Frowns greet my question. No one has a word to add. No details, and that’s odd when it comes to the nobility. “Couldshehave angered a faery? Brought this curse upon her daughter?”
“Or thereisno curse, and she’s drugging the duke,” Maria adds astutely. “Has anyoneseenMaudite collapse at dusk? Perhaps the curse is a lie.”
We sit in silence at that. The more I seek answers, the less I know. Twice I encountered a beast, and twice it injured me. The look of it matches nothing in the Hunter journals. If the duke’s curse is real, is it connected? Is it even real? If the queen holds secrets, I cannot doubt that they could involve family she wants to protect, but they could just as easily be because she is bound by magic.
Chapter 21
“A fisherman of Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, walking home to his cottage from his boat one evening along the wet sands, came, unawares, upon a number of fairies in ahoule. They were talking and laughing gaily, and the fisherman observed that while they made merry they rubbed their bodies with a kind of ointment or pomade. All at once, to the old salt’s surprise, they turned into ordinary women.”
—Legends and Romances of Brittanyby Lewis Spence [1917]
“Gab! Up!” I wake to my sister rattling my door at the Goose. I had a mug or two of mead as I discussed the Beast of Brimmond, the cursed duke, and the very real possibility that the faery murdering people was something that ought not have slipped from their world into ours.
Morning is here now, and my eyes feel rather like I have ground sawdust into my face. My throat is no better. I untangle myself from the covers and jerk open the door. “Why are you here?”
“I brought your horse. There’s need of the Hunter today.” Rylan takes one look at me, crinkles her nose, and sighs. She drops the bundle in her arms onto the floor. “You need to wash. You smell like hearth fire and wet horse.”
I do what any reasonable sibling would in that moment. I tackle her in a hold that has her face in my armpit. “Are you sure?”
“Ugh.” Rylan twists away, breaking my grip with agility if not brute strength. “You are the least ladylike person I have ever met, and that includes the farrier, the soldiers, the stable—”
“Fine.” I walk over to a washstand with an ewer of cold water and wash up.
“Clean things.” Rylan points at the bundle. “A guard was told there’s a body and went to summon the squadron. They will join us in the wood.”
“Did they escort you here?” I ask, realizing as sleep fades that she ought not be here at all. The peril of travel through Alveus as a young, unmarried woman is often the most obvious of my worries, but now that the beast has attacked me—and possibly Emma—I must worry about my sister being a target. Women are not safe from the monster.
I glare at her. “You are to be safely at the manor and—”
“I was surrounded by soldiers, and others are at the house.” Rylan huffs. “We are like prisoners at home.”
“Good.” Before she can reply, I prompt, “Details?”
“Not much. Beast of Brimmond, most likely. One of the young ones found it, told patrol, and is waiting downstairs.” Rylan shakes her head. “They ought to stay out of the forest. Just because it hasn’t killed a child—”
“I know. I told them that.”
“They don’t need the coins Father used to pay them,” Rylan continues. “What if we give them tasks at the manor, instead? Safer, but they still have money for sweets.”
“Excellent. I’ll leave you to figure that out,” I suggest before I unroll the things she brought for me. “I want to wear trousers in the forest going forward. I know Father disapproved, but there’s no reason I should be hampered by dresses.”
“I can have a seamstress come to the manor.” Rylan watches me, as if inviting me to tell her she’s overstepping.
Instead I grab her hand. “Thank you. I am overwhelmed, and all that you are offering helps ease my burden.”
“I am the Hunter-in-Training now,” she gently reminds me.
“You are still not to be outside the manor without guards—or me—at your side.”
“Yes, Hunter,” she murmurs as she assists me into my layers, and we leave the room. After a quick stop at the tavern to ask that our things be delivered to the manor, we take our horses and are off toward Brimmond Wood with a young man from the village.
“After this, you will stay out of the wood,” Rylan tells him. “I have tasks at the manor, and if the lot of you come to the manor together or with the soldiers, you’ll have coins aplenty.”
The boy’s initial frown transforms into a wide grin. “Yes, m’lady.”
He’s perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, but he belongs to one of the tenants on the Fleuriste estate. He’s well dressed, although the rips on the boy’s jacket tell me that either he’s been wandering where he shouldn’t or we are headed into the brambles that lie near the gate to Faerie.
Shortly after, we are back in the thick of Brimmond Wood. Rylan is perched atop her horse, looking for all the world like a lady. I slide to the ground and dart between two saplings, weaving through them as surely as the shuttle of my mother’s loom. Clatterbuck is not a fan of the narrow opening but trails after me still. Maybe she can smell where we are headed. Maybe she’s just in a mood.
