My knife hooked into it’s meaty neck, hitting the large artery to help it die faster. My arrow pierced his chest, but his large sizeprevented me from getting to his heart. It was more humane to stab him again than to let him suffer longer.
Three months of scarce animal populations this winter had hardened me, transformed me from the soft-handed prince my father wished me to be into something else entirely. A hunter with callouses to prove my worth. The elk had been clever, leading me through ravines and across frozen streams, but in the end, my arrow had found its mark. Just like it would when I finally faced Gaspard Coventry for the title of best in the land.
“Your Highness,” one of my companions called, trudging through knee-high snow toward me. “A magnificent kill. Surely the largest of the season.”
I didn’t look up. Just kept my hand on the cooling flank of the beast, feeling its life fade away beneath my palm. They always did this. Approached with deference, with titles, with careful praise meant to remind me of the wall that stood between us. Prince Alain Legrand. Heir to the throne of Durand. Future ruler of lands I’d barely seen beyond hunting expeditions and formal processions.
“Strip the carcass,” I said, finally standing after it fully fell into an eternal rest. “We’ll distribute the meat to the eastern villages. They’ve had the worst of the winter.”
My companions exchanged glances, probably wondering why a prince concerned himself with feeding peasants when the castle larders overflowed with preserved game and imported delicacies. But they didn’t understand what drove me. Couldn’t comprehend the hollow space behind my ribs where my sister’s absence gnawed like hunger.
Odette.Missing for eleven years now. Vanished on her sixteenth birthday without a trace, leaving behind nothing but whispers of witchcraft and rumors of beasts in the night. Father had sent search parties. Mother had consulted oracles in secret, defying grandfather’s ban on magical practices. I had beenthirteen, too young to do anything but watch my family fracture along the fault lines of grief.
But I wasn’t a fool-brained boy anymore. I was four and twenty, and I’d spent the past eight years becoming something my tutors never intended. A hunter skilled enough to track a ghost through a blizzard, a soldier proud enough to stand on the front lines with his men.
“The Tournament of Champions begins in three weeks,” I said, pulling my hunting knife from its sheath. The blade caught the winter sunlight, flashing like a threat. “Gaspard Coventry will be there.”
My closest guard, a grizzled veteran named Thibaut, cleared his throat. “Your Highness, the king might not approve of your participation. The tournament isn’t meant for—”
“For royalty?” I finished for him, driving my blade into the elk’s belly with practiced precision. Steam rose from its innards, carrying the copper scent of blood and the earthy musk of wild game. “Tell me, which nobles attend the tournament each year?”
Thibaut shifted uncomfortably. “Many of the northern houses, sire.”
“And what do they do there, besides drink themselves stupid and wager coin they’ve never earned?”
“They... observe, Your Highness.”
“They observe,” I repeated, slicing through sinew and membrane with methodical skill. “They watch men like Coventry collect glory while they sit on cushions with wine-stained teeth. They clap their soft hands and pretend they understand valor.” I looked up at Thibaut, feeling my anger rise like bile. “I will not be one of them.”
No one responded. They knew better than to argue when that particular edge entered my voice. It was the same tone that had silenced my father’s objections when I’d announced my intention to lead hunting expeditions. The same cold certaintythat had shut down my mother’s tears when I’d begun training with sword and bow from dawn until my hands bled.
I continued field dressing the elk, movements automatic after so many hunts. Three months of high snow had provided ample opportunity to perfect my technique. I’d killed seventeen elk, twelve deer, and a snow bear that had been terrorizing the northern village. Each kill a step toward becoming the hunter I needed to be to face what lay ahead.
Because somewhere out there, beyond the safe boundaries of Durand, my sister was waiting. I felt it in my bones, in the strange dreams that plagued my sleep for the last few months.
Dreams of amber eyes watching from shadows. Dreams of roses drinking blood like wine from a man in the center. Dreams of a female’s voice calling my name from behind walls I couldn’t breach. I believed it to be Odette, though I couldn’t prove it.
And then there was Gaspard Coventry. The man whose reputation as the greatest hunter in ten provinces made peasants speak his name in reverent whispers. The same man who’d returned from a two-month absence last month with haunted eyes and a limp he tried to hide. Something had broken him out there in the wilds, but it hadn’t stopped him from claiming three more hunting trophies since winter’s arrival.
I needed to beat him. Needed to prove I was better, stronger, more worthy of the title he carried so proudly. Not for glory—though I wouldn’t pretend the thought didn’t warm me on cold nights—but because if anyone knew the secrets of tracking impossible prey through forbidden lands, it would be Coventry. So if I gained the skill to beat him, maybe I could prove my mission to find my lost sister worthy to my father.
“The meat’s ready,” I announced, stepping back from my bloody work. My hands were stained crimson to the wrists despite my gloves, the cold turning my fingers stiff and clumsy. “Tie it to the pack horses.”
As my men moved to follow orders, I walked a few paces away, seeking a moment’s privacy in the vast whiteness. The forest stretched around us like a sleeping giant, branches heavy with snow, silence broken only by the occasional crack of ice-laden limbs surrendering to gravity.
I had spent my entire life being told what I couldn’t do. Couldn’t leave the castle without guards. Couldn’t speak to commoners as equals. Couldn’t train with real weapons until I was fifteen. Couldn’t search for my sister because it wasn’t ‘dignified’ for a prince to comb the wilderness like a common tracker.
Rules. Expectations. Limitations.
I rubbed my bloody hands together, watching red flakes fall to stain the perfect white beneath my boots. I wasn’t my father, content to rule from behind stone walls. Wasn’t my grandfather, with his fear of magic so profound he’d outlawed it throughout our lands. I was something new. Something forged in the crucible of loss and tempered by determination.
“Your Highness?” Thibaut approached cautiously, keeping a respectful distance. “The men are ready. We should return to camp before nightfall.”
I looked toward the west, where the winter sun was already sinking toward distant mountains. Beyond those peaks lay territories I’d never seen. Villages and forests and plains that existed only as ink on my tutors’ maps.
And somewhere in that vastness was my sister. Was Gaspard’s secret to being the best. Was the truth about the darkness that seemed to be spreading across our lands like ink in water.
“Yes,” I said, turning back toward our horses. “We’ll return to camp.”
