Rhiannon lifted her chin. Three of her fingers went up—the thumb, index, and middle finger. “Some call this a sign for peace. But we Sylvanwild, who live among the forests, know the truth.”
Dorian stiffened beside me. The muscles in his jaw and shoulders went tight as drawn wire. I saw tension, dread, but I didn’t understand why.
All around us, gasps sounded. Fae lowered their heads. Children hid behind their mothers.At least they’re not wailing.
I stepped closer to Dorian. “What is it?”
His jaw had clenched. So had his fist. Before he could answer, Rhiannon’s voice rang out.
“Tonight, after centuries, the Wild Hunt begins in Sylvanwild.”
The Wild Hunt.
I had never heard of it. But children always had the most unvarnished reactions, and I trusted a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts far more than I trusted Dorian’s silent stoicism.
The crowd erupted into open talk. Rhiannon tapped her scepter three times again, and this time the silence took longer to fall. People weren’t so willing to heed her as before.
“Nature places a special requirement on this Wild Hunt,” Rhiannon said, her voice rolling over the unrest. “Balance must be restored. This is the way of nature. As such”—her eyes swept to us—“the hunt will not end until half of our aspirants are culled.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Halfof us would be culled. Cold truth settled over me as I processed the cruelty of pairs. Half of eighteen was nine, but one half of a pair could not live with their partner dead.
Ten.
The second trial would not end until ten of us were gone.
The hall exploded, voices rising sharp and panicked, the air itself vibrating with terror. Rhiannon rapped with her scepter, but no one heeded her. Even the Sylvanwild queen was just one fae.
Beside me, Dorian had paled. His face shuttered.
“We’re to be hunted, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he said without turning his head.
“By what?”
“Most terrible creatures of myth,” the fae who’d lost an ear said from my other side. “Unseelie fae from below, and their wolves, too.”
“Below?”
I had never given thought to what lay beneath us. In the Kingdom of Storms, some religions believed in an endless river of spirits. Others believed in a pit of fire. But none of it had any bearing on the life I’d lived; past the age of six, I hadn’t considered that they might actually exist.
Rhiannon finally rose from her throne.
A breeze swept over my cheek, which soon picked up into wind. My attention locked on her, on the soft movement of her lips and the rubbing of her fingers at her side.
Magic. She was using her magic. And not sparingly.
Fae hair fluttered, the tapestries on the wall flapped. Soon the room was enveloped in a gale that whipped at our clothes and slapped at our faces.
It happened within seconds—a windstorm spawned in the citadel’s throne room.
If Dorian hadn’t grabbed hold of me and crouched above me, I’d have been knocked over. Beneath him, the scream of the gale filled my ears. My eyes lifted to the dais.
Amidst all of it, Rhiannon stood unfazed, untouched, her scepter raised in one hand, her other palm extended upward. The calm at the storm’s heart. The fur robes around her body whipped and clawed like the beasts they had once been.
This power belonged to her.
