Page 10 of The Enemy to the Living (The Wild Hunt #2)

Asher

I leave Mischief Quinn would have won. I’m certain of it.

I stand straighter when a large, huddled shape steps out of the alley.

Quinn says something to the gancanagh still standing watch—something that makes them smile—and then heads in the direction of home, shoulders hunched.

I’ve managed to corral my blessing well enough to hide myself in shadows, so I keep them around me now as I follow Quinn down the street.

He’s going home, I suppose, though he’s still clearly in pain. I can’t see any blood, but it was stark on his skin where the other wolf’s claws dug in. Would I be able to smell it, up close? My stomach turns. I don’t want to.

Quinn stops at the corner and frowns, looking back. The frown fades into an exasperated expression, and he shakes his head.

“Asher.”

His voice is a dangerous rumble, and my blessing eagerly steps aside, shadows falling away, leaving me standing there, exposed. I frown. It is not supposed to do that.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I came to see you fight.”

“How did you find it?”

I stare at him for too long and he makes a distressed sound in the back of his throat before he starts walking again. “Fuck,” he mutters under his breath when I catch up. “I’m fucked.”

“What? Why?”

He gives me a sideways look but doesn’t answer. I know we’re far from his pack house, and he seems to have no intention of taking a bus. It will be an hour or more before he gets home.

“Let me—We should—”

“I’m walking,” Quinn snaps, bringing me up a little short. Still, I remain by his side.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to find this place again.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why?”

“I told you, we have to—”

“We all volunteer to fight, you know,” Quinn says. “It’s not like they’re fooling us.”

I don’t point out that I don’t think Quinn would know if he was being fooled. Not that I think they’ve enchanted him. No. I just think he’s…

Vulnerable.

Desperately so.

“I know that. We have to be careful with the high fae. They’re always up to no good.”

“Bit of a presumption, isn’t it?”

“It’s true,” I say, a frustrated edge to my voice. Quinn pauses, looking at me. “It is.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. They already told me not to talk to you.”

“They did?”

Quinn shrugs again and doesn’t answer. Of course I expected that they’d have worked out who Vlad and I are.

They’ve clearly been avoiding the Hunt and the Huntsman.

And it’s interesting that they have wards enough to keep the pub hidden but not enough to keep us out, so either they can’t focus on his blessing, or they don’t know how.

“I think they just like the fights,” Quinn says as we cross the street. “Cel—One of them is really into them. Maybe they’re not up to anything bad at all.”

“Quinn,” I murmur, and that brings him up short, making him stop as soon as he’s standing on the pavement. “I mean it. Don’t trust them. It’s not safe.”

I only realise how open his expression was when it shutters. “Don’t talk to me about safe,” he snaps, and when he starts walking again, it takes me a moment to catch up.

“Are you not…” I swallow and try again. “Are you not safe here?”

Everyone’s told me his pack is a good one.

But what if they’re not? What if he is being badly treated for what happened with Tamesis?

None of it was his fault, and we in the Hunt know that better than anyone now that we have an understanding of what happened.

Bonds are hard to resist, and that’s especially true for a wolf.

“What? What do you mean?”

“With your pack, I mean. Are they treating you well?”

“My pack? Kieran’s pack?”

“Yes.”

Quinn looks at me as though I’ve grown another head. “Of course they are,” he says, using the same tone of voice I might expect to hear someone use to tell me the sky is blue. “They wouldn’t ever hurt me. Not on purpose.”

“What then?”

“Asher…”

“No. Please. I want to know what you mean.”

“And what if I don’t want to tell you?”

I reach out without thinking and take hold of his arm. My touch is gentle, but Quinn gasps anyway and comes to a sudden stop. He winces. Clearly, the scratches from that wolf haven’t healed.

“You can, though,” I say, not sure at all about the sudden urgency in my voice. “You can tell me if you want to.”

Quinn just stares at me. His eyes are wide, mouth half-open like he wants to protest but can’t quite work out what to say.

After a moment, he drops his gaze and ducks his head. “There’s nothing to tell,” he says. “I’m sure you know it all, anyway.”

A sketch of it, sure. I don’t want that. I squeeze his arm before I let go. “You can,” I say again. “I mean it.”

