The impact is a white-hot explosion of pain that shudders up from my shoulder and through my entire skeleton. The sound is the scream of a mountain dying. The wall does not just break; it detonates. Bricks, mortar, and chunks of foundation stone fly outward into the darkness beyond. Dust and grit fill the air, a choking cloud that stings my eyes.
For a moment, I am deaf and blind, the agony in my shoulder a roaring fire. But then the dust begins to settle.
Where the wall had been, there is now a gaping, black hole. A tunnel. It is not the clean, man-made passage she expected, but a raw, ragged wound leading into the earth, choked with a thick web of ancient roots. The clean, cold scent of the Oshta wilds washes over me, a balm on my battered senses. We have a path.
I turn and grab her, my massive claw surprisingly gentle as I lift her and set her on her feet, pushing her toward the opening. "Go," the word is a guttural rasp, more of a feeling than a sound.
She does not hesitate. She scrambles into the root-choked darkness. I follow, my huge frame barely fitting, the roots and splintered stone scraping my back and shoulders. We crawl into the suffocating blackness of the earth, leaving the sounds of the hunt behind us in the ruined cellar.
We are just inside, the sounds of the estate muffled by the earth, when a new sound slices through the night. It is a howl, long and mournful and utterly unnatural. It is not the sound of a wolf or a dog. It is the cry of something made, not born, a creature of dark magic and relentless purpose.
The first of Lord Jildred’s enchanted Batlaz hounds. The hunt has begun.
7
DINA
The tunnel spits us out into the night. We crawl from the suffocating darkness of the earth into the vast, open darkness of the world, and for a moment, I cannot breathe. After a lifetime spent under ceilings and in corridors, the sheer, crushing immensity of the sky is akin to a physical weight. The air is blade-sharp and cold, slicing into my lungs, a clean shock after the dust and rot of the estate. It smells of wild grasses, of damp earth, and of a freedom so absolute it is terrifying.
A moon, a sliver of polished bone, hangs in a sea of glittering, unfamiliar stars, casting the world in shades of silver and deep, bruised purple. We are in the windswept plains of Oshta. The grass is long and pale, hissing as the wind sweeps down from the unseen mountains, and great monoliths of dark stone jut from the earth like the teeth of some long-dead god. There are no walls here. No guards. No masters. My stomach plummets, a dizzying spiral of elation and stark, primal fear. We are free. We are utterly, hopelessly exposed.
I look to my protector, my monstrous savior, expecting to see the same fierce purpose that drove him through the estate. Instead, what I see stops my heart.
He stands in the small clearing, turning in a slow, clumsy circle. His massive head is raised, his nostrils flaring as he drinks in the thousand new scents of the wild. His movements are jerky, uncertain. The ten-foot-tall engine of destruction who tore through armored guards and shattered stone walls now seems… lost. The sheer openness of the world, the endless horizon, seems to have overwhelmed him. He is a creature born for the cage, and I have led him into a desert.
It’s then, in the unforgiving moonlight, that I truly see the price of our escape. Adrenaline and darkness had hidden the worst of it, but now, it is impossible to ignore. He is not only a monster; he is a wounded one. Deep, ragged gashes circle his wrists, his ankles, and his throat where the enchanted shackles exploded from his flesh. They are not clean wounds; they are raw and torn, oozing dark blood that mats the coarse hair on his limbs. His breathing is a ragged, guttural rasp, and a fine tremor runs through his entire, impossibly large frame. He is exhausted.
My own aches and the burning agony on my cheek fade to a dull, distant ache. All I can see are his wounds. All I can feel is a fierce, protective ache in my own chest that mirrors the pain I see in him. He fought for me. He broke himself to save me. I cannot let him fall now.
A memory surfaces from a life I barely remember. My mother, her hands stained with green from crushing leaves, her smile gentle as she dabbed a soothing paste onto a cut on my knee.“The earth provides, little one,”her voice is a whisper in my mind.“You just have to know how to listen to what it offers.”
