Page 94 of Hunted By Fae

I scramble down the steps, swing myself around the landings, then keep on going. I can’t afford to waste a second.

Stairs, so many stairs.

All this running and chasing and surviving has strengthened me; the muscles in my legs don’t waver anymore when I take on an eternal staircase. But the fatigue weakens me, the hunger of survival has slimmed my weight, and I’m only swinging myself around the landing of the twelfth floor when my legs are starting to wobble.

The echo of my pounding bootsteps floods the stairwell.

It’s loud, so fucking loud.

The fire in my chest is turning my breaths ragged. Strands of mousy hair whip my cheeks like the chill of the frosty air lashes at me. I burn hot and freeze cold; the fever of racing against winter itself.

But when I stagger down the steps to the eighth landing, I fall back with a sharp gasp.

Arms out, my hands splay against the air in an instant act of surrender—

Because I am looking down the barrel of a rifle.

For a long moment, all I see is that round chrome chamber just inches from my face.

My lashes flutter on the lethal promise.

Slowly, I lift my startled gaze to the other end of the weapon.

A scrawny man—maybe still a boy, in his late teens—holds the rifle as steadily as a monument erected in the centre of a small town.

Unwavering, he looks down the length of the gun, finger hooked around the trigger.

Punching against my chest, my heart is in a panic. I try to soften my ragged breaths as I choke out, “They’re coming.”

It’s all I can manage.

I don’t know if this man—boy—took refuge here to escape the fae outside, or if he was already hidden inside to survive a snowy night, and he awoke to the destruction.

I just know that my best chance of getting away is to offer something, help or compassion or a shared fear. It doesn’t matter, so long as it’s something that will lower that fucking rifle.

But it stays steady—and aimed at my face.

I’m not so sure that if he pulled the trigger, I would die right away. Maybe half my face would be blown off and I would writhe in pain and choke on my own blood before death came to claim me.

“They’re in the building,” I heave out the words in a rushed whisper, hands still lifted in the air. “In the other stairwell.”

Down the rifle, his focused brown eyes dilate. His short lashes lower before lines form on his brow.

My words sink in.

Realisation steals him.

If you shoot that rifle, they will hear it—and they will find you. We will both die.

It’s what I offer.

And it’s an offer he accepts.

Leaning his weight back, his sneaker squeaks and he lowers the barrel.

A heartbeat passes—and we just stare at each other.

Then, finally, he steps aside. But he makes no move to run… and it takes me a moment to realise why.