“Ari, Ella, Perry, and Kat, you mean.”
My heart beat harder with every moment it took Faolán to reply.
His throat rose and fell in a torturous swallow, but it was Rose who looked up, eyes wide, and asked, “She isn’t with you?”
The street tilted. For a second, I thought I was falling from my stag.
But no. It wasn’t me falling. It was the entire world.
“Why would she be with me? She went to the festival with you. You were meant to be—”
Faolán’s growl made my stag toss his head. “She headed back to the palace to find you.”
She hadn’t made it.
Rose’s eyes filled with tears. “It… it was just before the attack began.”
More screams pierced the air. They could be Kat’s. And even if they weren’t, they belonged to people relying on us—on me.
I urged my stag towards the sound.
Faolán loped beside me, claws elongating. “We’re all worried about Kat, and she clearly cares about you.” He shot me a look, brows drawn low. “But you need to make a decision—do something. Because at the moment she’s still—”
“If you’re about to mention her marital status, Faolán, we’re going to have a problem. Should I not care if she dies because she’s married to someone else?”
“No,” he growled. “It’s just… be careful, Bastian. You’re on the edge of something here.”
“Yes, I’m on the edge of fucking reason because you’re lecturing me about the fact Kat is married when there are Horrors in our city.”
“I thought you needed the reminder.”
Like I didn’t remember it every single day.
I bared my teeth at Faolán, every part of me tight and sharp. “I didn’t expect you to be so invested in rules handed down by the same people who consider you an abomination.”
At once, I hated myself for saying it. But I hated the world more for this situation.
And a Horror rose ahead.
No time for apologies, I spurred my stag onward and rode to face it.
50
Kat
Down one alley, darting into the next, I ran and ran and ran. My legs burned as breaths tore through me.
It hadn’t worked. The carapace must’ve protected the Horror from my poison as it protected it from weapons. Shit.
I turned again and again, trying to lose the skittering sound of the Horror’s feet.
The fact I’d drawn it away from the woman and her children was the faintest glimmer of a silver lining.
The next corner brought me to a long lane with no turnings and a wide set of gates at the end. If those gates didn’t lead out onto a road, I had just found the cloud for that silver lining.
A thick, black dead end of a cloud.
I pushed, sprinting with every ounce of energy I had.
Questioning clicks echoed from behind me as the dank stink grew, invading every sharp gasp for air.
I didn’t dare turn. If I did, I’d trip or just plain lose my nerve in the face of those flat, void-like eyes.
Just a little further. Just a little faster.
Acidic spit sizzled on the stone behind me.
Then my hands were on the gate, shoving it open.
Once I was through, I flung my body against it and dropped the bar. Not that it would keep the thing out for long—not when it could climb over.
A stable yard. Stalls with upper doors open, deer snorting as they scented the monster running up the lane towards us.
Not long. Not long at all.
I slammed shut the nearest stalls, but they wouldn’t last if the thing tried to get in. I needed something sturdy or small—somewhere to hide.
In a corner, I found a shelter full of tack and hunting weapons, but one side was open to the yard. Still, soft magic hummed over my skin. Some of the saddles and spears had to be enchanted. That would attract the Horror and give it something to feed on. It might also mask my scent.
There was nothing else here—no route out.
The gates rattled in their hinges. The bar holding them groaned.
The Horror slammed into them again. They wouldn’t last long.
Why bother climbing over when you could go through?
It almost made me laugh, but my pulse throbbed in my throat, constricting like a tight grip.
Behind a saddle stand, I spotted a door handle. A way out?
But inside there was only the scent of saddle soap and leather. A cupboard.
I had no other option—I darted inside and shut the door as the gates crashed open.
In the darkness, I found a leather strap—an old halter perhaps? Trying to keep my breaths quiet, I tied it around the inside handle and a hook on the wall.
The yard erupted with throaty bellows from the deer and the Horror’s echoing clicks.
Trembling in the cramped space, I managed to get the bow off my back, tighten the string with a whisper, and nock an arrow. If the monster opened the cupboard, I would fire off a shot and surprise it. Then I might manage to slip past it. Or I might die.
Not the most comforting set of options, but I didn’t have any others.
Outside, the bellows turned to screams and the sound of rending flesh.
I covered my mouth, holding in my fear as tears streaked down my cheeks. Those poor creatures. I couldn’t help picturing Vespera in their place. I thought Horrors only fed on magic, but…
My chest grew tighter and tighter with each cry.
Then there were no more.
I had no idea how long it took. The darkness of the cupboard felt like the darkness of eternity.
More crashing and a grunting sniff that came closer.
Breath stilling, I drew my bowstring taut. The leather shoulder pieces of my cloak dug in, but I was firing this arrow the instant that door opened.
Scratching and scraping, then the sucking sound of it feeding.
Then silence.
Gone, or…？
I let the bowstring slacken and pressed my ear to the door.
It could be waiting out there. Or maybe it had forgotten about me.
Waiting this whole thing out in a cupboard might’ve been an option if not for one inconvenient truth.
I needed my antidote before sunset. And a wonderful bonus of the Winter Solstice was that sunset came very early.
To surviving the dark, indeed.
I counted to a hundred like this was nothing more than a game of hide and sneak.
Still no noise.
Heart in my throat, I untied the broken halter and readied my bow. When I nudged open the door and peered out, there was no sign of the Horror, though upturned saddle stands blocked some of my view.
I waited. I saw nothing.
I crept out.
Saddles and tack littered the floor. It hadn’t been torn apart, but the leather had gone pale and dry, and when I nudged a harness with my toe, it disintegrated.
I picked my way through the debris in silence. Even the steel tips of the hunting spears were dull and grey like lumps of ore, rather than the polished steel they’d been when I arrived. They didn’t flake apart with a touch, but I tested one under my foot and it crumbled like charcoal.
Then I realised.
No magic vibrated against my skin.
The Horror had fed on every enchanted object here. Did that make it stronger? More dangerous?
Bastian had told me they’d been used as weapons in the war, but I hadn’t asked for specifics, especially not when he’d been in such distress from his father’s memories.
I edged out of the shelter and…