“They all say that,” he says, glancing up briefly before he trains his eyes down again. I don’t like that. I want his eyes on me. As much as I don’t like his anger—I don’t think it’s good for him, not how he’s wielding it—I like this nervous submission even less.

“And what if they mean it, too? Why won’t you share with your pack, Quinn? They don’t know you’re out here doing this, do they?”

What little colour is left in his skin entirely drains away. “No,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.

“And does it help?”

“What do you mean?”

“The fighting. Does it help?”

Quinn stares at me again, and this time, when he pushes a hand through his hair, it’s shaking. “It’s not—You’re not—” He makes a sound, almost a whine, and my blessing shifts restlessly in my chest, but I keep it corralled. “I need to go home, Asher. Let me go home.”

Home. He’s going back to the pack house, I know that, but is that home ? “I’d like to walk you. Just to be sure you’re okay.”

“No. No, please…”

Every line of his body is pure misery, and it hurts because the anger’s maybe no good, but this is worse. I’ve made things worse. All I want to do is help him, and that vague urge I felt earlier in the night has whipped up into something of a frenzy.

Still, I am old enough to have control. “Yeah,” I say, voice a croak. “Okay. Be careful. Please.”

Quinn’s eyes catch on me when I say please, lingering for just a second before he nods and hurries away.

I might not be fae, but I try not to lie all the same.

I also can’t trust myself, so I remain rooted to the spot until he’s well out of sight, and then consciously force myself to walk in the opposite direction.

The stones sinking in my stomach are heavy. I think I have just made everything much, much worse.

It is late when I arrive back at the base, and Vlad is already waiting for me. Grant gives me a tight smile from the sofa and then ignores every subtle hint Vlad gives him to leave the room, instead turning the pages of his book at a pace that I know means he’s not reading.

“Where have you been?” Vlad says lowly as though Grant somehow will not hear us even though we are all in the same room.

“They moved the entire bloody place,” I reply. I feel nothing but sadness when I think of Quinn, but my temper is spiking, entirely aimed at myself, of course. And maybe the twins. I don’t want to take Quinn’s only outlet away from him, but I meant what I said before—high fae can’t be trusted.

“Pardon? What are you talking about?”

“The pub. Mischief she just opens her sketchbook to a page with three different images—fangs dripping with blood, a stylised fairy with roots for feet, and two hands gripping each other as though unable to let go.

One is dark, with clawed fingers. I glance down at my tattooed hands.

Iris smiles when I point at it but says nothing. She cleans where I want it, the inside of my right forearm, and only when she turns the needle on do I breathe easily again.

It’s a bigger tattoo than the last one I got, but Iris is efficient, and her work is good. She speaks only when she’s halfway through, the outline done and stark against my skin.

“You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Ah.”

“There’s…” I make a frustrated sound and Iris tuts when I tense my muscles. I relax again. “There’s this wolf.”

When I don’t follow up with anything else, she smirks. “And this wolf, they’re—”

“He.”

“He’s what to you?”

“No one.”

“Hm.”

I roll my eyes and when she lifts the needle away, I shift slightly on the chair, folding my other arm behind my head. Iris waits for me to settle before she starts again.

“No one, huh?”

“He’s very young.”

“What does that mean?”

“In his twenties, I think.”

“So, like, an adult and everything.”

“That’s not—”

“Does it matter?”

“What?”

She lifts the needle again, and the one eye I can see is piercing. “Does his age matter?”

It shouldn’t, should it? It’s not like I’m trying—I just—

“He’s sad,” I say, and for a second, her eye flares wide. My phone buzzes at my hip. I ignore it. “I don’t know how to fix that.”

Iris doesn’t reply. She shades another part of the tattoo, slightly frowning.

“I don’t think you can.”

“What?”

“It’s not about fixing things, Asher. You can’t fix people, you know.”

“I know.” I do. I’m proof enough of that. So’s Vlad, though I’d say Grant…

Grant has changed him, maybe. He’s not fixed anything about Vlad, not really.

“I want to help him,” I say.

Iris smiles. She lifts the needle away and sets it down, examining the tattoo for a second. When she raises her patch, I hold perfectly still.

Magic surges over me, moves through me, and my blessing rebels far less than I know it can, as though it’s as invested as I am in hearing her answer.

“That’s something I think you can do,” she says finally. “I’m glad you’ve found someone to care about.”