Rys takes one of my hands, cupping it between both of his. He bows his head in front of me, tucking his chin so that he’s all I can focus on. “Let me do this for you.”
“How?” It comes out as a whisper. “The shadows… I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“You won’t.” He lifts his head just enough to catch Nine’s attention. “You know these Cursed woods better than I do. I need to get to the prison as soon as possible without relying on shadow travel. Will my geas be enough to call on the Wild Hunt? I only need one rider.”
Nine’s voice goes flat. “You’d be better off risking the shadows.”
“That’s not what I asked, Ninetroir.”
Ninetroir? Who— oh. That must be Nine’s true name.
And Rys knows it. How the hell does he know that?
I turn to look over my shoulder. Nine’s glowing bright enough that I can see the angry look on his gorgeous face. “You go too far, Rysdan.”
Holy shit. Nine knows Rys’s name, too.
What the hell? I glance at Riley. She doesn’t seem even a little surprised at the way these two are regarding each other right now.
Okay. There’s definitely more going on between them than a rivalry over Riley that ended when Nine claimed her as his mate. I probably should’ve realized that already. From the way Rys got a kick out of needling Nine, to how easily Nine snapped at Rys, even though he was icily under control when it came to anyone else.
Oh, yeah. There’s history here.
I turn back to Rys. “What’s going on?”
He lifts his hand, caressing the height of my cheek with his fingertips. “It’s alright, my darling. I know what I’m doing.”
Does he?
Because I sure as hell don’t.
He jerks his chin over at Nine. “You won’t change my mind. Will my geas be enough?”
Nine hardens his jaw.
When Riley realizes that her mate doesn’t plan on answering Rys, she pokes him in the side. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
Nine might avoid answering Rys. When it comes to Riley, it seems like he can’t.
“Yes,” he admits. “It’s foolish. I know the prison you saw. I can lead him there without invoking the Hunt.”
“Or I can bargain for a ride that’ll get me there all the faster.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Rys throws a glance toward Riley. “For your ffrindau, would you?”
Nine stays quiet for a few seconds. I know that Rys hit a bulls-eye with his comment, though, because the Unseelie finally lets out a frustrated sigh. “You can call on the Hunt. You want one rider? You’ll get him. But I don’t guarantee that he’ll give you his mount.”
“Fair enough. Let’s just hope that he will.”
“Rys?” I’m barely following the conversation between the two fae, but what I understand, I don’t like. “What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
Nope. Don’t want to.
I don’t get the chance to even try and argue. Before I can say a single word to stop him, Rys backs away from the rest of us. As he puts space between us, he reaches for something on his belt. It’s hidden beneath his cloak, and by the time I realize that he’s pulled a dagger out—a freaking dagger—he’s already slashed it across the meaty part of his forearm.
The words explode out of me. “What the fuck?”
In fact, my screech is so loud that I don’t hear the foreign words he murmurs as he flips his arm, letting his silvery blood drip onto the ground.
But you know what I do hear?
The super loud hoofbeats that seem to come out of nowhere.
9
I… I know that sound.
I spin in place, searching for the source of it. Like the last time I heard the sounds of a horse galloping toward me, I don’t see where it’s coming from. It’s loud, a thundering drumbeat that rattles inside of my skull, and it could be heading from any direction.
One thing for sure, though, it’s heading toward us.
How could I have forgotten about the mysterious rider that haunts the Shadow Realm?
Is this the Wild Hunt that Rys and Nine were talking about? I don’t know, but as the hoofbeats only grow louder and louder, the ground shaking beneath my boots, I’m about to find out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as Nine yanks Riley away from the open clearing. He wraps his arms around her belly, lifting her off the ground the same way that Unseelie snagged Jim. He melts right into the shadows, hiding from sight.
Rys notices, too. “You don’t have to stay. You can follow after the Shadow. She’ll cover you even if Nine won’t.”
I’m sure she would. I don’t know if it’s because she’s half-human or because we’re both chicks, but Riley would do her best to help me. Shoot, she already has, if you count the way she tricked her own mate to go the extra step to look for Jim.
But if I abandon Rys, that leaves him to face the mysterious rider alone.
I can’t do that.
“I’ll stay with you.”
He doesn’t argue which tells me all I need to know. He wants me at his side, even if he’s spent weeks telling us both that he doesn’t.
Instead, he says, “Pull up your hood. It’ll give you a little more protection from the leader of the Hunt.”
I do. “Is that something I should be worried about?”
“Not at all. You’re not the one who summoned him.”
Now why doesn’t that make me feel any better?
The wind starts whipping. I have to hold tightly to my hood so that it keeps me hidden. The sound of the horse galloping gets even louder; I clench my teeth together, squinting, trying my best to tolerate it. The ground is still shaking. I brace my legs so I don’t fall over.
When the horse comes bursting into the clearing, the powerful hoofbeats make total sense.
Back at home, usually when I was on break at my job, I would watch videos on the internet if I was bored. I liked to watch other painters, enjoying their process while picking up on techniques that I wasn’t already aware of, but every now and then I got sucked into other types.
