Chapter 2
Zyla
A good huntress learns their prey’s habits…”
— ZYLA BASHKIRIA, AUTHOR OF A brIDE’S GUIDE TO HUNTING THE HUNTER
The piercing cry of a horn echoes through the night.
“What was that?” whispers the girl beside me.
A scream echoes through one of the arches, followed closely by a handful of warriors bursting through the arch to the left, spreading out with nets.
Across the room, the clash of steel ricochets through yet another archway. And the man who crawled inside the room suddenly strikes, grabbing a buxom blonde and hauling her back into his arms as she shrieks.
Chaos ensues as the brides all flee, or find themselves backed into a corner. We’re seemingly surrounded, as though Kasaros’s presence was keeping the hounds at bay and now they’ve been set free.
“No!” the redhead beside me cries, her hands shielding her face as one of the enormous warriors turns toward her.
I shove past her, launching myself off the bier and spinning into a high kick that slams into the marauder’s jaw. Pain reverberates through my foot, thanks to the fucking soft-soled slippers the Knights of Malus dressed me in.
I would kill for my boots right now.
“Bitch!” the marauder yells, spitting blood across the floor, then turning his maddened eyes upon me. Tangled strands of brown hair swing around his face as he casts his net toward me. “You’re mine!”
I sweep below it, slashing up with my knife. It cuts through the strands and the remnants of the net fall around me as I launch under his guard.
A quick kiss of the knife and he staggers back, clutching at his ruined throat.
“Thanks,” I growl, breathing hard as I drop into a defensive stance, “but no thanks.”
“Blessed Goddess,” the redhead whispers, staring at him in shock as his body hits the floor. Wide eyes turn toward my knife. “You killed him. You… you killed him.”
I think she’s going to faint.
“What’s your name?” I need her to start thinking.
“Kari.”
“We need to get out of here, Kari. Do you understand me?”
A frantic nod.
“This way,” I yell, grabbing her hand. “This entire chamber is a trap.” She resists for a second. “Unless you’d care to stay?”
A swift shake of her head.
Four of the girls stream toward the left arch, the one well-lit by moonlight. There’s a hint of movement lurking in the shadows of the stairwell.
“No! Wait!” I snatch at Kari’s hand, yanking her back even as a net flies high, dropping over all four girls.
They go down with a scream, and my teeth grind together as a trio of enormous warriors stride out of the darkness, scooping them up still wrapped in the net.
The men are armored in leather braiding, but the pair of swords at their hips give me pause.
I have a knife, I have the skills, I have surprise on my side—
I can’t save them all.
Squeezing the hilt of my knife, frustration curling through me with iron fingers, I force myself to back toward another archway with Kari in tow. They’re capturing us like fucking butterflies in a net.
And three armed warriors… three is too difficult, even for me without the element of surprise.
No, the only way out is stealth.
“This way,” I whisper, dragging the redhead toward the arch to my right and into the deep shadows.
I can’t save them all.
But maybe I can save this one.
We run for what feels like hours, slipping down curved staircases that seem to go nowhere, backtracking into empty tunnels, then miraculously finding an exit.
At every step the walls shift, stone grinding deep underground as if powered by some sort of hidden mechanics.
The sound of fighting follows us, but we seem to be staying one step ahead of it.
A woman follows us, plump and pretty. I slow, waiting for her to catch us, but within a dozen turns she is lost to the maze.
“I c-can’t… I can’t keep… up,” Kari gasps, straining behind me. Her floral perfume heavily scents the air, heated by her sweat-stained efforts to run. The pretty red flowers in her hair have begun to droop.
She’s right. I’ve pushed her, using fear as my whip, but if we don’t have a brief rest then she’s likely to collapse.
Light forms an arch ahead of us. It’s the first time I’ve seen a glimpse of the outside since we plunged into the dark tunnels, and I didn’t realize how much I yearned for the sight of it. Hope flutters in my chest.
“Just a little further. As soon as we reach the outside, we can catch our breath for a second.”
“Oh Goddess,” she groans, bending over with her hands on her thighs. “I can climb… four hundred… stairs with a stack of scrolls in my arms, but I was… not made for this.”
Fresh air bursts over us in a wave as we stumble into some sort of garden maze.
Pristine hedges circle us, cut so precisely I have to wonder how they’ve done it.
A statue looms over us, a pair of lovers tangled together beneath the blood moon, every delicate line of them carved of some exquisite marble that would probably be beautiful beneath silvery starlight.
