying bridge, under the overhang.
I stepped onto the bridge, wind gusting through my dyed hair as an odd pressure swelled beneath my ribs.
He wouldn’t dare sully her— Kissing noises carried on the wind.