Everything ached. My body throbbed with each and every step that took us farther from the village that had been our entire world.
Leaving my mother behind without anyone to care for her wasn’t something that I understood how to accept, looking at Brann where he walked by my side.
He belonged with her. I was supposed to be dead anyway.
As the hours passed, wandering through the night that had come in the middle of the day, I grew more and more resolved to make Brann return home. There would be no one to protect our mother when the Fae crossed the mist and came to Nothrek once again. No one to stop them from cutting her down along with the rest of Mistfell in their hunt for the Fae Marked.
I’d need to do whatever it took to send him back to take care of her while I continued forward on my own, running until there was nowhere left to go.
“You have to go back,” I gasped. My lungs burned with the cold, heaving with exertion as we ran through the woods. Brann raced at my side, his longer legs keeping pace easier than mine, and I had to put everything I had into the deadly sprint to keep up with him. Pain tore through my side, the muscles cramping as everything inside me seized.
I hadn’t had a moment to rest or recover from the magic that had changed me as the Veil fell, not in the hours since we’d started running. There wasn’t time for such luxuries when my life was on the line.
Branches tore at my face when the path faded into nothing but the haunting shadows of darkness, and I couldn’t tell if the rustling leaves were the ones beneath my feet or if something else was in the woods with us.
All manner of animals lived in them, from the rabbits that had no doubt made a dash for their warrens, to the rock trolls that lurked in the caves during the day. Their heavy footfalls that shook the ground would have felt different from a rustle, but the arachne and snakes could have kept pace alongside us in the dark without ever being seen.
“I can’t,” Brann said, and even though I couldn’t see him, I could swear I felt him shake his head in denial. “Listen to me, Estrella. No matter what happens, you cannot let the Fae catch you. Do you understand?”
“I know that,” I wheezed, panting through the effort to keep up with him. How he wasn’t even the slightest bit winded, I would never understand. Brann had always been the fastest boy in our village. One of the strongest fighters, even though he had no interest in joining the Mist Guard.
Pain exploded across my forehead suddenly as something struck me, a flare of white spreading across my vision. I stumbled to the side and raised my arm to touch the thick branch that had knocked my head back. Falling to my knees, I touched the bleeding wound at my hairline and wiped the moisture on the cloak I couldn’t even see in the pitch black.
“Estrella!” Brann hissed in a whisper, and his booted foot touched my knee as he felt around for me. “Get up.”
He didn’t bother to check to see if I’d recover or ask what happened; only his urgency to put distance between us and the monsters that would follow drove him forward. “I can’t,” I said as my vision swam in a swirl of darkness and shadows.
A howl came through the trees on a blast of frosty wind, and everything inside me cramped with terror. “The Wild Hunt is coming,” I said, voice hollow.
The pounding of hoof beats echoed through the sky like thunder. My heart lurched, and, glancing into the darkness behind me, I couldn’t even see the trees we’d only just passed through. The darkness surrounding me only added to my rising fear, leaving me certain that something was watching us.
Something I couldn’t see.
“Get up,” Brann repeated. He fumbled for my arm, grasping my elbow and hauling me to my feet.
“You should leave me,” I warned, tugging at my elbow as he helped me through the woods. He slowed his pace, giving me time to catch my breath before quickening his steps when the heavens flashed with a plethora of colors that tore through the onyx sky.
“I will never leave you,” he said, even as he faltered, turning his face up to watch the black of night stained with watercolor pastels, which twirled and slithered through the clouds.
My mouth dropped open as I watched the colors writhe and twine, consumed by the unearthly beauty, which didn’t belong in the human realm. In the silence that followed as we stared at the sky in wonder, the burning of my lungs seemed to settle with a begrudging acceptance.
I would never be able to hide from beings who were strong enough to paint the sky. I’d never tasted true freedom, so consumed by the life laid out for me in Mistfell that I’d never thought to wonder what might be waiting for me further inland.
Now I never would.
Drawing a deep breath of frigid air into my lungs, I turned to stare at my brother’s face. Illuminated under the watercolor sky, his amber eyes reflected the light until the moment when he turned his face down to stare at me. He swallowed, the breath catching in his lungs when a flock of birds whipped over our heads and navigated through the trees, as if the risk of flying into a tree was far less than the danger that followed at their tails.
Another pair of amber eyes stared back at me: the only bird that didn’t flee in terror. The eerie eyes of the blight gleamed in the darkness before it took off into the sky and was lost to the night.
