by Bec McMaster
It’s also three times as tall as me and can spit poison that can sear the skin from your bones.
“Run!” I scream as the questing beast suddenly appears against the trees, a reptilian eye blinking open and locking upon me. Snatching the horn, I tuck it under my arm. “Run!”
“What in the blighted lands are you doing here?” I demand as we sprint through the maze. “You were supposed to be taking care of Mistmark!”
“I did take care of Mistmark! I married the bastard, after all! And then I managed to slip him and his nursemaid,” Soraya yells. “I didn’t realize the ceremony was real and binding!”
I shoot her a glance.
She slams me into the hedge just as an enormous green spitball hisses past us. It cuts right through the bloodstar, eating its way into the hedge as though it doesn’t exist.
“You knew.” Soraya can obviously see it on my face, and she’s furious. “You said ‘you’ll thank me later.’ That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
I push off from her and drag her through the newly opened hole in the maze. It’s too small for the questing beast. It might hold it for a moment. “This way! And yes, I knew.” I haul her to the right. “You’ve only been pining after him for three years.”
“Pining?”
“Don’t think I don’t know you,” I snap at her as the entire hedge to our right shudders. I throw a glance over my shoulder as the beast simply forces its way through the tightly bound trees. Curse it. Guess that wasn’t going to slow it down at all. “‘I’m fine,’ you used to say. ‘He’ll get his comeuppance one day soon.’ ‘His heart has my name on it, and I’m going to shove my fucking blade so deep inside it that you’ll hear his scream from here.’”
“What part of that has anything to do with pining?”
“He’s the one who got away, Soraya.” We reach a T-intersection and I take two seconds to decide which way to go before hurling her toward the left. “You don’t miss when Father sends you after a target. But for some reason, you couldn’t kill Mistmark, and I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Falion, and everything to do with those pretty blue eyes.”
“Goddess, I hate you!”
I grin at her. “I knew it!”
Soraya makes a frustrated screaming sound. “Well, don’t get too excited. He’s sent Falion after you. I managed to escape and led that fucking prick on a merry chase before I came here, but I think he’ll realize where we are the second he hears that huge furry bastard rampaging behind us.” She looks over her shoulder. “Down!”
I dive, and another enormous, sizzling spitball burns a hole through the hedge in front of us.
“How do we kill it?” she snaps as we both scramble to our feet.
Teeth clash as I leap halfway up the hedge and snatch a hold of one of the branches. The questing beast misses me by an inch, and I’m dangerously close to where its spitball is eating its way outward in the hedge.
“We don’t!” I Sift out of the way, rendezvousing with Soraya on the other side of the beast. “It’s impervious to mortal weapons.”
“Falion’s idea, no doubt. I swear, I’m going to drown that smug prick in the blood lily pool. He’s going to be picking weed out of his crushed velvet for weeks.”
“You’re starting to sound a little fond of him,” I muse. “I thought you’d simply try to kill him.”
“I did try,” Soraya growls. “Let’s just say, I think he’s got my measure. Although, apparently he can’t kill me because my life is bound to Mistmark’s.”
I ignore her glare. “I did actually think of that. Handfasted couples are bound to each other for a year and a day.”
It’s an ancient custom between warring fae courts that’s probably saved many a life. By the time a year and a day has ended, often cooler heads have prevailed, and in some cases both bride and groom no longer want to kill each other.
We skid around a corner and slide to a halt.
“Dead end. Curse it.” Soraya looks this way and that. “And no way out.”
“Here.” I cup my hands and kneel. “The way out is up.”
“With this bloody hedge trying to take a swipe at me at every step,” she grumbles, but she steps into my hands, and I throw her into the air.
Grabbing the horn, I Sift after her just as the beast crashes right through the hedge beneath us.
The shock as it hits the trees takes my feet out from under me. I catch a glimpse of Soraya’s startled expression and then she’s falling too. A branch stabs into my shoulder, and the horn is torn from my grip.