For a while, I watched a ton of animal videos. There are the ones that made me cry, like the stories about abandoned dogs finding their forever homes, and funny ones, like the video that shows how cats react to cucumbers. And then some that made me go WTF?
I watched this one that totally blew my mind. I guess I never realized how fucking huge a moose is in real life because, when I saw footage of one strolling down the street, my jaw dropped.
It’s doing the same exact thing now.
This horse? It’s even bigger than a freaking moose!
Good thing I braced myself. Seeing this monstrous black horse with an equally black mane and blazing red eyes come racing toward us… when my knees go wobbly, I don’t fall, even though I stumble a bit as the horse rears up on its black legs, stopping short before it tramples me and Rys.
Holy shit.
A man is sitting on the bare back of the beast. He looks small—probably because the horse is so damn big—but, when he’s close enough, I can see that he’s a big bastard. He has at least a head on my scarred Seelie.
And that’s not counting the antlers… yup, those are antlers… that are attached to his hooded cloak.
I can’t tell if they’re real or just decoration. When the rider slants a glance my way, and all I can see under the shadow of his hood are a pair of brightly glowing, vividly green eyes, I decide that I really, really don’t want to know.
What the hell is this guy?
I take an involuntary step back right as Rys clears his throat. The rider’s head snaps to Rys again.
“I followed the blood. Why have you invoked the Wild Hunt?”
“I would like the use of your mount.”
“And what would you give me in return for it?”
Whoa. I don’t know what kind of voice I expected the rider to have, but the deep, booming voice is ev
en more powerful than Oberon. And maybe I have that comparison in my head because of those freaky green eyes, but I don’t know. He’s so loud, I feel his voice thrumming inside of me with every word.
I gulp. Oh, no, no, no.
Jim can survive in the Faerie prison until Rys and Nine can reach him, right? I mean, I made it more than three weeks. If it takes them until morning, he should be fine. We don’t need to borrow the rider’s horse just to get there faster. That seems like something we really shouldn’t be doing.
Too bad that Rys doesn’t seem to agree.
“I would be in your debt.”
No.
The rider tilts his head slightly, almost as if he can hardly believe what he heard. “A favor? From one of the Blessed Ones?”
“Yes. I offer you a geas if you’ll give me your mount until I no longer need it.”
“To accept the bargain, I would need something for you to imprint on. Something I can use to call on you.”
Rys thinks about it for a moment. He purses his lips, then pulls out the feather I gave him earlier. “What about this?”
The rider straightens in his seat. “Where did you get that from?”
“Will this seal the geas?”
“Answer me first, fae.”
The way he says fae makes me think that he isn’t. So what is he? I thought he might be Unseelie, since we’re in the Winter Court and he called Rys a Blessed One, the fancy name for a Seelie. But to so dismissively say ‘fae’, the same way the fae sneer ‘human’... what are we dealing with here?
Whatever the rider is, Rys doesn’t seem to be fazed by him. “I need the use of one of your mounts,” he repeats. “If you don’t want to accept my bargain, then I’ll call on another rider.”
That… might’ve been the wrong thing to say.
The horse rears back suddenly, snorting loudly as it kicks up its hooves almost over my freaking head. I swallow my shriek, jumping right behind Rys. He doesn’t even flinch, staring straight at the rider, daring him to refuse his offer.
From beneath his hood, the rider never once took his eyes off of Rys. He has such total control of that monstrous horse, I’ve got no doubt in my mind that he did that on purpose, trying to spook Rys.
It, uh, didn’t work.
“Perhaps someone else would like this,” Rys drawls, twirling the black feather between his long, slender fingers.
“I rule these woods,” the rider growls. “You make a deal with me, or you make it with no one.”
I clutch the back of Rys’s cloak. I know he’s doing all of this because he wants to save Jim for me, but there’s something about this rider that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.
We don’t need him. Riley said the prison wasn’t so far, right? We can go as a group, cutting through the Shadow Realm the same way that Riley walked through the actual shadows, and then Rys could figure out how to get inside. We don’t need this rider. Not when I’m almost positive that, if he does accept Rys’s offer, it’ll cost even more in the long run.
I want to save Jim, but not at the expense of Rys.
This is a bad idea. There’s gotta be another way to get to Jim.
Before I can change my mind, I start to say, “You don’t have to do this.” I only get about three words out, though, when Rys steps away from me, holding the feather up high.
“So. Do we have a deal?”
For one terrible moment, I expect the rider to take off. He holds all the cards. If having Rys in his debt isn’t enough to interest him, he could just refuse the deal and we would’ve wasted all of this time for nothing.
And that’s when he shoves his cloak back, shooting his arm out toward Rys, yanking the feather of his grip before Rys can take it back.
“One day I’ll call your debt in,” promises the rider, his voice gone even lower than before. “Make no mistake, though. You will tell me how you got this feather, and only then will I consider your geas met. Do we have an accord?”
“You have my word.”
“It is done.” The rider disappears the raven’s feather inside of his cloak. He pats his horse’s neck, then easily dismounts. “Herla is yours until you send him back to me.”
