The Huntress
“Ask ten hunters to map the Labyrinth, and you'll receive ten different charts, each sworn true. The Trickster delights in personal torment—bending walls for the claustrophobic, endless paths for the impatient, shadows for those who fear the dark. Your greatest weakness becomes his favorite toy.”
—WARNING PASSED AMONG THE ASH KINGDOM CHAMPIONS
Chapter 1
Zyla
The secret of a good hunt is patience. But even better? Camouflage. Pretending one is prey instead of a predator, disguised in soft silks with braided hair and a poisoned kiss.”
—ZYLA BASHKIRIA, AUTHOR OFA BRIDE’S GUIDE TO HUNTING THE HUNTER
Awareness comes slowly, like thedrip, drip, dripof water down the walls surrounding me. I’m not entirely certain when I slip over the boundary of consciousness, but between one blink and the next, I find myself staring at a dark ceiling.
Where am I?
This is a world of darkness and silence—except for the throbbing in my head.
Every inch of my bones feels like lead. The taste of something foul lingers in my mouth like an unwelcome guest. I’ve suffered mornings like this before—most often following a heavy night in the village tavern—but I can’t say that I enjoyed last night half as much, though I don’t truly recall.
But I can’t keep lying here.
Rolling over with a groan, I nearly fall off the bed as I blink groggy eyes open. My hand slaps down, finding smooth, polished stone.No. Not a bed. I’m lying on a stone bier, the edges of the marble cut sharp and square.
And not a hangover.
Memory comes streaming back like punches of light—the knights in their white robes opening the doors to the harem and standing there in shock as they beheld the empty chambers and the bare windows, bereft of their protective iron-bars. The anger on the Knight Protector’s face when he came to see the truth for himself and found only me.
“I am ready to be sacrificed,” I told him boldly, hands raw from the mix of powders I’d used to set off small reactions at the base of the iron bars, so the other women could pry them free and escape.
Words streamed into one another as the knights began to shout, but the Knight Protector was the loudest.
I would pay for my insolence. He would punish me himself, his fists curling into enormous slabs shivering with the urge to drive them into my soft flesh.
He would?—
What do you mean he could not touch me?
“The ceremony,” one acolyte whispered. “We have not the time. The sacrifice must be made. And she is all that remains to sacrifice to the Labyrinth.”
My heartbeat starts to pound behind my ribs as everything comes rushing back.
The beating of drums.
The wine they’d given me.
The ceremony.
The way the Knight Protector had stared at me as if committing my face to memory, as if promising himself that one day he would see me broken and bloodied for my defiance.
And the way I’d blown him one last mocking kiss before the darkness swallowed me whole.
I have no intention of ever returning to that world.
As if to taunt me, a crack of lightning shatters the night, whipping through the air and lighting the room I sit within. The shock of after-image leaves me half blind. It draws me back into the moment, my victorious moment.
I made it.
