The scent that washes over me is not musty like the faery cat or foul like death. Strangely, the beast smells of crushed flowers. I try to turn to defend myself, when I am shoved forward with such force that I go from standing to face down in the grass in an instant. The warmth I feel reveals that the beast has tossed me onto my own lantern.
I extinguish the flame as my fall cracks the glass and I smother the fire with my stomach, burning myself in the process.
“I don’t kill little girls,” the creature taunts as it steps on my back and holds me on top of the hot lantern.
With a twist of my arm and wild swing, I jab my dagger into the meat of the creature’s leg and clutch the hilt so I do not lose it.
It punts me across the ground with the other foot, and I land with a painful thump. The moon breaks through the clouds again, but the faery is gone back into wherever it initially hid.
I crawl and shove my body to standing before limping home to pluck the glass from my body and teach my sister how to collect samples from a living victim.
Chapter 13
“TheDracæ are a sort of water-spirits who inveigle women and children into the recesses which they inhabit, beneath lakes and rivers, by floating past them, on the surface of the water, in the shape of gold rings or cups.”
—Scottish Fairy and Folk Talesby George Douglas [1901]
Too few hours later, I jolt awake before the sun with another insistent urge, this time to find my father. The feeling pressing into me is of biting insects ransacking my skin, swarming through me like fire. I’ve heard Father talk about the Hunter’s urges, but this is new to me. The feeling, like the one last night, ought not be mine. It’s a magic tied to the Hunter, and I am not him.
My injuries ache.
My microscopes beckon.
Still, the need to find my father feels increasingly urgent, so I leave the town house and hire a horse before dawn has broken. I am ready to ride with the rising of the sun. I cannot go without telling my family, lest they think I have been grievously injured on patrol.
I pause at the town house and enter to stand at the dining table where Mother and Rylan are seated. The urge to ride fills me, but I must be sure they also know to be cautious.
“I need to go to the manor. You will stay here.” I look at my sister and add, “Do not go out of doors at night while I am away. Guard Mother.”
Rylan nods.
Mother sips her tea in silence. The cup’s clink as she lowers it to the saucer is the only hint that she is unsettled by my remarks. “You sound like your father just now.”
“He is in peril. I can think of no other reason I would feel this need to rush to him,” I confess. “I swear I will—”
“No vows, child.” Mother eyes me warily. “Hunters are bound by their vows.”
I nod, hearing the grief and acceptance in her words. “I must go.”
Rylan’s chair clatters as she stands to embrace me. “Be safe, please.”
My arms tighten around her, but I cannot promise safety. I am out of doors and mounted within moments, and in the next few hours, I race toward home. I know not what’s happening, but the urge inside me feels not dissimilar from the need to breathe or eat. Imustheed it. My very bones and marrow demand it, and I am increasingly powerless to resist. I’ve never felt such a thing, and I fear the import of it.
The last time I traversed Brimmond Wood alone, I was knocked to the ground and injured. I feel the weight of that fear bundling into my worry for Father as I ride, and it adds a heaviness to the shadows around me that is embarrassing for a Hunter to carry.
Still I ride.
The path from the city takes me first toward Maudite Castle, and I think idly that the dowager duchess is home with only guards and servants. She was there in her grief as I cavorted with her daughter. Guilt blossoms, although I know well that Isabeau was not in Regina Centrum to see me. There is a monster too near Maudite Castle, though, and that worry slides into the mass of weight I am collecting.
Still I ride.
I reach the darkened heart of the forest where my father burned Hugh’s corpse. Nothing amiss stands out, aside from a pall of silence in the forest, the sort of silence that means the wildlife has fled from an area.
I slow and call out, “Father?”
My borrowed horse lifts her feet in discomfort. Unlike the horses in our stable, this one is apparently unaccustomed to death or perhaps just feels the uneasy pressure that hovers in the air here. The gateway to the land of monsters is nearby, and I wonder—not for the first or twenty-first time—why we do not have a contingent of guards stationed right here. Typically, I would think about the changes I intend to make, including that one, but in this instant, I am certain my father is injured. Thinking about a future that might come too soon does not feel proper.
“Father?” I repeat, letting instinct guide my path now.
