Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

by Sarra Cannon

  When Raven returned, I was ready. One look at his formidable expression made me hesitate.

  What had he gotten me into?

  Chapter 20

  Potent magic slithered over me, making my skin crawl as I entered the gloomy chamber. The enormous room was empty. Nothing decorated the space except for the massive tapestries depicting winter scenes. Straight ahead of us, built into the ice-block wall, was a low balcony. Two identical mirrors, both longer than I was tall, were tacked onto the wall behind the railing, and two matching chairs sat before them.

  A path lined with flickering candles led us through the shadowy expanse to a small circle scraped into the frozen floor. Raven stepped inside it without hesitation. I did not. Circles were common symbols used by witches and other magic practitioners as a safety net while casting complex or dangerous spells.

  Fae blood ran with magic. They needed visual aids as much as I needed an instruction manual on breathing. I waited, expecting Raven to offer an explanation, but he stared straight ahead with cold determination.

  I followed his gaze. Two grotesque fae had materialized on the balcony and now sat in the chairs. Their bodies were humanoid, but their heads were…wrong. One eye the size of a basketball rose from the fleshy stumps of their necks. One had a red iris, the other’s was blue.

  “No harm will come to you here, child.”

  The baritone voice beat at me from all sides.

  I turned a slow circle. “Who are you, and what right do you have to make such promises?”

  Around us thunderous laughter boomed. A burly man limned in green light strode toward us, appearing out of thin air. Bare-chested, he wore leather pants and matching mud-brown boots. A wild nest of hair was drawn into a frizzy knot at his nape. His beard hung in tangles down to his navel with leaves and twigs and burs as accents. He stood two heads taller than me and was three times as wide, his muscles thick and smeared with dried mud.

  “I am the Master of the Wild Hunt.” A breeze whirled around him smelling of fresh soil and wet dog. “As your father cannot be here, I have come in his stead. I will grant you my protection while you are on these grounds. That is a sight more certain and true than any offer this one can make you.”

  “He’s right.” Raven set his jaw. “His word is good. Have no fear of that.”

  The apparition that was the Huntsman waited until I stepped beside Raven.

  Magic sizzled and popped, sealing us inside a protective bubble anchored to the floor by the circle.

  “Thierry Thackeray,” a voice drifted from the balcony. “We have been expecting you.”

  I glanced first at the seated fae before my gaze slid past their shoulders to the wall behind them.

  Reflections now filled each of the mirrors. Both were sidhe males, both dressed in somber robes. They were visible to us from the waist up, the rest of their bodies obscured by the odd fae sitting before them. The crests above their frames luminesced, revealing ornate designs. One matched Raven’s, a raptor with a serpent in its claws, except it faced right-side up. The other showed a stag with enormous antlers wearing a serene expression.

  The image in the frame beneath the stag smiled benevolently at me. “I am Consul Liosliath of House Seelie.”

  Under the raptor crest, Liosliath’s counterpart scowled. “I am Consul Daibhidh of House Unseelie.”

  “You have been informed of our dilemma,” Liosliath intoned. “We are most grateful for your consideration in coming here to attempt a mutually beneficial compromise.”

  Compromise. Blackmail. Poh-tay-toh. Pah-tah-toh.

  “What you do not know,” Daibhidh said with a hint of a grin, “is that King Moran is dead.”

  I jerked my head toward Raven. The king was dead? Crap. Now all the threats and secrecy made sense. A crown was at stake. Wars had been fought for much less. Double crap. The conclave didn’t know. If they had, they would have locked the threshold down so tight not even a pixie fart could drift through the wards.

  “He was murdered,” Liosliath corrected. “Therefore, a new king must be chosen by Right of Hunt.”

  My breath caught in the vise clamping around my chest. They meant the Coronation Hunt, the hunt my father had instituted as a means of determining which house was fit to rule without rampant bloodshed.

  I rubbed my forehead, taking all of it in. “There hasn’t been an assassination since…”

  “Not since the Black Dog assembled the High Court and instituted the Right of Hunt,” Daibhidh supplied. “It was his blood that sealed the contract and brought peace to Faerie. The Coronation Hunt was his idea, and is his responsibility to maintain. The Huntsman is prepared, his hounds eager, and yet Macsen is not here.”

