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T he centaurs had fallen off one by one as Raif moved swiftly and quietly through the trees.

He’d struck at least two with his arrows, his shot sure and his aim true as ever.

He’d always been good with a bow, though he was far better with a sword.

Close-in combat was where Raif truly shone as a warrior.

Had there been fewer hunters, he would have taken great pleasure in cutting them all down.

As it was, there were too many to risk his companions’ lives for his own enjoyment.

There was something off in this part of the forest, something more than the aberrant Fae they’d encountered before.

It was in the air, thick and oppressive.

It pressed in on him from all sides as he ran; his legs had to work twice as hard to drive him forward against the weight of it.

Eventually, the heaviness forced him to slow to a walk.

Raif’s breaths were labored, the same weight dragging down his legs now pressing on his chest. He felt as though his lungs were being crushed under it, unable to fully expand.

His vision swam as he forced himself forward.

Forced himself to keep gasping for air. He was moving too slow, allowing himself to be too vulnerable to those twisted beings he thought were surely watching him now, waiting for him to stumble and fall.

Brandishing his sword, Raif gritted his teeth and fought back steadily against that ceaseless pressure.

One step after another, he inched forward until his inability to take in a full breath had his head spinning.

Enough that when he lifted his eyes to look up from the path, he thought he must have lost his mind when he saw before him a clearing.

The Cut.

Raif stopped moving, stopped breathing entirely.

He blinked hard, but the mirage remained.

Sheathing his sword, Raif closed his eyes.

Unclenched his jaw. Focused all of his strength and energy on taking one deep, deliberate, steadying breath.

If he could drag enough air into his lungs, it would clear the illusion from his mind.

A level head was his best defense against the barrage of corrupted magic assaulting him.

Elowas, he repeated to himself. This is Elowas; this isn’t real.

Despite his efforts, when Raif opened his eyes again, he was still standing at the edge of The Cut. Now, it was dimly lit by flickering candles—and he was no longer there alone.

He knew this scene, knew exactly what was unfolding before him. Around him. He’d carried this memory with him for a very, very long time. He’d never forget the configuration of those candles.

He had the same pit in his stomach as he’d felt that day when he saw the cold, determined look in Kael’s eyes as the pair had ridden back to the Undercastle from a particularly brutal clash on the Veladryn front.

They’d managed to secure the dominion, just, but their victory came at a steep price.

Werryn had berated Kael’s inability to extend his shadows far enough into the Seelie unit to do any real damage.

The king hadn’t been able to produce much more than a few fine, misty ribbons until their forces had come close enough that his magic tore through both the Seelie army and his own.

One of those black tendrils had bitten into Raif’s thigh, deep enough that the memory of the pain made him limp now as he approached where Kael—the ghost of Kael, the memory of Kael—knelt in the center of The Cut.

He’d lit candles in a configuration Raif had never seen before that night, though the Guard Captain rarely attended the rituals there.

They were garish and over-the-top, he would claim when asked, but he would never admit the truth out loud: those rituals frightened him.

The Low One was not a kind god, but one of wrath and vengeance.

The perfect idol for the Unseelie Court, but not one that Raif cared to be any nearer to than he felt when muttering his own prayers in private before he slept.

Kael was facing him, just as he had been that night, but he didn’t see his friend lurking in the shadows of the trees.

Watching. His head was lowered, hair a shining silver curtain hiding his face.

The invocation he murmured was too low to hear despite the sounds of the forest having silenced around them.

And then, the cool glint of metal as Kael raised his dagger.

Raif was as powerless to stop him in this manifestation as he had been that night as Kael drove the weapon into the crease of his elbow and slowly, slowly dragged it down towards his wrist. The blade was sunken into his forearm so deep that its tip must have been scraping bone, but the Unseelie King didn’t falter, didn’t flinch.

Blood poured from the wound and was absorbed just as quickly into the thirsty soil below.

Sangelas —blood magic. A blood rite. Kael was committing an unspeakable, unthinkable act.