My gaze sweeps the moon-drenched landscape. The slaves whispered stories of Oshta, of its harsh, unforgiving nature. But my mother taught me its secrets. My eyes search the clumps of pale grass, the shadows at the base of the standing stones. And there, its silvery, star-shaped leaves unmistakable even in the gloom, I see it.Fylvek. A common weed, but its leaves, whencrushed, release a thick, cool sap that staunches bleeding and numbs pain.
My fingers dig into the rough spun fabric of my tunic, the only solid thing in a world turned to chaos. I have to get closer to him. I have to touch him. My heart drums against my ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm. He is not the calm, watchful creature from the kennels. He is a disoriented, wounded animal. This could be the last mistake I ever make.
But I cannot leave him like this.
I gather a handful of the tough, silvery leaves and find a small, bowl-shaped rock. Using another stone, I begin to crush them. The rhythmic scrape and crunch of my work is the only sound besides the hissing of the wind. A thick, emerald-green paste begins to form, its scent sharp and clean, like mint and fresh soil.
When I have enough, I take a breath that does nothing to steady me and rise. I approach him slowly, my hands held out where he can see them, the green paste a stark offering in my palm. "I'm not going to hurt you," I whisper, the wind stealing the words from my lips. "This will help."
He stops his restless turning and watches me, his head lowered, the red embers of his eyes glowing with an unnerving intensity. He is utterly still, a mountain of tense muscle. I stop a few feet away, my heart in my throat. I can go no further. He has to come to me. He has to trust me.
For a long, agonizing moment, he just watches, his great chest rising and falling. Then, slowly, deliberately, he lowers himself to a crouch, a gesture of submission so profound from a creature of such power that it makes my eyes burn with tears. He extends his left arm, the gashes on his wrist a horrific, bloody ruin in the moonlight.
“Okay,” I whisper, my voice trembling as badly as my hands. “Just… just hold still now. I’m not going to hurt you.” I takea shaky step closer, the small rock with the green paste feeling impossibly fragile in my grip. “This will help, I promise. My mother… she used to say the earth provides what we need.”
My hand trembles as I reach out. The electric shock of the first touch, of my small, human fingers against his coarse, strangely warm skin, jolts through my entire body. I begin to gently, carefully, apply the cool paste to the raw wound, and a low growl reverberates in his chest.
I flinch back, my heart seizing. “I’m sorry,” I gasp, my eyes wide. “I know. I know it hurts, I’m trying to be gentle.” He does not move, just watches me, his red eyes burning in the dark. He holds himself perfectly still, enduring my touch, trusting me not to cause him more harm.
The silence feels wrong, so I fill it with my voice, a quiet, shaky thread in the vast, windy darkness. “It’s calledfylvek. The leaves have a cooling sap.” My movements become more confident as I work, smearing the soothing poultice over the torn flesh on his wrists, then his ankles. The growl in his chest subsides into a low, pained rumble. “It stings at first, but it will help the bleeding and… and take the worst of the pain away.” I look up at his monstrous face, at the flicker of something other than rage in his eyes. “You were so brave. Back there. In the estate… I… I thought I was dead. But you… you saved me.” The words sound so small, so inadequate for the magnitude of what he did.
I move to the terrible, raw collar of muscle around his neck. To reach it, I have to stand on my toes, my hands braced against his massive shoulders. He is a wall of living, breathing heat, and under my palms, I can feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart. “Almost done now,” I murmur, my voice barely audible over the wind. “You’re holding so still. Thank you.”
When I am finished, I step back, my hands slick with green paste and his dark blood. He looks at me, and the red hazein his eyes seems clearer than I have ever seen it. A moment of connection passes between us, a silent acknowledgment of a debt paid and a trust earned. We are no longer slave and monster. We are survivors.
The moment is shattered by a sound that slices through the night.