  “The Sullivan tracks our king’s murderer,” Liosliath scolded.

  Daibhidh sneered. “He does one duty to the detriment of another.”

  The Huntsman exhaled on a snort.

  “They can argue for days,” he told me in a quiet voice. “The Seelie want your father to find the king’s killer. The Unseelie want him to lead the hunt so that a new ruler is crowned before the old one is cold in his grave.”

  “My mother was taken,” I told him just as softly. “She’s the only reason I’m here.”

  He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I’ve heard nothing of a human in the Halls.”

  Dread soured the broth in my gut. Mom had to be here. She had to be.

  Tired of listening to the consuls bicker, I wanted straight answers. I just needed to get their attention first.

  I tested the bubble with my toe. It held. I can fix that. Murmuring my Word, I removed my glove, and soft light pooled at my feet. Pushing energy through my hand, I shoved my palm straight up against the dome. Magic hit the reinforced shield, and it exploded outward with a deafening pop of air.

  Silence fell around me. Into it, I challenged, “I came here to negotiate for the return of my mother.”

  “Your mother is missing?” Liosliath’s brow furrowed as his reflection glanced at Daibhidh. “Is this House Unseelie’s doing?”

  Unruffled by the accusation, Daibhidh waved his hand. “For all we know her parents are missing together.”

  “You don’t have her?” Doubt dripped from my every word. “Then we have nothing further to discuss.”

  “Are you saying…” Daibhidh crooned, “…that you would exchange your life for your mother’s?”

  “Are you admitting you took her?” I growled under my breath.

  “No.” His lips twitched. “I have, however, heard things.”

  I gritted my teeth and played along. “What kind of things?”

  “Whispers.” His image rippled. “It will cost you to hear them.”

  Raven gripped my arm. I shrugged him off me. It was his fault I was here in the first place.

  “Name your price,” I said with more boldness than I felt.

  “Gather your father’s mantle. Act in his stead. Run in the hunt.” Daibhidh’s reflection stilled. “Accept his title, become the Black Dog of the Faerie High Court in his absence. Then you can know all that I do. Do you accept?”

  Run in the hunt. The blood rushed from my face and left me chilled to the bone. The hunt was a death sentence.

  “There must be something else I can offer.” Panic raised my voice an octave.

  “Are you haggling over your mother’s worth?” Daibhidh clicked his tongue.

  “No,” I snapped, mind whirling. Haggling was exactly what I was about to try.

  There must be another way. What else did I have? What else could I do? What else?

  “Faerie is a dangerous place for a woman to find herself alone. Especially one with such close ties to Macsen Sullivan.” Daibhidh pursed his lips. “Not all fae admire his legacy as we do, you understand, and as Sullivan himself is untouchable… A mortal, well, they are so defenseless, aren’t they?”

  “She isn’t defenseless.” Magic leapt into my palm and burned bright. “She has me.”

  “Ah.” He tapped a fi
nger against his bottom lip. “That might be true, but what good are you to her here when she is, well, you don’t know where she is, do you?”

  I clenched my fist and extinguished my power before I used it and got myself killed ahead of schedule.

  “The choice is yours,” Daibhidh said. “She might survive Faerie alone. No mortal ever has, but there must always be a first.”

  Choice? No. This was blackmail, a promise that if I didn’t play nice then neither would they, and there was good reason why such tactics were popular among the criminally inclined.

  They worked.

  “Time grows short. Arrangements must be made soon, whether you are a consideration or not.” Liosliath raised his eyebrows. “Have you made your decision?”

  A knowing smirk wreathed Daibhidh’s face.

  My heart beat hard once.

  Kill or be killed.

  “Yes.” I tasted fear when I swallowed. “I’ll do it.”

  Beside me, the Huntsman issued a low growl that rumbled with anticipation.

  Tuning him out, I demanded of Daibhidh, “Tell me all you know.”