Rys nods. “I’ll treat him like the king he is.”
The rider’s glowing green eyes seem to grow impossibly brighter. “Make sure that you do.”
He leans in, whispering something softly to the horse. The horse tosses his head again, almost as if he’s answering the rider, but when the cloaked figure steps away from Herla, I can see that he’s calmed down a whole lot.
The rider keeps going. Without another word, he strides away from us, the hem of his long cloak swishing around the heels of his leather boots. Ice cracks beneath his feet, like he’s heavier than his slender build suggests. And then, in between one step and the next, he disappears.
It’s just like, poof, and he’s gone. I can still see the imprint of his last step in the crusty snow, so I know he was really here, but he’s not anymore.
I gasp. “Where did he go?”
“Where does the Hunter go when he has no Hunt to lead?” murmurs Rys, already pulling himself up on the back of the horse. “He’ll be back. Sooner than later, I’m sure, but there’s no time to worry about that now.”
I give my head a quick shake. Rys is right.
It’s time to go and break Jim out of fairy jail.
I pace back and forth, too amped up and anxious to sit still.
Riley offers to create a tent for the two of us, where we can sit down, rest, and keep warm. Turns out that she can basically create anything out of her shadows which I might’ve appreciated a whole lot more if I wasn’t too busy worrying about Rys and Jim.
As soon as the rider had left, Nine and Riley reappeared in the clearing proving that Rys was right when he said the Shadow was shielding them with her power. Because they were hiding all along, they heard the entire exchange between Rys and the rider which was a good thing. We didn’t have to waste time telling them what happened.
No, instead we just bickered about who was going back to the prison.
I lost. Big surprise, huh? Rys absolutely refused to even consider bringing me with him, even though I pointed out that the supersized horse could probably carry me, Rys, and Riley.
But, since Riley was willing to hang back while the two fae went off to see what they could do about getting Jim out of the prison, there was no point in my really arguing. It was three against one, and every second I spent bitching was another second that Jim was in trouble.
So, after making us promise that we would stay right where we are so that they can find us again, Nine slips into the shadows and Rys kicks Herla’s side, sending the horse galloping off into the trees.
After that, I pace. I pace because we still haven’t found a fleasc and the ground is super cold. I pace because I have this urge to run after that horse and walking helps. I pace because I’m so tired, if I do sit, I’m probably going to have a hard time getting up again.
Riley watches me go. I notice she’s careful to keep space between us, and the one time that I get close enough that I nearly clip her shadowy cloak, she jumps away from me.
I immediately stop moving. That was a pretty weird reaction. “Hey. You okay?”
“Too close.”
“Huh?”
Riley moves back a couple of more steps. “Sorry, but you’re too close.” Holding up her hands, she motions for me to stay put. “I can’t… you can’t touch me.”
“But I’m human. I don’t have any touch magic.”
I don’t have any magic at all.
She shakes her head, her long, pale blonde hair falling forward, covering her face. “It doesn’t have to do with that. Well. No. It does… I had a lot of bad experiences when it comes to the fae.” She pauses, then admits, “With Rys, actually.”
I’m already so worried about what’s going on with Jim, and how Rys and Nine are making out. Didn’t think I had enough room in me to feel s
uper jealous over that revelation.
I already knew that, but—
“He told me he stole a touch once.”
Riley rubs her gloved hands together, the leather rustling back and forth. I don’t even know if she realizes she’s doing it. Her gaze is on the expanse of shadows behind me.
Finally, she lets out a rough sigh. “Elle. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not the type of chick who beats around the bush. I can tell you’re anxious. Me, too. But if there’s something you want to ask me, spit it out. I brought it up. Least I can do is own it.”
You know what? I can appreciate her blunt honesty.
“Okay. I will. When I first met Rys, we were in prison together. I’m sure you know that. We don’t hide it. If you ask me, neither one of us should’ve been there. All I did was tell some stuck-up Seelie noble that I didn’t want him touching me, and Rys…”
Riley cuts in. “I know why he was in jail.”
Of course she does. “Anyway, I don’t know if you have any idea what it’s like being in a cell—”
To my surprise, she bursts into laughter. I make a face, and she dials it back. “Sorry. Sorry. Not funny, I know. But I’m guessing Rys never told you that I spent six years in an asylum.”
I blink. “Uh. No. He didn’t.”
“It is what it is. You try telling the humans in the Iron that the fae are after you. It wasn’t a surprise when they threw me in a psych ward. Excuse me. Facility. It’s fine. I’m out now, and since it turns out the fae are totally real and they wanted me to kill their queen, looks like I wasn’t so crazy after all.”
“Um. Okay. But, like I was saying, we got to know each other pretty well while we were inside.” That’s an understatement. “After I gave him permission to touch me the first time, he told me he stole a touch once. Was that you?”
Her head bobs up and down. A nod. “And now you know why I got him in the face with a shovel. Still kinda sorry about that. It can’t be easy having a scar like that when all the fae are so scarily gorgeous.”
Freed: A Supernatural Prison Romance (Imprisoned by the Fae Book 3) Page 9