Shadows began to mix with the blood, seeping from Kael’s arm that he now held outstretched. Then, it was as if Kael’s entire body was exploding with his own magic. Darkness engulfed him. The Cut. The forest. So thick Raif could scarcely see his king as he tried to run towards him.

But this was wrong. This was different.

Those centuries ago, Raif had plunged headlong into that darkness to find Kael writhing on the ground as his magic tore him apart from the inside, too strong for his body to contain.

His flesh blistered and stretched and tore in patterns that cruelly mimicked the tendrils of shadow that surged from him.

It wasn’t until Raif had snuffed out each candle, kicked dirt over the runes Kael had scratched into the forest floor, and hastily packed the wound in the king’s arm with strips of his own tunic to staunch the bleeding that the darkness ebbed at last. Kael’s shadows withdrew into his skin, leaving him unconscious and gravely wounded. But alive. Breathing.

This time, Raif’s feet were stuck fast in place.

The darkness that surrounded him had thickened where it lay on the ground, dense and heavy as mud all the way up to his waist. He couldn’t move.

When he made to call out to Kael, the same muddy blackness filled his mouth.

His throat. His lungs. But his eyes were left unobstructed, and he was forced to watch as the king succumbed to his magic.

It shredded through him, shattering bones and strangling organs and ripping his flesh to bloody, ragged ribbons.

And the earth took it all, those runes filling with gore and the soil drinking and drinking endlessly.

Kael’s body was left a mangled, unrecognizable heap.

His shadows dissipated into the air as though inhaled by the altar before him.

Raif fell to his knees when the darkness retracted, finally freeing him.

His whole body trembled, and his eyes burned with unshed tears, but he didn’t look away from the carnage.

He’d failed him—his king. His oldest and closest friend. He’d failed him again.

Raif was still on his knees, shoulders heaving, when the scene before him began to dissolve slowly.

It was only the sound of galloping hooves that brought him out of the twisted, false memory and back into focus.

He was not in Wyldraíocht, he was not kneeling at the edge of The Cut.

He was still in Elowas, and he was still being hunted.

The warrior wheeled around, rising to his feet and nocking an iron-tipped arrow on his bow as he spun. His movement was smooth, flawless—one he’d practiced in the training ring a thousand times. The transition from vulnerable to defensive.

The first arrow Raif loosed met its mark in the center of one hunter’s barrel chest. When he fell, the next beast behind him stumbled over his flailing legs.

The fall, and the sight of his brother sucking in dying breaths where he lay, only angered the creature further.

Raif’s second arrow hit the centaur’s hindquarters, but still he charged.

Swiftly, Raif drew his sword and dropped his back shoulder behind it, so that when the advancing centaur ran straight down the blade until the hilt was pressed against its stomach, the soldier scarcely moved an inch.

The centaur snapped its jagged, broken teeth in Raif’s face just once before Raif heaved him onto the ground.

But his sword was stuck in the creature’s gut, and there was yet a third baring down on Raif’s position.

He withdrew a rope from his satchel, long and pliable and woven through with iron thread.

At the end of it hung a heavy ball of the same metal.

He handled it quickly, ignoring the way it singed his palm as he hurled it towards the beast’s middle.

The weighted end swung around once, then again, wrapping the rope around twice and pulling it taut.

The centaur roared in pain and fury as he fell to the ground, but Raif was already kneeling atop him with the tip of his dagger resting against the notch in the creature’s neck.

His legs kicked and his hands clawed desperately at the earth.

His movements only tightened the rope further, the iron scorching marks into his bare skin.

“Be still, beast,” Raif growled. The sharp end of his dagger sank slightly into the hollow of the centaur’s throat. The droplet of blood that bloomed from the tiny puncture was black.

The centaur’s breath came in hot, noisy pants as he gradually slowed his movements and instead shifted his body this way and that in an effort to escape the burning.

“You’ll only tighten the rope further.”

Finally, the centaur ceased fighting. His nostrils flared as he stared angrily up at his captor. “You—you’re no aneiydh.”

“No,” Raif confirmed. “I am not.”