No!
The ground comes at me too fast to Sift, but the second I land I vanish into the shadows, punching back into reality several feet away. Lucky. The questing beast’s slavering jaw closes right where I should have been, its teeth clashing over nothing more than empty air.
“Z!” Soraya launches beneath it, her knife slicing through the tendon in its heel.
I launch into a dive, grabbing the horn and rolling beneath the creature’s hooves. The flash of its dappled belly glides over my head, before I’m rolling to my feet on the other side of it. “This way!”
We sprint for the exit of the maze as the questing beast gives another furious roar behind us. A glance over my shoulder reveals its crimson eyes locking on us furiously. Soraya injured it, but the creature heals too fast to remain crippled for too long.
A door appears in the maze walls. I slam against it, and the polished timber bursts open. The cave beyond is dark, leading into the mountain court. We slam the doors shut behind us, but two seconds later an enormous jarring impact throws me off my feet.
Desperation fills me as I scramble across the gravel floor just as the creature appears. It’s enormous nostrils flare as it turns its lizard-like head this way and that, a long thin tongue flickering out to taste the air.
“Blow the horn!” Soraya snaps, blood dropping from her temples as she presses her back against the rock wall.
She’s trapped there.
Our eyes meet.
“It can only be used once!”
“Then use it! Blow the cursed horn!”
I set the horn to my lips and blow.
Nothing happens. I’d been expecting the bellow of something like the trollhorns they have in the north, but this is silent. All I can hear is my breath, whispering through the brass curve.
“It didn’t work.” I jerk the blasted thing down.
But Soraya’s face pales, as if she sees something I don’t. “Stay still,” she whispers, sinking back against the rock. “Don’t move.”
Mist pours into the cavern, lit from above with eerie blue. Little gleaming lights sparkle within it, and it’s not until it draws closer that I realize they’re eyes.
The grymhounds of the Wild Hunt.
Creatures you can barely see until they’re upon you.
The questing beast roars its rage to the pack, and then it lunges toward them, teeth snapping. A hound vanishes into a curl of mist as its ruthless teeth close over it, but another darts beneath its belly, angling for the back of its front hoof.
“Move.” Soraya shoves me further into the blackened cave.
A low, echoing growl rumbles from within. I skid to a halt as she slams into me.
And then a creature appears, huge and wolf-like and carved of glowing light. Its eyes shine with blue light—empty and emotionless, but the growl tells me everything I need to know.
“What’s it looking at?” Soraya whispers. “Isn’t it supposed to respond to the horn blower?”
“Define ‘respond,’” I reply grimly, “because Keir said something about how they guard the horn. Maybe it is guarding it.”
“Guard? Guard? It’s looking at you like you just murdered its firstborn.” Soraya draws her knife and the pair of us glance at its glowing blade.
“What’s it doing?” I whisper. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
“Not that I know of.” She whips the knife through the air in a threatening arc. “Stay
behind me.”
It’s been years since we’ve worked together like this. My back meets hers, and while I draw my own blade, I doubt it’s going to do much.
“They’re impervious to steel,” I tell her. “The only thing that effects them is silver.”
“Good old goblin-forged weapons,” she says with a smirk. “Come on, you mangy cur. I dare you.”
The enormous grymhound stalks toward us. It has to be the alpha of the pack. Others turn away from the questing beast at its growl, falling into place around us.
Then they’re upon us. Glowing teeth snapping for my face. The heavy weight of rancid wolf slamming into me, the impact numbing my arm to the wrist.
I Sift out of the way, but something catches on my sleeve as I go, and the ice-cold burn of teeth grazes my wrist. The second I reform, the pain drives me to my knees.
“Z!” Soraya lunges toward me, driving her glowing knife through the heart of the alpha. It vanishes in a swirl of mist, but those glowing eyes reform barely ten feet away.
