For all that I have my complaints about his parenting, I know that my father and I are inextricably bound. There is a line that runs from me to him to his father to his, and so on. Right now, that line is like a glowing thread pulsing between leaf and moss.
I rush toward him, urged by the bond tying us together.
“Daughter.” He looks up at me with one unbloodied eye. The other eye is gone, lost in a gash across his face. “Been waiting.”
My stomach twists at the sight of him. Claw marks rake over his chest and stomach. Something wet slips out of a wound that is not merely blood. His hand presses there, holding things inside where they ought to be.
“How long were you here?”
“Before middle of night.”
My every muscle tightens. The urge last night ... Quickly I fill him in on my midnight encounter. “It attacked you and then came to the city?”
“Wants to end the Hunter line,” he says. “Said so.”
“That won’t happen,” I swear. Irate at the thought, I stare at the injuries on my father. I am lucky to be alive. I know it. “Let’s get you to help.”
“No need. I knew you would come.” He smiles at me, proud in a rare way, but it, too, is a grisly sight.
I’m on the ground kneeling there in my father’s blood as he reaches out to take my hand. In the moment, I think he wants comfort, but I realize that he’s pressing a swath of fur into my palm.
“Find the beast. Beast spoke ...” His words sound haunted, but perhaps that’s simply from the pain.
I stare at the thick scrub and shadowed wood, thinking that it certainly had time to return here. If it has, I can’t see it. My hand goes to my hilt. “Have you seen it today?”
“Left after it killed me and hasn’t returned.” Father makes a noise that’s either a groan or a laugh. I can’t tell which, and I’m not sure I want to know.
“Hush. You’re hurt, not dead, merely—”
“Don’t be daft, child,” he bites out in a voice that sounds like unoiled gears. “Same creature. Killed the others. Killed me.”
“This is its fur?” I ask, trying to recall whether it matches the beast that attacked me in the wee hours. “The beast?”
He nods slightly. “Kill it. You mustkillit.”
“I will. Let me get you to Maria now. She can stitch you up. I know she has plenty of magic in stock.” I eye several saplings I could fell and fashion into a litter. The ride would be jarring, though. I don’t see a better option. I cannot leave him here defenseless, and I have no idea how to help this sort of injury. “I felt you, like you were calling for me.”
“Dying now.” He swallows hard. “Magic tried to heal me. Can’t. So it summoned you. Passing the Hunter’s magic.”
“Let me give you water.” I hurry to fetch a drinking pouch from my bags. I have more questions than I know how to ask. The only ones that matter are practical now. “What is it? What did this?”
“New. Not known.”
That’s far from comforting. My father is one of the longest surviving Hunters, and he’s dying. What chance do I have against such a beast? An unfamiliar faery? I feel useless. There’s nothing I can do tomake this easier on him. He’s been viciously attacked. I cannot fathom the pain he’s in right now.
He pulls in a visibly painful inhalation and says, “You can do this, Gabrielle.”
“I’m not ready. I’m not as strong as you or ...”
“Neither was I.” He blinks tears of either pain or regret or fear. I don’t know, and I cannot ask. Another deep breath and he adds, “Tell your mother she was my last thought.”
“I will.”
He meets my eyes and orders, “Samples. Fire. Hunt.”
And then my father dies. He ordered me to take samples. The thought turns my stomach. He was myfather. How am I to do this?
At first, I sit silently alongside his body. I have always known that he, as with all Hunters, would die in a battle or as the result of one. I had assumed wrongly that I would not bear witness to his end, that he’d be on a hunt, and I’d just ... know. He said I’d feel it when he died.
