I can’t push the thought away, no matter how hard I try. They were grown for me. Shaped and forced out of his skull in a configuration my father chose.
I didn’t think about what that meant. I heard the words and ignored their meaning. I didn’t imagine what it might feel like to have bone forced through your skull in a shape someone else designed. I didn’t wonder if it hurt, if he screamed, and if he begged them to stop.
I didn’t think about it because he wasn’t a person. He was anit. Quarry. Game. A trophy to be hunted, killed, and mounted on a wall for all to admire.
But he speaks.
He speaks, and animals don’t do that.
And I was going to kill him.
My stomach heaves. I double over, one hand pressed to my mouth. The water I drank threatens to come back up. Nothing does, but the retching tears at my ribs and leaves me gasping.
He glances back at me with an expression that doesn’t change, and waits until I straighten, then starts moving again. I stumble after him, my head spinning.
All my life, I’ve been told fae are dangerous animals. Magical beasts that need to be contained, controlled, and culled. The hunts are sport. The trophies are prizes. It’s no different from hunting boar or stag.
But you can’t mount a person’sheadon your wall. You can’t track a person through the forest and put an arrow through their heart, then call it a birthday celebration.
Except that’sexactlywhat the Dell does, and exactly what I came here to do.
What does that make me?
What does that make all of us?
The trees begin to thin. More light reaches the forest floor. He’s moving differently now, stopping more often and scanning ahead with an intensity that wasn’t there before. Every few steps, his head turns, nostrils flaring, testing the wind.
His grip tightens on my arm whenever I slow.
The ground levels out, and through the gaps between trees, I catch glimpses of something. There’s a shift in the light, a change in the quality of the air. It feels different here.
He stops, staring at the trees. Tension runs through the line of his shoulders. He moves forward, pulling me with him, and then I see it.
A stone.
It juts from the earth at the base of a tree, half-hidden by moss and roots. There are marks carved into its surface—lines and whorls and angular shapes.
He stops in front of it, and the way he’s staring makes the hair rise on the back of my neck. Then he turns toward me, and my stomach drops.
Iknowthat look. I saw it this morning, right before he cut my palm open. Right before he pressed his mouth to the wound and drank. Right before he used my blood to break his collar.
His hand closes around my wrist. The wounded one. His fingers find the edges of the cut on my palm and press down.
Pain flares. Blood wells up, seeping between his fingers.
“No! Please. Not again.”
SIX
ALLERIA
I tryto resist by digging my heels into the dirt, leaning back, and attempting to make my body heavy and uncooperative. My boots slide through the leaves as he drags me forward. I might as well be fighting the tide.
“Please. Not again.”
His attention is on the stone, and he doesn’t stop until we’re right in front of it. Then he lets me go. I’m too shocked to move, watching as he raises his other hand and drags a nail across hisownpalm. Blood wells up, pooling in the cup of his hand, and he reaches for me again.
I pull back, closing my fingers into a fist. He forces them straight then presses his palm against mine. The contact shocks me. His blood against mine is hot and slick. I can feel his heartbeat or maybe it’s mine. Everything is blurring together. The heat of his blood, the sting of my wound reopening, the way his fingers lace through mine and squeeze until our palms are sealed together, until there’s no space between us. Until his blood and my blood combine.