Teeth chattering with the pain of its bite, I stagger to my feet. “It doesn’t like your blade.”
“Recall them!” Soraya yells.
Two sharp blows of the horn will draw them back to the Other World from which they came. I blow sharply. Once. Twice.
Instantly the hounds evaporate, curls of light eddying into nothing.
The questing beast looks toward us before it hesitates. Its gaze shifts over my shoulder—into the black interior of the cave—before it makes a desperate sound and limps away, vanishing into one of the smaller caverns that branch out from this one. Blood drips from the bite marks slashed into its hide and the braying sound it makes reminds me of mournful beasts heading for the slaughterhouse.
It’s not the poor bastard’s fault it was brought into this game.
Both of us sink to the floor.
I can’t get over the sensation of how close we came to death. I can feel the beast’s breath on the back of my neck still. I can hear its wheezing roar.
“Why didn’t you Sift out of here?” Soraya demands, pushing to her feet and offering me a hand.
A tingling sensation burns through the bite marks in my wrist as I let her draw me to my feet. “It all happened too fast.”
Soraya makes a growling sound. “You lying wretch. We spent years testing your reflexes. You had more than enough time. You stayed because of me, didn’t you?”
The words lie trapped behind my teeth.
Yes, I stayed. I always will, because I can no sooner leave her behind than I ever could.
And she senses it.
“Didn’t you?” she snarls, shoving me back with a hard slam to the chest.
Instinct kicks in. I sweep low, taking her feet out from under her, and the second she moves to retaliate, I’m gone, punching back into being several feet away.
“What was I supposed to do?” I demand, my fists curled at my sides. “Leave you behind? The only thing keeping it off our backs was the fact there were two of us. It couldn’t work out which one of us to focus on.”
“I don’t need you to watch my back—”
“Because you were doing such a good job of it before I found you in Malechus’s sarcophagus!”
“I didn’t ask you to rescue me,” she says coldly, examining the cavern. “When Malechus came back—”
“If he came back,” I point out. “You could have suffocated in there. And you’re welcome. You’re always bloody welcome.”
Bristling with fury, she stalks past me. “Where are we?”
It’s Soraya’s way whenever there’s conflict. If she knows she’s in the wrong, then she simply won’t argue any further. I want to scream. I’ve been bottling this all inside me for years.
“I don’t know.” Bending to pick up the horn, I wrap it in a piece of my shirt and concentrate, plucking shadows from the air to weave around it. It’s nowhere near as good as the protective veil Falion had created, but it will do to guard it from anyone’s eyes. “I had a monstrous gnashing beast trying to take a bite out of me. I wasn’t mapping where I was running. Why?”
“Because I’m fairly certain something drove that creature off, and it wasn’t your grymhounds. Nor was it us.”
There’s something about the way she stares into the darkness of the cave that sends a shiver down my spine. I take the chance to Sift to the side, hiding the horn in a rocky crevice before I reappear at her side.
Soraya looks at me sharply, as if she sensed the movement, but she’s still distracted by the current threat.
The questing beast could be lurking outside.
And she’s right. It was injured by the grymhounds, but the second a wound is cut into its hide it starts repairing itself.
Something about the cave unnerved it.
“Guess we’re going to find out,” I mutter as I turn toward her. “Are we taking bets on what sort of vicious beast lurks in—”
A hiss of air whips past my face, a sting alighting on my cheek. I clap a hand there in surprise, but it’s the brief scream Soraya gives that stalls my own shocked cry.
An arrow embeds itself in her chest, and she staggers back, her feet scrambling to keep her upright.
The last thing I see before she hits the ground is the ebony shaft of the arrow.
24
One glimpse of those short, clipped raven’s feathers on the shaft and I know who hunts us.
I know.
Ruhle. And his seven.
I spring forward, slamming Soraya back to the floor as she struggles to rise, just as another arrow screams past.
