She had cover here. The forest’s density would cloak her, smother sound, swallow blood, bury the evidence.
All of it laid out below him like a viridescent blanket.
He wanted to burn it bare, reduce it to ash. To show them all what writhed beneath the moss and roots, the way Ryuu had always been laid open to fire and sky.
But Luamis’ secrets were cowards. Buried deep until they sank to meet Deimos in hel.
The screaming stopped. And the silence, that terrible, honest thing, settled like dust.
Ronan leapt, a hundred feet down, the night wrapping him in a cloak as he fell. His wings stretched and braced, holding the wind as he descended quietly enough to go unheard. With his wings still wide, he landed in a crouch, body taut. Listening.
It wasn’t fear holding the forest anymore. It had become the unbothered quiet of night. He inhaled, searching for her, grimacing when the only thing that greeted him was death.
Thorns raked at his leathers as he pushed through the brush, roots splitting beneath his boots, vines snapping under his wings.
It didn’t take long to find them. Though, it wasn’t what he had expected.
The bodies weren’t torn apart, they were arranged, side by side, almost thoughtful. Almost remorseful.
The woman’s face was mottled grey, the same shade as Ryuu’s stone coves, two small puncture marks piercing her throat. Beside her, the child was worse. Blood seeped, sluggish and thick, from the wound, clinging like tar, the last of her life wrung out drop by drop.
She hadn’t just killed them. She had drained them.
This wasn’t only hunger; it had become survival. Not guilt as he had so hoped, but an unrelenting urge. Feeding so her own cursed life might endure.
His lashes lowered, a finger drifting, closing their clouded blue eyes. Black flame woke as his palms hovered against their foreheads, but he couldn’t summon it. Couldn’t burn them down and let them return to the core.
They weren’t deer or carrion beasts. They had homes and families who would search, who would wonder. Who deserved the certainty of death, rather than the endless cruelty of absence.
He gathered them instead, lifting them onto his shoulders. Mortal bodies were so fragile, so easily broken. Too delicate to even sift without disintegrating into nothing.
Which is why she hunted them. Fae fought. Mortals only ran.
The forest thickened as he moved, shapes bending, howls following his stride. More monsters, scenting what they thought to be weakness.
He didn’t take the bodies home, but he carried them closer, out of the forest, toward the village edge. Close enough that those who loved them might find them. Might have the closure he was never granted.
He stopped at a break in the trees, far from the town but exposed enough where they would be found as soon as day broke. Instinctively, he traced a rune in the dirt, then swiftly wiped it away before he could finish.
They wouldn’t reach the Aureveil, not by the old laws. Mortals were forbidden.
“For your suffering,” he whispered anyway. “May they lead you home.”
He prayed they would. Because one day, when his own tether snapped, when the darkness finally claimed him, he didn’t want stone. He wanted forgiveness. A place where breath didn’t taste of ash and legacy.
But for now, he would follow death’s footprints until they led him to her.
“Ronan—” The witch queen’s voice wrapped around him like spider gloss—smooth and cloying, meant to bind.
“Isolde.” His reply slipped, unbothered, save for the slick fire twisted beneath.
He crossed the arches of her fortress, where spires of black ice jutted overhead, spears poised to devour.
The air reeked of rot and frostbite. Decay was fused to the cloaks of her coven, their figures lurking between stone pillars, their gazes raking over him as though they could already taste his bones.
Still, Ronan entered like a storm tide.
“That’squeento you,” Isolde spat, not bothering to grant him her eyes.
