“The pleasure of the losing is in the finding.” I refused to show fear. “Or so I’ve been told.”
He stopped an arm’s length away. He appraised me calmly, like a falcon who had caught sight of its prey but was in no hurry to stoop.
“You hide your face.” His voice was husky, as if he didn’t use it often. “Which makes me think you are not lost at all, but rather wish not to be found.”
“Maybe I’m unbearably ugly.”
His expression shifted.
“Loathly or not,” he said, “this is no place to be found—nor lost.”
“You already said that.”
“I did not think you were listening.”
I dared a sideways glance, meeting eyes cold enough to freeze my blood. Silence strung a bow between us.
“Tell me what you are,” he offered, without lowering the arrow still trained on my face, “and I will consider letting you leave this place alive.”
“If I knew,” I honestly said, “I’d tell you. But as far as I know, I’m just a girl. I’m justme.”
He considered this.
“And you?” I dared to ask. “What are you?”
My boldness made him smile. His teeth glittered white in the moonlight, his canines a little longer than they ought to be.
“When this place needs guarding, I am its guardian. And I am not fond of intruders.”
My fear lurched toward terror.
The Gentry guard reached out to grasp a dark curl falling out of my braid, sliding it between his fingers. Tattoos twined above his leather vambraces toward his sculpted bicep. In the drifting moon shadows, they looked like the pinions of a great black bird.
“Perhaps I should have been more clear.” His voice rasped with pitiless amusement. “When I said I do not like intruders, what I meant was: I promise to give you a head start.”
A lifetime of training had taught me many things. It had taught me the value of my instincts. It had taught me when I was outmatched and outwitted. It had taught me the surest way to entice a predator to pounce was to turn my back on it.
It had also taught me that sometimes, all there was to do was run.
I had never run like I ran now.
There was no thought for form or style, only speed. My legs pumped beneath me; my breath gulped in my lungs; the world went black and silver as the forest swallowed me up. The crash of my steps in the underbrush was too loud. Strange specters and phantoms paced me in the dark.
Emaciated foxes creeping on elongated, soot-stained paws. They carried bloodied scalps between their teeth, matted hair trailing through silver leaves.
Skeleton birds with smoke for feathers and daggers for beaks.
Men without faces, girls without eyes, beasts without mouths.
But though I strained my ears for the sound of my pursuer—his footfalls, the twang of an arrow on a bow, theshinkof steel leaving a scabbard—I heard nothing.
After what felt like an eternity—or, perhaps, mere moments—I reached the stand of ancient ash trees. The bridge over the stream. The willow, with her tangled tresses. The Gate, its borders a sullen shimmer.
I slowed. And finally heard the footsteps I’d listened for—the crash of my pursuer through the undergrowth. Fear burned away my exhaustion. I closed my eyes, lunged for the bridge.
A hand on my shoulder gripped me, stopped me. Spun me.
Rogan.
