It sends a wave of panic through the crowd.
A few attempt to flee back the way we came, only to flail and stumble through the crowd, sending yet more hunters into the brambles.
Thorns and vines shoot out—greedy hands claiming their prizes and pulling them into the bower. More cries, more panic, and everything quickly devolves into chaos. A knife’s edge. A bloodbath waiting to spill over if nobody puts a stop to it.
“Enough!” I roar, loud enough to be heard and heeded.
A few are still too crazed to stop themselves from running, or too unsteady to save themselves from the brambles, but my words reach enough of the beings around me to quell the rising tide of disaster.
“Fall into line,” I continue, “and stay away from the damned thorns.”
Mercifully, they seem to listen, or at least to be shocked into awareness if they don’t understand what I’m saying. They seem glad to have anyone who’s able to offer some kind of scant comfort, even if that comfort comes as an command that might help them save their own skins.
Order falls over the panicked crowd. The line thins, and cooler heads prevail as we continue our grim procession into the court.
Relief washes over me. And shame.
Shame that the relief has nothing to do with the fact I might have just prevented a bloodbath, shame that I couldn’t care less for the fools who came to this dangerous realm without being able to get a damn grip and keep a handle on themselves.
That’s on them. If they’re unprepared and unequipped to survive even the walk to the fae queen’s court, I’ve got no faith at all they’ll live through the hunt to come.
No, I’m much more relieved for one life in particular I might have just saved.
Not that I have any idea if I did, though my instincts say yes. They hum and buzz just as brightly, just as fiercely, and I can’t imagine that would be the case if she somehow ended up as one of the poor souls lost to the queen’s brambles.
Just the idea of it sends a renewed wave of panicked urgency through my veins.
But I hardly have time to dwell on it as I reach the heart of the fae queen’s court.
A monstrous place. A place of nightmares.
The bower’s tunnel opens into a wide central hall. Soaring into a ceiling made of more dead thorns and bare branches, a heavy pall of decay permeates the space. Thick and oppressive, like being buried beneath feet of forest floor rot. I try not to inhale too deeply as I fall into line with the rest of the hunters fanning out before the high dais in the middle of the room.
I search the crowd for my witch, every inch of me humming with the certainty she’s near.
Only… I still find nothing. No sign of her. No whisper of her magick or a single glimpse of the black cloak she was wearing the last time I saw her.
But she’s here. I know she’s here.
Somewhere amidst this nightmare, she’s here.
Perhaps wearing a disguise forged from the magick of her realm, staying out of sight. The thought draws a smile to my lips and a burst of gratitude to the center of my chest.
Smart, my mate, to hide her true form.
Here, in this cursed place, it’s the best strategy she could have chosen. Even if not knowing where she is drives me mad with worry, I can at least be grateful she’s protecting herself.
A hush falls over the crowd. A taut, tense silence as we wait for the monarch to speak.
The queen sits on a throne of thorns. Towering high above the center of the brambles on her dais, she’s flanked by guards and courtiers. A grim retinue, the assembled fae watch the guests in their midst with too-keen eyes. Hungry. Greedy. Like they’re imagining a thousand ways they mightentertainus.
Worst of all is their leader.
Skin a sickly pale and eyes a deep, endless black, her features are sharp and merciless. She’s clothed in more black vines and thorns, which unsettlingly seem to sprout from her own skin. They wrap around her neck, into her hair, twisting together to make a many-spired crown. When she shifts in her seat, they shift with her, and I watch with morbid fascination as one rises from the floor of the dais and settles itself on her shoulder, brushing against her ear for a moment before it retreats.
Afterthe queen gives it a little pat. Like it’s a beloved pet that’s just performed some trick.
She surveys her domain, lips curling back into a humorless smile that exposes rows of sharp teeth.