“We have to keep moving,” Brann said, pressing forward and dragging me along with him. My steps were slower, and dread settled over me for the day when I would need to say goodbye. Because the emotion I’d seen in his eyes only confirmed what I had already known in my heart.
We both knew parting would be inevitable.
His golden hair gleamed with the colors in the sky every time we came to an opening in the trees, and I tried to focus on him. On his strength beside me, pushing and pulling me to keep trying.
A scream pierced the air far behind us, drawing a shudder from him.
“We’ll never outrun them,” I said, knowing it would be pointless in the end. Even without knowing what kind of magic they had that would enable them to travel across the human lands, we were on foot. We were tired, and
we were not used to walking long distances, let alone running. The arduous pace we’d set at the start of our journey hours ago wasn’t sustainable.
But even if it had been, it wouldn’t have been enough.
Brann nodded, seeming to accept the truth as I spoke it. We kept walking through the woods, staying as quiet as we could, as we both understood that any noise could be our downfall.
After what felt like an eternity of walking in silence, the colors in the sky disappeared in a slow wave of black that seemed to swallow the rest of the light from the world. My stomach clenched inside me, tightening as the black swirls on my arm felt as if they writhed in response to that eerie darkness.
“He’s here,” I whispered, turning to look for the brother I couldn’t see, as the woods were plunged into darkness once again.
“Who?” he asked, his voice so quiet that I knew instantly he already knew the answer.
I didn’t know his name—this faceless Fae who thought to claim me through magic.
But I felt him, pulsing inside me like an infection in my blood. It was different from the knowledge that the Wild Hunt were hunting through the Kingdom, the howl of their hounds and stomp of horse’s hooves echoing through the air.
I’d felt the moment his feet touched the human realm, treading upon the soil of Nothrek. I felt him inside my skin, my Mark writhing as if it could reach out and call to him.
“Him,” I said, and Brann’s presence at my side disappeared as he stumbled. Just like that, he was gone, lost to the night in a way I didn’t have a hope of finding him by sight. “Are you okay?” I asked, lowering myself to a crouch and feeling around the ground. The dirt beneath the layer of leaves on the forest floor was damp, the soil rich and hearty as my fingers dragged through it to feel for my brother.
Something slithered over the back of my hand, all smooth and scaled as it went past me without stopping. I squealed, lifting a dirt-covered hand to my face to cover my mouth and muffle the sound. “Brann!” I whispered, spinning around in my crouch and trying desperately to find him. Panic coated my skin, waiting for his answer, and then finally he groaned.
“I’m here, and I think I fell into our hiding place.” Something touched my ankle, reaching under the hem of my dress and grasping it. “It’s me,”
Brann said, holding me steady when I tried to shake off his grip. “You scared the—”
“Give me your hand. I’ll help you down,” he said, and I did as he bid. He helped me step down off the ledge I was standing on, the moist decay of a tree root touching my free hand when I lowered myself into the hole.
Sitting beside him and leaning my back into the dirt and roots behind me, I couldn’t stop the hysterical giggle that bubbled up in my throat or the feeling of Brann’s incredulous eyes trying to glare at me. “How are we supposed to know if we’re hidden, when we cannot see?” I asked when I could finally breathe past my laughter.
He snorted, dropping his head to rest on my shoulder as he shook it from side to side. I curled my legs into my body, hugging them tightly as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders to keep warm. With the frigid night air surrounding us, the lack of movement made freezing to death a very real possibility. We needed a fire, but nothing would attract all manner of predators from the woods like a flame in the night.
Would the sun rise in the morning? Or had the Fae plunged us into an eternal darkness that we would never escape?
My eyes drifted closed as the exhaustion became too much for me to bear. Longing for the feeling of the sun on my skin, I drifted into the realm of dreams, where monsters didn’t threaten to take me to a world of mystery and enchantment, and the most dangerous being in my life was the lecherous Lord who wanted to make me his wife.
And I slept.
 |
M
y eyes flew open. The press of a hand at my mouth jolted me awake and tore me from my nightmare. A shrill scream burned its
way up my throat, clawing to get free. “Shh,” Brann whispered in my ear, his voice trembling as I nodded frantically against his hand, which was covered in dirt and smelled of rotting leaves and decay.
He pulled his hand away from my mouth finally, and I lifted my own to cover it. I didn’t know what had made Brann wake me so fearfully, but I did
my best to muffle my breathing. My own skin bore the metallic scent of blood along with the dirt that caked my skin, while the crumble of fallen leaves dusted my wounds.
