The Dark Lord was not what I expected. Not some grotesque demon or horned devil from a church fresco. He was beautiful in a way that made my chest hurt to look at him, like staring directly at a lightning strike. A flash of light heading straight for you but unable to move from the coming doom, caught in the beauty. His skin was the color of ash, not gray but a luminous pale that seemed to absorb and reflect light that wasn’t there. His hair fell in midnight waves to broad shoulders, framing a face carved by someone who understood that perfection requires a single flaw—in his case, a small scar that bisected his left eyebrow.
He was massive. I’d always prided myself on my height and build, on the way I towered over other men in the village. Next to him, I felt like a child. His shoulders were twice the width of mine, his frame stretched inhumanly tall so that I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes.
Those eyes. My breath caught in my throat. Where eyes should have been, there were twin pools of absolute blackness, not empty but filled with something worse than void—with conscious, hungry darkness. Flames danced within that blackness, not metaphorical but actual fire that moved and shifted without consuming its impossible fuel. Despite the absence of pupils or irises, I knew with bone-deep certainty when his gaze fixed on me.
“So,” he said, his voice like velvet dragged through gravel, impossibly deep yet crystal clear. “The latest Coventry to seek my favor.”
I meant to kneel. I’d planned to show proper deference to the power I was bargaining with. Instead, I found myself frozen, not with fear but with a kind of animal recognition. Prey before predator. Mortal before god.
His mouth curved into a smile that didn’t touch those burning eyes. “No need for kneeling, hunter. We are... old acquaintances, you and I. Or rather, your blood and mine.”
I found my voice, buried beneath layers of instinctive caution. “My lord. I’ve brought the payment as agreed.”
“Mmm.” He circled me slowly, his movements too fluid, too smooth to be human. Though he appeared to walk, his feet didn’t quite match the rhythm of his progress, as if the ground itself was an afterthought to his movement. “Enid has chosen well. You have the look of your grandfather. The same... hunger.”
The witch preened at his praise, her twisted features arranging themselves into something meant to be a smile. “He seeks the beast in the castle, my lord. The one who defies your corruption.”
“Yes.” Hades stopped directly before me, looming like a living shadow. “The last holdout in my forest. The thorns in my side. Tell me, hunter, why do you want him dead so badly? Is it truly for the girl?”
My hand tightened around the bag containing the unicorn horn. “She belongs to me,” I said simply, the words falling from my lips with the weight of absolute truth. “The beast has taken what’s mine. I want it destroyed and my property returned.”
Hades laughed then, a sound like breaking ice on a frozen river. “Property! How delightfully primitive.” He leaned closer, and I smelled sulphur and something older, something that made my nose burn and my eyes water. “Did you know,Gaspard Coventry, that half my Underworld is populated by your bloodline? Generations of Coventrys, all convinced of their right to possess, to own, to claim. All sent to me before their time by their own arrogance.”
I should have been insulted. Should have bristled at the implication that my family’s greatness was actually our downfall. Instead, a surge of pride washed through me. Of course the Coventrys dominated even in death. Of course we refused to fade meekly into old age.
“We take what we want,” I said, meeting those flame-filled eyes without flinching. “We always have.”
Something flickered in those depthless orbs—amusement, perhaps, or satisfaction. “Yes, you do. That’s what makes your line so... useful.”
There was something in his tone, something that tickled at the back of my mind. A sense that he was playing a game whose rules I didn’t fully understand. That mischievous glint behind the flames, the way his mouth curled around the word “useful”—he knew something I didn’t, something that apparently brought him no small measure of enjoyment.
“Come,” he said abruptly, turning toward the deepest part of the corrupted forest. “It’s time to begin your transformation, hunter. Time to give you the power to claim what you so desperately desire.”
Enid fell in beside him, her tattered dress floating around her ankles as if she walked through water rather than air. The darkness moved with them, a living canopy that continued to consume what little remained of the forest’s life.
I hesitated, just for a heartbeat. Alf’s words echoed in my mind:Nothing good ever comes from dealings with such darkness. Even for the one who seeks it.For the first time since making my bargain with the witches, doubt flickered in my chest. Not about whether I would reclaim Isabeau. Thatremained my unshakable purpose. But about the price I might truly be paying, beyond the unicorn horn and my service to the Dark Lord.
Behind me, I heard Alf shift nervously with the horses. Ahead, Hades and Enid moved deeper into corruption so complete that the trees were nothing but black skeletal fingers clawing at an equally black sky. I stood at the threshold between worlds. The dying but still recognizable forest at my back, and the absolute negation of life before me.
The image of Isabeau flashed in my mind. Her perfect face, crimson lips, amber eyes, her body that should have been carrying my child by now. Then, overlaid like a second exposure on a photographic plate, the beast curled around her in that stolen castle bed, its massive form defiling what should have been mine alone.
Rage rose in me again, hot and familiar and clarifying. Whatever doubts had begun to form evaporated in that heat. Whatever game Hades might be playing, whatever secrets he kept behind those burning eyes…none of it mattered. Only Isabeau mattered. Only reclaiming her from the monster that had stolen her.
I stepped forward, following the Dark Lord into the consuming darkness. Behind me, I heard Alf’s quiet, broken sob, a sound so pathetic it didn’t even deserve my contempt.
The forest closed around me like a fist, branches reaching as if to hold me back. But I was Gaspard Coventry, greatest hunter in ten provinces, future master of darkness itself. And nothing—not forest, not beast, not even gods with eyes of flame and secrets in their smiles—would keep me from what was mine.
twenty-seven
Isabeau
Morning light slanted through the broken castle window, painting Laurent’s fur in stripes of gold and shadow. I watched him pace the chamber, his massive form moving with the unthinking grace of a true animal. Night had retreated, taking with it the man I’d discovered beneath the beast, leaving behind this wild, magnificent creature who shared my bed but couldn’t share my thoughts. Last night, I’d learned his name, Laurent, and seen recognition kindle in those amber eyes so likemy own. But morning had come, as it always did, washing away our progress like footprints in the tide.
“Laurent,” I said softly, testing the name on my tongue again, savoring its shape in my mouth.
He didn’t turn. Didn’t even twitch an ear in my direction. Just continued his restless circuit of our shared chamber, claws clicking against stone, breath coming in those uneven huffs that meant his mind was elsewhere, consumed by whatever beast-thoughts filled his head during daylight hours.
“Laurent,” I tried again, louder this time, feeling foolish but needing to be certain.
