It was gone.
The body—
Was it the wrong place?
No. He wouldn't—he couldn't forget where he'd left her. The specific gnarled root, the pallor of her skin in the moonlight. That scene was etched behind his eyes. The heat beating on his claws.
Or would he? But what had distorted his memory, then?
The ecstasy of it…? The feeling of being… free?
Was it an animal? A scavenger, dragging what remained of her to a deeper thicket for a feast? Or… worse. Had someone found her?
It hadn't even been that long. The chaos that followed her disappearance, Ruby's coronation, the political tremors, his own father's disappearance, had elongated time, but the ground shouldn't have swallowed her whole.
He couldn't just go asking the nearest woodsman or farmer. 'Pardon, have you stumbled upon a freshly murdered woman's corpse?'
It would be a confession.