Instead, the hand around the female’s throat seems menacing in the light of the blood moon, and the gasp on her lips is stained red.
Beneath the statue stands a fountain.
Water.
I plunge to my knees before it, cupping it eagerly before sniffing. Kari doesn’t bother to wait, she simply shoves her face into the water and gulps it down greedily.
Smells normal. Appears clean. I swiftly drink my fill.
There’s food and drink to be found here, Mariam told me, though it’s scarce and sometimes one often has to barter to gain it.
Kari slumps against the fountain. Getting her to move again is going to be a problem. Her soft curves, gentle ink-smudged hands and the lustrous timbre to her red hair speak of good health and home. She must be a scholar or a scribe, and I’d be surprised if she’s known a single moment of struggle.
A little pang fills me. Gods, that would have been nice. A life without struggle. I can’t begrudge her that, though I envy it. Some part of me wants to keep that feeling safe for her.
“What did that man mean?” she whispers. “Back there in the chambers? A bride hunt? What is—?”
Noise intrudes. I shove my hand over her mouth, capturing her words.
We’re not alone.
“This way,” I breathe, hauling her to her feet and toward the nearest exit.
We pull up short when a hideous creature strolls out of the maze, his reptilian features set close together over his long, lizard-like nose.
I’ve seen the laboratories at the keep of the Knights of Malus—their magic-fused monstrous experiments trapped in cages—but I’ve never seen something so clearly reptilian fused with a human’s body.
A tail lashes behind him, thrusting through his tight woolen trousers, and a pair of suspenders cross his broad chest. His skin is silvery-blue, hints of scales blending into soft flesh.
“Well,” says the creature, his long tongue flickering out to test the air, “thissss iss a pleasssant surprissse.”
I turn, but another man steps out of the far corners of the maze.
“Good hunting,” he tells the lizard man. “Thought I could smell something sweet.”
Kari’s perfume. They can smell Kari’s perfume.
“One each,” says the lizardman, his gaze sliding between me and Kari. They light upon her soft skin. “Thisss one isss mine.”
“Hold,” protests the taller, bearded man, striding toward us. “We haven’t even flipped a dagger for it.”
“I called it firssst.”
“You promised. If we found one, then we’d take turns once we flipped for first rights. If we find two, then we flip for choice.”
“I changed my mind, Rigor,” hisses the lizardman, darting forward to grab Kari’s arm. “I know sssoft, fertile flesssh when I sssee it. This one will breed many younglingsss. I call claim on her.”
Kari wrenches away, hammering a clenched fist at his nose. Surprise gains her distance, but I really need to teach her how to throw a punch.
“Yeah? Well, I want this one too,” says Rigor.
I exchange a glance with Kari. “You’re a popular choice. I’d be almost offended, if we weren’t being leered at by two thugs.”
Her cheeks burn, but fear paints shadows in her eyes. “I think it’s the blood down the front of your gown.”
I grin at that. It’s not the blood. “I think it’s because you’re beautiful. And you have curves in all the right places. Meanwhile, all I have is a knife.”
Rigor glances at me as if surprised to find I am, in fact, holding a knife. Thought flickers through his dark eyes. “We’re definitely flipping for the redhead.”
Apparently, he doesn’t have an appreciation for the type of woman who can run down a deer, skin it, and butcher it. Especially when she might just do the same to him. Coward.
“Or maybe,” growls a deeper voice from the shadows of a third exit, “I’ll take both.”
“Tsk, tsk,” says a second newcomer, casually juggling balls of light in his hands as he strolls out of another entrance. “Is that any way to greet a new bride? Slaith, you need to make an entrance. Do a little wooing. Attempt to string more than three words together without drooling.”
Tossing a glowing orb in the air, he flexes his fingers and it explodes in a shower of glittering white sparks.
Four of them. There are four of them.
I crouch lower, because this might become… difficult. A swift glance shows me the hedges. My sister, Aylin, used to say that as a child I climbed everything that came across my path. I could be gone within ten seconds, but I can’t leave Kari behind me.
“Mine,” growls the creature called Slaith, lumbering forward with a spear in his hand. A single bushy eyebrow stretches across his head. I ease back as his shadow falls over us.
Is he… nine feet tall?
The mage grins and holds his hands out in as if to say, I tried.
“Oursss,” hisses the lizard man.
He and Rigor turn toward the newcomers.
“We staked our claim first,” Rigor growls, drawing his sword. “These brides are ours.”
My mind races. Two against two. I like those odds better. I just need them distracted, and then I can move in for the kill.
“Do we get a choice?” I demand.