And then they’re singing toward us like a flight of ravens. Rolling her, I manage to find cover under an overhang of rock for both of us.
“Get out of here!” Soraya screams, coughing blood.
Leaving her here is leaving her to our bastard brother’s mercy. “Not without you!”
Grabbing the arrow, she grits her teeth together as she snaps the shaft. “You stupid fool, you’ll only slow me down. The way you always do. The way you did the night of our final test. You’re not ruthless enough, Zemira. And you’re going to get us both killed.”
It’s an arrow to the chest.
Suddenly I’m back there, staring into her eyes as I see recognition slowly dawn there. She was reaching for my hand to haul me up the cliff until a sheet of glacial indifference came over her.
“You’re only slowing me down,” she’d whispered, her voice cutting through my chest like a rusty hacksaw. “You’re going to get us both killed.”
“Don’t leave me! We’ll do this together—”
But Soraya only shook her head, her eyes locking down tight and hard as if she was nailing the coffin shut on the love we’d once shared. “He was right. Father was right. You’re weak. And I have to be strong enough for both of us. Goodbye, Z.”
And then she turned and walked out of my life.
Forever.
“Maybe I am weaker than you are,” I snarl. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to just walk away right now. I’m better than that.”
“Curse you, let me go—”
Grabbing two fistfuls of Soraya’s coat, I steel myself. I’ve done this before.
I can do it again.
“No! Don’t you dare!” she yells.
An arrow ricochets off the ledge.
“Come out, come out, little rats,” Ruhle whispers, his voice dipping into a laugh that echoes through the cavern.
One day soon, I am going to drown that skulking rodent, and I’m going to enjoy it.
But right now….
“Don’t move!” I hiss at Soraya, and then I plunge us both into the shadows.
We punch into darkness, but this time it feels like a weight keeps dragging me down. Flickering in and out of being, I move as fast as I can. Alighting on a ledge. Slamming into the tree outside the cavern. Toward the lake….
Every time we slam back into the world, Soraya’s scream rings out until I’m forced to clamp a hand
over her mouth to stop her from giving away our position. Speckles of shadow stream off me until the hem of my cloak is ragged and torn. Somehow I’m losing particles of myself. Maybe I’m not strong enough to hold us both incorporeal for this long, but I knot my fists in Soraya’s shirt as though I can somehow hold her together physically. It’s like falling through an endless chasm of darkness, screaming, screaming, until you finally hit rock bottom.
We slam into the waters of the lake.
I’m inside out. Blind. Breathless.
And it’s so cold here.
The darkness closes over me, and the last thing I think is how heavy my bones feel….
Slap.
Pain ricochets through me.
Water rushes past.
I cough out a lungful of water and try to get my bearings as someone drags me from the lake. The world is spinning, or maybe that’s just my eyes rolling back in my head.
Slap.
“You stupid bitch.” Someone’s rubbing heat into my hands. “Z, wake up.” A hand slaps my face, gripping my chin. “Wake up! Or I swear I’ll leave you here. I swear I will. Wake up!”
She breathes into my mouth, and heated air fills my lungs. It’s like swallowing light. Heat. My eyes pop wide, and then it feels like every ragged edge of my body suddenly melts into liquid.
Coughing again, I roll onto my side and spew out a cloud of darkness. It’s like I’m vomiting pure shadow, and Soraya thumps me between the shoulder blades even as that merciless heat eats its way through me.
What the fuck…?
“What’d… you do?” I rasp, finding myself on the banks of the lake.
Soraya wilts over me, barely holding herself up.
Her skin’s the color of ash, her lips blue and her skin shivering. Somehow she’s aged a year in a single moment.
“What did you do?” I whisper, because I feel like I could leap a small mountain right now.
And she looks like she can barely lift her head.
Soraya staggers to her feet, hauling me with her. “You don’t know everything about me, Z. And it’s going to stay that way.” She trips against me, her body shaking. Weak. “You should have left me there.”
