Page 113 of Hunted By Fae

My heart sinks, the beats thumping in my gut.

Before I can press the speaker button again, Bee’s panicked whisper returns, “Someone’s running—I can hear them. They’re coming up the trail. That’s not you?”

One word is quick to growl out from my gritted teeth, “Run.”

TWENTY-FOUR

BEE

My boots are beating down on the snowy, gravel roads that weave around cabins and campervans.

In the distance behind me, the rapid song of a run raining down on a trail is gone. Maybe I have outrun it. I don’t stick around to find out, I just keep running.

I don’t give it the chance to catch up to me.

Whateveritis, it’s wringing my insides.

That sickly sensation coiling through me propels me faster down the road to the end of the park. I clammer over the gate in a rush, legs slipping along the snowy metal bars.

I land with a stagger.

Arms outstretched, I balance myself on the slushy road. I cut right, running on the grassy border of the road, because the road itself is too slippery.

The steadythud, thud, thudof my backpack smacking against my spine matches the pace of my ragged breaths.

Tess told me the direction to go for the brewery, but I knew that already, and since I read and reread the map, burned this area into my mind, I also know that it should be five minutes ahead.

I don’t pause.

I don’t falter.

The noise that chased me up the lakeside might be gone, but that doesn’t slow me down. It could have been anything thundering up that path. It could have been a wolf, a feral dog, a not so friendly person, a fucking bear—or worst of all, thewhat if…

It could have been bootfalls.

That was my thought. My instinct. My panic.

That it washim.

Dare, chasing up the slim one-way trail beyond the trees, parallel to the lake and the path.

I know it’s not a light thing to abandon one’s unit. In my own land, Licht, the punishment can range from being buried neck-down in the sand for days and nights to having one’s nails torn out.

My twin brother paid his price for it.

He abandoned his unit after a brutal loss on the battlefield. He was one of the few still standing. But Licht customs have warriors throwing themselves onto their own swords rather than return home, defeated, or leave a single breathing comrade on the battlefield—and when he escaped, some were still breathing.

So they took his left eye.

Carved it clean out of his skull.

And for ten years, he is to wear no patch or false eye. It must be seen.

Dare wouldn’t have left his unit to chase me down, to hunt me, because he is of Dorcha, of the dark armies, and their punishments should be more gruesome than I can even imagine.

And yet,and yet… the logic isn’t fashioning with the fear. It isn’t merging as it should.

And it is fear that grips me.