I close my eyes, fill my lungs, and on the exhale, the world splits open.
My body stays where it is, twigs digging into my back, the earth cold beneath me. But layered over it, I’m somewhere else, looking through eyes that aren’t mine.
Sliding into a mind requires patience. Push too fast, and the connection shatters. Too slow, and you skim along the surface forever, never sinking deep enough to achieve anything. The trick is settling in gradually, letting yourself become part of someone’s awareness, so slowly, they never notice.
Most mortals have no training in mental defense. They don’t need it. The fae who might have invaded their minds are collared or dead, and human mages care only about bindings and wards and discovering new ways to hurt us. It never occurs to them that something could slip past their defenses without tripping a single alarm.
Their arrogance is their oldest weakness.
I ease into place and wait for the connection to stabilize, then separate what belongs to her body from what belongs to mine.
There’s the sense of movement first. The sway of a horse, and the rhythm of hooves on earth. Wind pulls at her hair, tugging loose strands across the field of vision. The smell of woodsmoke drifts from somewhere ahead, mixed with horses, sweat, and the scent of forest.
Then emotion. Relief, fear, and shame tangled together, knotted so tight I can’t tell where one ends and another begins.
I let it wash past. What she feels doesn’t matter. What matters is whatIcan see.
The horse crests a low rise, and the Dell spreads out below.
The main gates stand open, with two guards flanking them. They’re armed, stances relaxed, their attention turned inward toward the courtyard instead of outward watching for threats. It probably hasn’t occurred to them that I might come back.
Beyond the gates is the lodge, with its stable and smithy, and scattered outbuildings, and set off to one side of the courtyard, the fenced enclosure.
Everything else falls away.
The post stands in the center of the pen, chains and iron rings bolted to the wood.
Four days ago I stood there, chained in place, while Alleria and her party inspected their quarry. I kept my back to them, refusing to let them see my face, but I heard everything. Her intake of breath when she saw the spread of the rack they’d grown on me for her, while the huntmaster explained what a fine trophy I’d make.
Her attention skitters away from the enclosure now. She doesn’t want to look. She doesn’t want to remember standing at that fence with excitement bright in her eyes.
I hold my focus while her gaze slides past, taking note of the height of the fence, the distance from the post to the gate, and the way the gate stands open, waiting for the next fae to be displayed there.
The horses stop in the center of the courtyard, and the ordered routine of the Dell dissolves into chaos. I track movements through the crowd. There are four guards visible, their eyes on the horses. If I were there in body instead of riding behind her eyes, I could easily have walked through the front gates at this moment, and no one would have noticed.
Humans. So confident in their cages and collars that they forget what happens when the lock breaks.
A male pushes through the press of people, shoving past those who don’t move fast enough, and when he reaches the horse, he pulls her down, wrapping his arms around her so tightly I feel her ribs compress through the connection.
“Alleria.” His voice breaks on her name. “Gods, girl!”
I know that voice. He called her name in the forest. Now I have a face to go with it.
She sinks into him, and the bond connecting my mind to hers floods with warmth and safety. I let her have the moment, and while she’s lost in the reunion, I look at the courtyard over his shoulder.
A woman approaches with a blanket. Two more guards come out of the lodge. The path to the stable stands clear, and beyond it, the gap between outbuildings that leads to the back of the property. Then another figure comes toward her, and my focus sharpens.
Cowen.
The huntmaster straightens his coat as he walks. His face wears an expression of relief, but I can see the calculation underneath. He’s thinking about cost and how to present this so the Dell’s reputation survives intact.
He bows when he reaches her.
Seven days ago, this man stood and watched while bone erupted through my skull. He looked at me the way a butcher looks at an animal being brought for slaughter—assessing how much money could be made from the carcass.
He’s wearing the same expression now.
My body in the hedgerow goes rigid, fingers digging into the earth, responding to the surge of rage. I have to wrench my attention away before it bleeds through the bond.
