On it: two knives. One with a white handle, one with black. Both gleam in the torchlight, their blades so thin they seem almost not there.
Rhett picks up the white-handled knife. He mutters something in Latin, the syllables clipped and elegant. The words are for the crowd, not for us.
Colton releases my hand and holds it palm-up.
“Ready?” he says.
I nod.
He takes the knife and draws it across my palm, clean and fast. I gasp at the shock, the pain bright and animal, but it’s over before I process it. Blood wells, beads, drips onto the stone.
He sets down the knife, takes my wrist and angles it over the boulder. He squeezes, and the blood spatters in a red arc.
Rhett hands Colton the black-handled knife. This one looks heavier, the blade a little longer. Colton rolls up his sleeve and slices his palm, slower than he did mine. He doesn’t flinch. The blood runs down his arm, dark in the silver light.
He presses our hands together, palm to palm. Our blood mixes, trickles down to the stone. I watch the red mingle, a weird little river that runs onto the ancient stone below.
Rhett recites another string of Latin, this time louder.
Colton breaks the contact, then smears his thumb in the blood pooling in his hand. He reaches up and draws on my skin.
From the feel, it’s a heart.
The crowd reacts. Not with applause or noise, but with a ripple, a pulse. I feel it in my bones.
He leans in, close enough that I can smell the sweat and copper on his skin.
He whispers, “Just run, let me do the rest.”
I look at him, the way his eyes are dilated, the way his jaw trembles. I want to say something, anything, but my mouth won’t work.
He steps back.
Rhett wipes the blades clean, tucks them back into the box. He looks at me, then at Colton, and for a second, he smiles. It’s not a nice smile.
The ritual is over. The world holds its breath.
I am blood-marked, crown of flowers, white dress surely used to symbolize purity of some kind.
I am runner and prey, but I am also his.
“The Hunt will begin at the horn. Eve, you will run until sunrise, or until Colton catches and claims you. The claiming will be filmed, it will be performed in front of the Feral Boys as witnesses, as the Law commands.”
Sex… publicly?
I want to vomit, but instead I nod.
“Very good.” Rhett says and steps back.
The torches are almost gone, just embers in the grass when it begins for real.
A figure in a black robe steps out of the dark, his face hidden. He lifts a horn to his lips, old and battered, the end flared outwards.
The note that rips the air is prehistoric, the kind of sound you feel in your bones before you hear it with your ears. It doesn’t rise, doesn’t fall, just detonates and echoes off the forest beyond.
I shudder.
He lowers the horn. For a second, his head tilts like a wolf scenting blood.