  “Your mother is kept safe by an Unseelie loyal to the crown.” Daibhidh linked his fingers over his middle. “Once your duty has been done, she will be returned exactly where and how she was found by those who took her.” His ageless gaze captured mine. “Before these witnesses, I swear this to you.”

  I breathed a sigh that left me limp with relief.

  Mom was safe. She was going to be okay.

  “Thierry.” Raven filled my name with anguish.

  “Faerie owes you a debt of gratitude.” Liosliath visibly relaxed. “As a tradition your father himself established, your participation in the Coronation Hunt ensures it is a legacy in the making.”

  Tradition.

  Legacy.

  The magnitude of what I had agreed to crashed over me and left me trembling.

  The king was dead. The Huntsman stood at my elbow. And I had just volunteered to play tribute.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  “This is what the consuls wanted all along,” I said under my breath. “This is why you brought me here.”

  Raven refused to look at me.

  But I knew. This was why they sent him to fetch me.

  Coronations were held once every one hundred years. According to lore, the purpose of the Wild Hunt was to ride through the mortal realm on All Hallows’ Eve, collecting the souls of fae who died on Earth and returning them to Faerie, to the Ever-After, the fae equivalent of Heaven.

  On one such hunt, the Huntsman and his pack of sleek, black hounds crossed a battlefield. Their guts were distended with spirit flesh and their hunger temporarily sated when their noses led them to one last feast. Two souls, one Seelie and one Unseelie, stood with their hands clasped as if unaware the hunt was upon them.

  The pack leader ran ahead of the others. Confused when the spirits stood their ground, he approached them, sniffed them and allowed each to stroke his silky, midnight fur.

  The Seelie held the hound’s gaze while the Unseelie spoke. “Only in death have we known peace. If we had raised our voices instead of our swords, much of our grief might have been circumvented. Loyal beast, reaper, it is our final wish that Faerie never endure the misery of another Thousand Years War.”

  “Mark this day, Black Dog,” the Seelie intoned. “Tonight you are the hunter, but one hundred years hence, you shall become the hunted. One prince from each of our houses will hunt you across Faerie wearing the skins of hounds, goaded by your own Huntsman while you wear the skin of a sidhe noble. Your blood will anoint the new ruler and usher in one hundred more years of prosperity for the fae.”

  Instead of consuming the spirits as the Huntsman had decreed, Black Dog bowed his head to their will. That simple act of defiance shattered the bonds between himself and the Huntsman, and Black Dog gained awareness. As a gift to aid him in the trials ahead, the Unseelie entered his left eye and the Seelie his right, so that Black Dog might always view both sides of any argument with impartiality.

  Black Dog also gained the form of a man so that he might stand toe-to-toe with kings. He named himself Macsen Sullivan and established the Faerie High Court, choosing one Seelie and one Unseelie consul to join him, and instituted the Right of the Hunt.

  Once a century, he was run to ground and torn to pieces. The blood of one man was spilled to determine a king. His sacrifice avoided the slaughter of thousands had the houses gone to war for the crown. For the seven days after he was laid to rest in Faerie’s soul, the realm mourned him. Lore said those tears seeped into the soil and restored him, and he rose at midnight on the seventh day made whole again.

  My father was a legend, and by doing this, I too would go down in history. I just wouldn’t get back up again. I was half mortal. The best I could hope for was being long-lived. The immortality thing Mac had going didn’t extend to me.

  This gave temp job a whole new meaning.

  Raven stepped forward. “I claim the right of coimirceoir.”

  Both consuls gaped at him.

  The Huntsman growled, “On what grounds can you claim guardianship of this girl?”

  “She is not a girl, but a woman.” Raven set his shoulders back. “She is also my wife.”

  Chapter 21

  Wife? Clearly I wasn’t the only one who had sniffed the toadstools.

  “She looks surprised to hear you call her that,” the Huntsman observed.

  The consuls exchanged wary glances.

  Liosliath narrowed his eyes. “What proof do you offer of the validity of this union?”

  “Thierry has warmed her hands at my hearth, eaten at my table.” A pinkish flush crept up Raven’s throat. “She has disrobed in my chambers and even now she wears the colors and cuts of my house.”

