I kept walking—well, stomping—through the thick woods, still reeling from my father's absurd decree. Yet, I knew there was no way to thwart his orders. I understood his concerns, the reasoning behind his actions, but anyone… anyone but Harold.
I stopped, groaning, and drew several deep breaths. Calm down, Elara. Control your emotions. If I wanted to hunt successfully, I needed a clear mind. Hunting always helped me settle my thoughts. Lumina, my chief maid, had always found it weird, but I rather liked being different.
Of course, that was about to change. Soon, I would be married off, tamed, forced to conform to all the things men insisted women ought to do. Funny how the world always seems to know what women ought to want better than we do ourselves.
I resumed walking, this time with measured steps. The leaves were soft beneath my boots, damp with morning dew. I wished it were the middle of spring, when the trees were lush and green, rather than this bare, skeletal mess.
Hunting would have been far easier without having to navigate over brittle, lifeless trunks that snapped underfoot with every step.
It was probably why I hadn't even touched the bow slung across my shoulder. But that didn't matter. I had to do something—anything—to salvage what little was left of my freedom before I was dragged back to the palace and gift-wrapped for Elder Harold.
I wandered deeper into the woods and finally came to a halt. Not a single creature has stirred so far. No rustle of fur, no slither of scales, not even the chirp of birds. It was as if the entire forest had gone into hiding at the mere thought of his arrival this evening. The Werewolf King.
My thoughts circled back to my father's words in my room: he had a plan. Was it an ambush?
No wonder he wanted me gone. I only hoped it wasn't as simplistic as sending the few remaining knights we have, to attack them on arrival. One of those beasts could take down more than ten of us. Talk more about their king.
I decided to heed the hush and turn back. Just as I pivoted on my heel a shrill wail stopped me cold.
I would have missed it if the woods had not been so unnervingly silent. Even the crickets had gone quiet, swallowed by that stillness that feels like a held breath.
Then I felt eyes on my back.
I slid a knife free from the leather strap at my wrist. I did not reach for my bow. I wanted whoever lurked to think me small and foolish, to make them underestimate me. Let them learn otherwise.
The scream rose again and I darted left. Curse these boots, I thought, but I ran anyway, reckless enough to hope I was not too late.
I rounded a stand of thin beeches and stopped. A woman lay there, or what remained of one. Skin torn from her shoulder to her waist, a horror I had hoped only our storytellers invented. The corpse was stripped, slack-eyed, the kind of work only a beast with teeth and hate could do.
A werewolf.
One leg was gone, clean from the thigh, as though it had been taken as a trophy.
That means it was near.
My pulse thudded, but I forced myself to breathe and to look. Predators make mistakes. Predators show themselves. I scanned the trees and saw movement, a shadow crouched behind a small oak.
I fitted an arrow, silent as a thought, and drew the bow. I could not see the figure clearly through the trunks, but I never miss. The string sang and the shaft flew.
The thing leapt from cover and for a moment I could not place it. It was wrong in all the ways natural things are wrong—too squat, its limbs too jointed, its head too small for its shoulders.
And it didn't take the shape of a werewolf like the warriors and ancestors described. This creature had the form of a dwarf. Well… less than given its small form.
It screamed, a raw sound that made my teeth ache. I flinched, hands to my ears, and bent down.
Then I realised the noise was a trick, a lure meant to lower me. I rolled aside just as the creature landed where I had been. It twisted, furious, eyes like coals.
Just when I thought I'd nailed it, it lunged. I twisted aside—barely—its claws grazing my arm. The cut burned instantly, deep and hot, like fire licking under my skin.
Why had we never been warned about things like this in Novami? Or had we been so fixated on the werewolves that we missed the other nightmares sharing our woods?
I tried to stand but my knees gave out. The ground tilted. My vision swam, dark edges crawling inward. Poison. Of course it was poison. "Shit," I muttered, breath shallow.
The creature knew. I could hear it in the sound it made. A low, wet gurgle that almost resembled laughter. It waddled toward me with deliberate, taunting steps, its stubby legs carrying it at a snail's pace. To me, it was five feet away. To it, with those ridiculous limbs, it was ten. Plenty of room to savour the moment.
I clawed at my hip, fumbling for the hidden dagger no one ever noticed I carried. My fingers barely worked. The poison was spreading fast, my muscles turning to water.
It inched closer, mouth opening wide again. Rows of teeth—or were they claws?—slid past each other endlessly as if its jaw had no bottom. My stomach lurched.
Finally, my fingers caught the dagger's hilt. I yanked it free, mustering everything I had left, and hurled it. The blade spun once, twice, and struck square between its eyes.
For a heartbeat, I hoped. I willed it to die, to slump to the ground and leave me be.
It didn't. It only growled, low and furious, and its mouth stretched wider, impossibly wide, like it meant to start with my face.
I closed my eyes, bracing for pain.
And then—grunting. Not mine. A heavy, bestial sound, close enough to rattle my ribs.
But no pain came.
I peered open my eyes, heavy-lidded and weary, to find a man standing over me. Even from the ground, he was impossibly beautiful—like a god descended into the mortal realm. Could a god really have come to my rescue?
My gaze drifted from his face and landed on the creature. Its head was gripped firmly in one hand, its mangled body in the other.
"The best way to kill a Skathling," he said in an oddly… harsh musical tone. "Is to sever its head."
Skathling. The name was alien to my ears. I could feel my vision blur again as relief and exhaustion tangled inside me.
Firm hands wrapped around me, lifting me off the ground. Just that simple touch… it sparked something hot and impossible, far beyond anything Roland had ever stirred. I struggled to focus on the stranger before me, the man who had affected me in ways I had never imagined, but my body betrayed me.
"Don't die on me, Mate," he whispered, and the words strangely intimate, yet commanding were the last thing I heard before the world went black.