The four of us wait patiently. Carver takes a seat on the damp cobblestone, crossing his legs like he’s a child preparing for story time. His pale eyes blaze with magic, hungry for what’s about to come.
Jeriko does the opposite; she paces, her gaze eating up every detail of the night. Always so impatient.
Nollix leans against the brick building, his attention fixed on me like he might consume me with just a dark look. Muscles stretch the shirt that was once white but is now stained brown with dirt as he folds his arms over his chest. If it wasn’t for his shirt, he’d probably blend in with the darkness. Between his dark complexion and jet-black hair, it’s the perfect camouflage. Not that he needs it when we can’t be seen anyway.
On silent steps, I journey closer to the heart of the fight that’s about to ensue.
I hate my job. I hate being a part of the Wild Hunt. But these dark and terrible moments are the only time I’m allowed around living, breathing people.
And I won’t waste it by sitting around and waiting for death to fall.
“Don’t touch them, Vi,” Nollix warns, his deep and mocking voice echoing up the tall buildings.
“She knows.” Carver vouches for me. I almost snort at his confidence but manage to only give them a smirk.
“And you know this because you two have had so many stimulating conversations.” Nollix’s tone holds the annoyance he always seems to have for me. The first day we met, he tried to speak to me, only to be blatantly ignored. It only took that one time to piss him off enough to never try again.
Their banter slips away from my thoughts the closer and closer I come to the beautiful, daring woman about to lose her life.
Carefully, I slip between the gang of five who are crowding around the victim. The woman’s features are set in an assured look of self-confidence that has me edging nearer to her. I’m an unseen audience in what is sure to be her bloody death.
Right now, it’s just her and me, though. Her eyes are a honey color, alive with adrenaline that I can practically feel kicking through my own veins. She’s tall, somewhere between mine and Jeriko’s height, with no weapons to aid her. Tonight’s chase will end quickly, it seems. I stalk around her lithe body, slipping through the smallest bit of space between her and the walls as I measure her up.
If this were a different world and I were a simple princess, who would she be in my life? A seamstress? My gaze sweeps over her hands which open and close at her sides. She doesn’t appear to have seamstress hands that have been poked by needles enough to callous. Her skin and clothes are clean, unblemished.
My fingertips ghost over the tension held in her shoulder blades.
Perhaps a lady of the court in the wrong place at the wrong time? Could we have been friends?
“No touching, Violence,” Nollix growls once more.
I shoot him a look from beneath my lashes, and he holds my gaze for so long, my heartbeat begins to pound in my ears.
I’m not a child that needs to be scolded, I think but I’m sure my expression says it all.
“Something’s here,” one of the attackers says in a terrified whisper.
Hmm. I oddly like when they can sense us. The Wild Hunt lives an invisible life between the living and dead. Technically, I am alive. My heart typically pounds a quiet and forgotten beat; still, we are not a part of the living. We may as well be dead. Some people, like this one—those more in tune with nature—can sense us.
I turn to him, the one with the wide eyes, searching sightlessly about for the huntress right before him. Without lifting a finger, I release a breeze of wafting magic around him, caressing the hem of his dark shirt and lifting his hair in a heavy gust of wind.
“Did your mother never tell you not to play with your food?” Jeriko asks with a manic smile.
The three of them stand several yards away, watching and waiting and hoping and praying the night will bring them what they want. That it’ll end soon enough.
While I want it to go on forever.
Their presence alone gives new breath to my lungs. It’s exhilarating. The taste of their fear, the warmth of a brewing fight, the combination of it all as it heads into one big burst of exhilaration as souls are swallowed up.
“Seriously, this shit’s giving me the creeps,” the nervous man says, taking a step back from the group.
“Then let’s get it over with. Teach Cameron here not to steal from the crown ever again.”
The crown?
I turn to the victim. Cameron. Her eyes lower, and for an instant, I wonder what she took from my father.
But there isn’t time to dwell on those facts. Not when death is coming.
