twenty-six
Gaspard
The forest’s edge reeked of death and rot, the stench of decay thick enough to coat my tongue with each breath. Perfect. I’d always found beauty in destruction, in the way nature yielded to greater forces.
These dying trees, their bark peeling like diseased skin, were nothing compared to what I’d become. Power throbbed in the wound across my palm, a constant reminder of the pact I’d made. Three days of hard riding, barely stopping to eat or piss,and now I stood exactly where the witch had directed, at the threshold where corruption had eaten the forest alive. Where my transformation would begin in earnest.
Behind me, Alf shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the sound of his nervous breathing grating against my ears. He’d been quiet most of our journey, a welcome change from his usual prattling, but the silence had its own accusation. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching—part fear, part disgust, all judgment—made me want to carve out his eyes with my hunting knife.
“Stay with the horses,” I said without turning, my voice rough from disuse. “This is not thy business.”
“Master Gaspard,” he began, then faltered as I turned just enough to fix him with a glare. The scar on my palm pulsed in time with my irritation, sending tendrils of dark pleasure up my arm. I’d noticed that happening more often since our visit to the bog witches. My emotions physically manifesting through the mark of my bargain.
“Please,” he tried again, his round face flushed and sweating despite the chill in the air. “Reconsider this path. Nothing good ever comes from dealings with such darkness. Even for the one who seeks it.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Alf, with his soft hands and softer belly, presuming to lecture me on the consequences of power.
“Nothing good?” I echoed, turning fully to face him now. “Tell me, Alf, what ‘good’ has come from playing by their rules? Following their laws? Respecting their boundaries?” My voice rose with each question, fueled by the rage I’d nursed since seeing Isabeau in that monster’s bed. “The beast has what’s mine. My bride. My future. My right.”
“She ran from thee,” Alf whispered, the words barely audible but landing like blows nonetheless. “Perhaps that should tell thee something.”
My hand closed around his throat before I’d consciously decided to move. I squeezed just enough to feel his pulse hammering against my palm, to watch his eyes widen with the realization of his mistake.
“She ran because she’s confused,” I hissed, my face inches from his. “Because her power makes her think she’s above her station. Because that’s what scared rabbits do when they don’t understand their place in the natural order.”
I released him with a shove that sent him stumbling backward, nearly tripping over an exposed root. His hand went to his throat, rubbing the red marks my fingers had left. The fear in his eyes satisfied something dark inside me, something that had always been there but now grew stronger by the hour.
“Isabeau belongs to me,” I continued, each word deliberate and cold. “The beast that has her is already a dead thing walking. It simply doesn’t know it yet.”
Alf’s eyes dropped to my scarred palm, then back to my face. Whatever he saw there made him take another step back.
“I’ll... I’ll watch the horses,” he said, his voice small and defeated.
I turned back to the forest without acknowledging his surrender. He didn’t matter. None of them did. Not the villagers with their simpering praise, not the tavern girls with their desperate attempts to catch my eye, not even Alf with his years of loyal service. They were background noise in the symphony of my purpose.
Only Isabeau mattered. Only reclaiming what was mine.
The air shifted suddenly, growing colder, heavier. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as a presence materializedamong the dying trees. Not a physical arrival, but a gathering of shadow and malice that coalesced into Enid’s familiar form.
She rode a wave of darkness that seemed to devour what little life remained in the forest. Where it touched, the already diseased trees crumbled to ash, their decayed forms simply giving up the pretense of existence in her presence. Birds fell dead from branches, their small bodies hitting the ground with soft thuds that somehow carried over the unnatural silence that had fallen.
“Coventry,” she greeted, her voice like glass dragged across stone. “Right on time. How... obedient.”
I refused to show the discomfort her presence inspired. Instead, I inclined my head in the barest acknowledgment, keeping my posture straight and proud.
“I’m a man of my word,” I replied evenly.
My hand went to the saddlebag I’d carried personally, unwilling to trust even Alf with its precious contents. Inside, wrapped in black velvet, lay the unicorn horn. I’d left the rest of the skeleton at my home, to be collected by the witches’ servants later, but the horn—the most powerful piece—I’d kept close.
Enid’s eyes, those pools of swirling purple, fixed on the bag with naked hunger. “A gift?” she breathed. “I can feel its power even through the leather.”
Before I could tell her that I brought my payment with me, an eery sensation swept over the area. The darkness around her feet rippled and spread, climbing the trees around us like living ink. As it rose, the already dim evening light faded completely, plunging us into a night that had nothing to do with the sun’s position. This was a darkness beyond absence of light. This was negation, a void that swallowed everything it touched.
“He comes,” Enid whispered, her voice suddenly reverent.
The shadows between the trees deepened, gathered, and took shape. At first, I thought it was simply a trick of myeyes adjusting to the unnatural darkness. Then I realized the blackness itself was moving with purpose, with intelligence, forming a silhouette that grew more solid with each passing heartbeat.
He stepped from between two trees that had been twenty paces apart, the laws of space apparently as meaningless to him as those of light. One moment there was nothing, and the next, he stood before me, real and impossible all at once.
