“You didn’t ask.” He took a step closer, imploring. “And you’re splitting the prize with some stranger? What Sabina did was stupid, but her instinct wasn’t wrong. She was trying to protect you, in her way.”
“Marking her territory, you mean.”
“You can’t deny it’s all a bit suspicious. The huntress. She’s… strange.”
Sy glanced behind David, to the opposite side of the glade. His partner had removed her borrowed gloves and was pressing her palms to the bark of a tree.
“We could have done it together, Sy,” said David. “We still can. We don’t have to be at odds.”
But David was the reason they were all here. He had feigned disinterest, but he knew what Sy was planning and had sent the rest of them on the prowl.
Sy wasn’t splitting the prize. Not with Anya, and not with David. “I’m afraid we do.”
David’s face fell. Whatever there had been between them, there was no coming back from this, and they both knew it. “Right. Alright. Best of luck, then.”
Before Sy could reply, David left him under the leaves of the willow.
Feeling emptier than he ever had, Sy caught up with Anya, who took him deeper into the cover of the trees. Close, but not too close. They spread their bedrolls and lay in the murmur of the camp; then, as the campfires were gradually extinguished, in the silence. The heavy silence. Ready to pounce.
He tossed and turned for hours beside Anya, who remained still as a stone. To distract himself from the quiet, he replayed every last conversation he’d had with David. Which had been the last they’d had as lovers? Which had been the last as friends?
But that was worse than the crouching night. So he turned to something else that had been bothering him, another itch he couldn’t scratch.
Sabina’s spell. Next to him, Sabina was the best scribe he knew. Though she swore she penned it accurately, the magic had misfired. But the spell also did something that shouldn’t have been possible, no matter how badly it was botched.
Beastly, Anya had called herself. He wouldn’t put it past Sabina to attempt a spell to make the hunter’s boast come true – but what spell, botched or no, could possibly turn a human woman’s tongue into a beast’s?
In the quiet, he rolled over to study his sleeping companion, her head nestled in the crook of her arm. What secrets did the forest hold? What secrets did she?
He couldn’t begin to imagine. But he was beginning to suspect they may hold the key to his freedom.
Before he could follow that logic further, the crouching silence pounced. A sharp, violent scream cut through the night, followed by a monstrous, blood-curdling roar.
CHAPTER TEN
A gunshot. Anya awoke and grabbed her shotgun before she knew what she was doing. She heard a scream, then a roar, and her body reacted while her mind, dredged from the deepest sleep she’d ever experienced, struggled to make sense of what was happening. The gunshot. And a roar.
A bear. The others must have left their food unattended, drawing in the predator, seeking an easy meal. By the sounds that woke her, and the shouting and roaring that continued to carry across the glade, it had attacked. Why?
Something worse than a bear.
She fumbled her grip. Her fingers were unfamiliar inside Sylas’s gloves, but nothing stuck to her hands, and she adjusted quickly. Sylas was awake beside her, his sleeve rolled up, standing. His pen was out, and his drawing board, and he hastily scratched something in the dark.
“Stay here,” she said, grabbing her ammo pouch.
“Wait,” he called back, but she was already gone.
In the clearing, lit by several waving lanterns and torches, she let herself feel relief for the briefest second: it was only a bear.
Onlya bear.
She dug into her ammo pouch, fingers drifting over the row of birdshot shells to pull out a slug. She lodged it into place, closed the barrel.
A woman whose name Anya couldn’t remember was on the ground, the source of the screaming. Several of the men were behind the bear, shouting, led by Aquila, who was aiming his rifle at it.
The bear was batting at and tossing the woman like a cat with a ball of yarn. She sobbed, curled up tight, frightened out of reason. In the dark, Anya could see the sleeves of the woman’s nightgown stained with blood and more of it matting the woman’s hair to her scalp.
“Keep your head down,” Anya called to the woman. “Don’t move.”
