Warmth burned around her finger. Her oaken ring burst into life. Roots curled around Branwen’s wrist, caressing her forearm as the magic awakened. Her left arm was snared in a sleeve of oak leaves and branches. All of it was laced with gold.
The spell had taken hold.
Someone had hunted the lapwing.
Gwydion’s eyes went wide. He made a horrified little sound, reaching for her. And that was when she understood.
Her fealty, her loyalty, her actions—they did not belong to her. Not anymore.
The dagger fell from her fingers and tumbled into the grass.
Gooseflesh rose along her arms, and she took a step back. She had not meant to take that step—she simply moved. She felt the tug of some invisible cord, the whisper of a command she could not hear. The magic of the Wild Hunt was settling into her bones.
“No!” Gwydion put himself in front of her, hands on her shoulders. “I’ll free you, I swear it.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you even care?”
He looked as though she had run him through with a blade. “Branwen. I cannot lose you to them.”
She had no control over her body. The magic of the oaken ring called to her. And perhaps that would have been terrifying if she could feel. The last of her despair had been doused with the capture of her brooch. It was almost a comfort not to feel, to retreat into herself.
“You lost me,” she said, “when you led me into this forest under false pretenses. When you looked me in the eye and said that we were equals when all the while I was nothing more than a tool to you.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders.
“I tried to take you from this,” he whispered. “Last night. Before I took the rings. I tried.”
Her body was not her own, but it carried her away. Like a river taking hold of a fallen leaf, she was yanked from Gwydion’s grasp.
“You made your choice,” she said. Another step took her near Pryderi’s fallen signet ring. On instinct, she seized it, holding it against her heart with her unspelled hand.
And then she was running, bidden to flee. Palug was at her side. She chanced one look over her shoulder. Gwydion was reaching for her, one hand outstretched.
It was the last thing she saw before tears blinded her.
CHAPTER 36
GWYDION RAN.
He ran as though all of Annwvyn were giving chase—because they would be. It was only a matter of time until word reached Arawn and Pwyll. They would be gathering their forces, sending out scouts to chase the wayward trickster.
Every part of him ached. Pain had been a companion for much of his life, but now it nipped at his every step like an overeager hound. He drank his fill at a stream, using those precious moments to catch his breath.
You will break a throne.
Those words echoed within him. He’d always hated tales of prophecies. It seemed a cruel trick of fate to tell a person their future without giving them the tools to avert it.
He remembered Pryderi’s prophecy—and then he quashed that thought so viciously that he winced.
He would not think of Pryderi.
He would not think of Branwen.
He would think of Gwynedd. Of the kingdom he was going to build. He would help shape it, grow it as he had grown his gardens. With Arianrhod as queen, they would make a world where villagers did not have to fear mercenaries raiding them or afancs stealing children. He could not change the past. He could only move forward, and he had set out on this path long before he met the huntress.
But it hurt. It hurt so badly he thought he might collapse under the weight of the agony. He could see Branwen’s face when she realized the depths of his betrayal, how he had willingly given her fealty to the Hunt.
That was his worst regret. That he had left her behind.