  His freaking wife. That was the point of the meal and the clothes and the kindness. Why? What use was I to him or anyone else beyond this point? I had accepted their offer. I was dog chow. Why tighten the noose around my neck?

  “We aren’t married.” Barely suppressed rage trembled through the words.

  “She is a Christian. She adopted her mother’s faith,” Raven explained away my outburst while cutting a shiver-inducing glare my way. “She desires a formal ceremony conducted by her priest before publically acknowledging our union.”

  “Given her limited knowledge of this realm,” the Huntsman murmured, “Rook’s familiarity with Faerie would make for a more interesting hunt. I vote yea.”

  Beware the Rook. The warning clanged in my mind.

  “Rook?” I whirled toward Raven. “No. You’re Raven, the Morrigan’s son.”

  Daibhidh almost laughed himself off the wall. “Raven is in his rooms upstairs, as any sensible noble would be during these unsettled times. I can introduce you if you like, but you’ll meet soon enough.”

  “He didn’t mean the chess piece,” I whispered to myself. “A rook…is a bird.”

  “Rooks are corvids, dear girl, as are all those of the Morrigan’s line.” Daibhidh wiped a tear from his cheek. “Rook, you are a credit to your family. I was right to trust you with luring Macsen’s pup here, but marrying her? You have outdone yourself.”

  “I am not his wife.” The tips of my ears burned. “I didn’t consent to any union.”

  And yet, as I mentally retraced my footsteps through Faerie, I saw each moment leading up to when I stepped neatly into his snare.

  I was an idiot.

  And Raven—no, Rook—was soon to be a widower.

  “Be that as it may,” Liosliath stated. “I grant Rook’s request for guardianship.”

  “Now that we have that settled.” Daibhidh clapped his hands. “Let the hunt begin.”

  Liosliath inclined his head toward me. “May the best hound win.”

  A whiff of wet dog told me the Huntsman had shifted closer. “It will be quick, child. I vow that. Go now. Run.” He toyed with a leather thong around his neck. Attached was a horn carved from a curving an
tler. His eyes shone bright in the darkness. He wet his lips then forced his hand to his side. “The hounds are coming.”

  Shock rooted my feet to the floor. “The hunt starts now?”

  So much for the Huntsman’s vow of protection.

  Rook took my hand and yanked me stumbling out of the circle. “Run.”

  “Are you insane?” I struggled against him. “You’re going to get me killed.”

  “As far as they’re concerned, you’re already dead.” He jerked me so hard my shoulder popped. “This is your only chance.”

  “Go with him. Hurry, girl.” The Huntsman lifted his horn to his lips. “The hunt has begun.”

  The first blast of his horn made the tile rumble beneath my feet. Toppling off balance, Rook tugged me into motion as the magic in the sound called to me.

  Join in the hunt. Blood and bone. Hot and fresh.

  My blood. My bones.

  In answer to the summons, bloodcurdling howls filled the room. The scrabble of nails and the excited barks of a scent picked up turned blood to ice in my veins.

  “I have a plan.” Rook urged, “Hurry and I might save you yet.”

  As the barking grew louder in time with the pounding of my heart, God help me, I followed him. For all I knew he was guiding me straight to his brother for an easy kill.

  Raven was here, somewhere, waiting. The Wild Hunt’s magic would swirl around him and transform him into one of the Huntsman’s hounds. Higher reasoning would fade. Only hunger for my blood would drive him.

  “You lied to me,” I panted. “You’re fae. How did you do it?”

  “I’m a half-blood.” He glanced back. “Like you.”

  Perfect. I was on the run with the Morrigan’s bastard son.

  “We can’t outrun the hounds.” Not real ones. Certainly not the Huntsman’s spectral beasts.

  How long did I have before the Seelie hound joined Raven—the Unseelie hound—in the hunt?

  “I arranged for transport,” Rook called. “It’s not ideal, but we need a head start.”

  Afraid to ask for details, I kept my mouth closed. Rook had lied to me from the get-go. Why did I expect honest aid with no strings attached now? Desperation? Anger? Panic? Fear? Yes to all of the above.