For now. But the Tournament of Champions was coming, and with it, my chance to prove I deserved more than a title handeddown through bloodlines. My chance to become the hunter who could track a ghost through the wilderness and bring her home.
Even if it meant breaking every rule my family had lived by for generations.
The campfire spit and hissed as fat from the elk dripped into the flames, the scent of roasting meat fighting a losing battle against the pervasive stink of rot that leaked from the forest’s edge. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Every man in our hunting party had positioned themselves with their backs to the trees, creating a half-circle that left the forest side of our camp conspicuously empty. Twenty seasoned hunters, men who’d faced bears and wolves without flinching, and not one of them would look directly into those twisted shadows. Not even to check for threats. Especially not to check for threats.
“Strange choice for a campsite,” I said, deliberately loud enough to carry. “So close to the black forest.”
The conversation around the fire died instantly. Men who moments before had been boasting of past hunts and future conquests suddenly found great interest in their boots or the meat turning on makeshift spits. Even Thibaut, who’d stood against a charging boar for me last autumn, wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“It was the flattest ground, Your Highness,” one of the younger hunters finally offered, his voice tight with forced casualness. “And sheltered from the wind.”
I tore a piece of bread from the loaf beside me, watching the way the men’s shoulders hunched forward, as if trying to make themselves smaller targets for whatever might be watching from those diseased trees. Their fear was a tangible thing, thick enough to taste on the back of my tongue.
“Tell me about it,” I said, gesturing toward the darkness with my chunk of bread. “The forest. What do you know?”
Silence stretched, punctuated only by the crack and pop of burning wood. The men exchanged glances, a silent negotiation of who would speak first, who would risk acknowledging what they all pretended not to see.
“It’s not a place for men, sire,” an older hunter finally muttered, his weathered face carved with deeper lines in the firelight. “Not anymore.”
“It has a name,” I pressed. “The Forbidden Forest, they call it in the castle. Though my tutors never explained why it’s forbidden. Most call it the black forest in the city.”
Thibaut cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably on his log seat. “There are... stories, Your Highness. Nothing fit for royal ears.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, pinning him with my stare. “I’ve spent three months sleeping on frozen ground and pissing in the snow alongside you all. I think we can dispense with what’s fit for royal ears.”
A nervous chuckle rippled through the group, breaking some of the tension. Thibaut sighed, resignation settling across his broad shoulders.
“They say it was beautiful once,” he began, voice dropping lower as if afraid the forest might hear him. “Green and alive. A sanctuary where magical creatures lived in peace. Then something happened. A curse, they say, though no one agrees on who cast it or why. The forest turned black. The animals withinit twisted into mockeries of themselves. And the magic that once blessed the land became a poison.”
I nodded, encouraging him to continue. This much I’d heard before, in whispered fragments from castle servants who quickly fell silent when they noticed me listening.
“But that’s not what keeps men away,” Thibaut continued, staring into the fire rather than at me or the forest. “It’s the beast.”
“What beast?” I asked, though something cold slithered down my spine, a premonition of an answer I already half-knew.
“Not what—who,” corrected another hunter, an archer from the eastern villages with a reputation for seeing farther than most. “They say he was a royal once. A noble. Transformed by the curse into something neither man nor animal.”
“Three of them,” added another voice from across the fire. “Brothers. Cursed to wear the skins of monsters.”
Thibaut shook his head. “That’s just one version. Others say it’s a single creature, ancient as the mountains, awakened when the curse twisted the land.”
My patience thinned. “And what does this beast—one or three—have to do with men avoiding the forest?”
The silence that followed felt heavier than before. Finally, Thibaut met my gaze directly, his eyes grave.
“About five months back, a girl went missing from a village near the forest’s edge, Thorndale. Young, beautiful by all accounts. Search parties found nothing—until a hunter claimed he saw her through the trees.” He paused, taking a long pull from his wineskin before continuing. “Said she was naked as the day she was born, running with the beast like she belonged to him. Said it had its teeth in her shoulder, marking her as its own, and she wore a collar around her neck to show his ownership.”
Five months. My hand tightened around my bread until it crumbled between my fingers. Could they have seen Odette?
“When men tried to rescue her,” another hunter picked up the tale, “they never returned. But sometimes, on still nights, you can hear screams from beyond the tree line. No one knows if it’s the beast, the girl, or the men who tried to save her.”
“She’s not the first,” the archer added, his voice barely audible. “Every few generations, a maiden disappears. Always beautiful. Always special in some way—a voice like birdsong, or eyes that seem to see more than they should… An Thorndale’s village has to offer a sacrifice to the forest for the beast to claim to prevent him from entering their town and destroying it. Every Harvest Moon. “
“Like amber eyes,” I whispered, thinking of my sister’s unusual gaze that had always set her apart.
Several men nodded, unaware of why I’d paled.
“They say the beast keeps her as his pet,” Thibaut said grimly. “A perversion of the natural order, where man rules over beast. In that cursed place, the beast rules the woman. She’s his and forced to stay.”