“Then set me free,” the creature said angrily, writhing once more against the rope. “We are no threat to you. He has no use for the living.”

“You hunt for Him?” Raif demanded. He jerked the rope tighter when the beast refused to respond.

“Yes,” the centaur gritted out. “But not the living. Set me free.”

Raif studied him for a beat, searching the centaur’s feral, desperate eyes for deception.

He smelt of dark magic, of rotting soil—and fear.

Keeping the rope tight and his dagger lifted, Raif eased back off of the creature’s chest. The centaur rolled shakily to his feet.

He grimaced as the rope tugged at his raw skin.

Still gripping the covered end of the line, Raif approached the fallen centaur to retrieve his sword from its stomach. He stopped when he drew closer, then fell back a step. His lips curled in disgust.

The hunter he’d slain was no centaur at all, but a monster crudely patched together from parts of other Fae. The torso of a male roughly stitched onto the body of a mare, the scar from where the two were fused together halfway healed into a thick, jagged line that glared an ugly shade of red.

Raif had seen a great many terrible things during his time as a foot soldier in the Unseelie army, but this—this was the first time he’d felt his stomach turn this way, the first time he’d ever had to force back bile. He could have vomited right there had he possessed any less willpower.

“What is this?” he demanded once he found his voice. No longer so forceful, it shook with every syllable.

“There were only two of us when I arrived,” the bound centaur said simply. He’d moved to stand beside Raif, forcing slack into the rope. “He wanted a herd.”

“He—the Low One?” Raif almost shuddered. Almost. He hid the reaction by pinning the poor beast’s body down with the heel of his boot and yanking his sword free. He did so blindly to avoid looking at the grotesque scar again.

The centaur glanced down at him strangely for the briefest moment before turning away. “We keep him fed, and he lets us do as we please.”

Raif tugged sharply on the rope to force the centaur back around. The hunter stood two heads taller and was almost twice as broad, but he was weakening under the grip of the iron. He swayed slightly on his hooves.

“What happens when there are no more aneiydh to hunt?” It was likely a foolish question, but Raif felt he needed to ask it. He needed to understand what he was facing now, whether or not it posed him a direct threat.

“As long as he is worshipped, there will always be aneiydh to hunt,” the centaur said. The way he said it so simply, with neither pleasure nor regret in his words, was somehow more chilling than if he’d appeared excited by the fact.

Raif wondered briefly whether Lyre knew this about their god—that He consumed the souls of the faithful. Though knowing the High Prelate, he’d likely be the first to volunteer to deliver those souls to the Low One himself.

“Have you no remorse?” Raif demanded finally.

The centaur continued to gaze down at him with the same blank, impassive expression. “We are all the same here. Why should I pity those which wouldn’t pity me? Here, it is hunt, be hunted, or hide. I will not be hunted, and I will not exist an eternity in hiding. So I hunt.”

Raif raised an eyebrow . “Where might one hide?”

The centaur smirked then, though it wasn’t cruel or taunting. Entertained, maybe. “I’d have taken you for a hunter, soldier.”

“Say I wasn’t,” Raif pressed. “Say I wanted to hide.”

“There is a place out of his sight—a protected place, the only place in all of Elowas he cannot look into.”

“Take me there.” He knew it was unlikely that Kael would be there, but a nagging in Raif’s chest wouldn’t let him ignore the possibility, however slight. If nothing else, it would make for a safe fallback location once he managed to reunite with his companions.

The centaur recoiled forcefully, almost rearing. “I cannot—”

“You can,” Raif interrupted, his voice hardening as his grip on the rope tightened. “You will. Or I will leave you here, tied to a tree, for whichever hunter comes along next.”

The centaur’s nostrils flared and he bared his teeth. It was false bravado; Raif could tell by the way his eyes widened a fraction. Finally, he bowed his head in reluctant submission. “I will take you, if you agree to release me once we arrive.”

Raif only nodded, careful to avoid making any promises he wouldn’t keep. Then, he snapped the rope just hard enough to make the creature wince. “Lead the way.”