The sky was still dark, and I had no sense of time or whether it was truly night now. I could have slept for minutes or hours, but all I knew was, it hadn’t been enough. I waited, tempted to ask him why he’d scared the life out of me as the silence spread and nothing happened. I was about to do just that when I heard it finally.
The thudding of hooves striking against the earth, muffled by the foliage covering the ground and the lack of a hard surface for the horses’ shoes to tap against as they moved. Whoever rode kept their pace slow and steady, and I spun to look up through the tree roots above our heads.
There was only darkness, only the stillness of the night in front of my face. I watched, pressing my hand tighter against my mouth as I squinted, pressing my body into the dirt in front of me, making myself smaller and for once being grateful for my stained, lackluster dress as it blended in with the rotting woods.
For once, being poor and not able to afford a new dress seemed to work to my advantage.
I stopped breathing the moment the first hoof stepped into view, gleaming silver as if it created its own light and sparkled in the pitch black. Where there would have been hair on any normal horse, the smooth surface of bone was glossy and polished as it lifted and fell in its next step. The entire body was made of bones, a skeleton of an animal that was no longer alive.
And yet it moved through the night, step by step, and more followed in its wake once it had passed. I lifted my gaze to the spectral form of the man who rode it. He seemed to glow, a twisting mass of white and black shadows. Dark hair fell just past his shoulders, floating off them as if it could defy gravity. It faded into the inky, dark air, bleeding outward and becoming part of the shadows themselves.
His eyes shone with a shock of white, all traces of color missing from them as a magical haze enveloped him. His shoulders were broad, encased in a fur cloak that would have made the wealthiest of men in Mistfell jealous. Feathers were braided into the dark locks of his hair, shaking with every one of the skeletal horse’s heavy footfalls.
The only color in the swirling tendrils of shadows, which seemed to compose his entire being, was the shock of icy blue tattoo on his face. It stretched down the center of his forehead, severing his face in half and arching over the bridge of his nose before the glowing ink separated and curved across each of his cheekbones.
Even though there was nothing solid to his appearance, he was devastating. A translucent being that felt Other in a way I’d never dreamed of seeing.
He moved past us, a line of other horsemen following at his back on their own skeletal steeds. They each varied in appearance—different hairstyles, a different blend of shadows and light that very nearly resembled a person—but each bore that glowing blue mark on their face.
I knew without a doubt who they were: the force that our legends told would be the first to hunt down those marked by the Fae.
The Wild Hunt.
I turned to look forward, watching in horror as the man at the front of the line pulled on the reins and halted his steed. He spun quickly, his head and shoulders twisting, to stare at the back of the line. That shock of white eyes aimed toward me, feeling for just a moment as if he not only saw me, but saw straight through me to the core of everything I’d become. The burning on my neck intensified, throbbing with the cold heat of a warning.
Spinning to lean my back into the earth once more, I pulled my cloak tightly around my head and neck and hoped to suppress the feeling that lit me aflame from the inside.
The thump of a man dismounting carried through the woods, the sound echoing off the trees around us. I pressed my hand tighter against my mouth and fought back the panicked breaths that filled my lungs, while my heart felt like it drummed against my chest.
I was so certain he could hear it, positive that the creature who trudged through the underbrush at his feet sensed the pounding blood in my veins.
I waited, counting the breaths between each footstep. There were too many, too long a pause between each scuff of his foot against the ground. Either he meant to torment his prey, or he genuinely wasn’t certain where we might be hiding. I didn’t dare to hope for the latter.
Already prepared to offer my cooperation for Brann’s life, I reached over to grasp his hand in mine. Desperate to feel the warmth of my
brother’s hand against mine for one more moment before all else was lost, I hated the chill that had swept over his skin.
Another step came, bringing the spectral being closer, until I wasn’t certain he wasn’t a ghost sent from the underworld to punish me for attempting to flee.
The last step came directly above our heads, and the ground shifted with his weight. Clumps of dirt rained down, falling between the tree roots that concealed us until my cloak and hair filled with them.
We held perfectly still, waiting with bated breath for the moment he reached through the roots and tore us free from our hiding place.
I sucked in a breath of air, panic seizing my lungs as the image filled my head. Brann spun to stare at me, a silent reprimand for the too-loud noise, but the howl of a hound in the distance had covered the gasp I’d stolen at the worst possible moment.
The wind carried the sound of the hounds who’d found their prey, and guilt immediately claimed my body in a trembling embrace.
As the leader of the Wild Hunt mounted his horse and the entire group of them rode off into the distance, all I could feel was gratitude that it hadn’t been me the hounds scented out. That I would live to hide another day, even when it meant that someone else hadn’t been so fortunate.
