Page 2 of The Realm That Falls to Her

“Who were they?” I demand again. “The ones who gave you the secret to cold iron.”

“A male and a female,” he says, not looking at me. “He had violet eyes and she, the woman…looked like her.” He points across to where Evanthe lies unconscious. The fury freezes in my veins, then flares anew.

Cebba. It has to be. And her father, Ilberon, that murderous bastard. He put her up to this.

I cross to my mother, lifting her limp body into my arms and turning towards the exit.

“You aren’t going to kill me?” the human asks, confusion overtaking common sense. I turn the full weight of my stare on him.

“Oh, in good time,” I say. “But first I will take care of everyone else. When I return, I will start with your court, your friends, and your family, everyone you’ve ever held dear, everyone who’s ever heard you whisper a word about my kind. This secret will die with you, but only when you’re wishing I’d killed you first, so you never had to listen to the dying screams of your loved ones, as you have forced me to.”

He gapes at me, and I’m pleased to see he still has enough life left in him for horror to cloud his eyes. I leave him in a widening pool of his own blood, climbing the stairs in a few urgent bounds. My revenge will be slow and drawn out, but the priority is to return my mother to Faerie, where the realm can help her heal. I reach out to her again now, the spark of magic within her still so faint, fighting against the poison all around her, but so close to going out.

I will save her, whatever it costs me.

And then I’ll deal with Cebba.

Chapter 1

“Get down, now.”

I slam my knees against the muddy earth, pulling Destan with me, as several Seelie fae ride into view. Crouched behind the rocks of the trail, my legs burn from running and my head thumps to the frantic rhythm of my heartbeat. I need to rest and regroup, but we can’t stop for long. Damp seeps through my skirts, and I watch a centipede wind its way through the crevices of the boulders while I strain my ears to listen.

The rapid beat of hoofs rumbles up to us, and I peer through the stones. Our pursuers are galloping along the trail twenty or so feet below, moving much faster than we can on foot.

The Wild Hunt, with their huge, Calasian steeds and taste for blood sport. I thought I’d seen the last of them when I killed Cebba, but thanks to Evanthe they’re back. It would be very nice if one of these days they were hunting something other than me.

“Okay,” Destan murmurs to me as he peers over my shoulder. “They’ve gone further down the pass. Let’s move.”

Now that we’re more confident they won’t spot us, we return to scrabbling on up the steep trail, but my limbs feel like lead. We’ve been running ever since Evanthe found us at Irnua, since Ruskin…

I gulp back my rising dread at my last memory of Ruskin: a flash of magic, an explosion of dark water and then—gone. Snatched from existence as if he and Evanthe had never been there. The image has latched onto me, weighing me down. He can’t be gone. Not really. The terror of it stalks me just like the Hunt. If I let it catch me, I know it will choke me, suffocating me until I can’t put one foot in front of the other anymore.

But we’re not too far from the border with the Unseelie Kingdom as I remember it. If we can get that far, at least the Hunt isn’t likely to follow.

“Come on, Eleanor, you’re going to have to move faster than that,” Destan urges.

I glare at him, but I don’t have breath to spare to point out this is easier for him than for me. We’re both sweaty and panting with the effort of outrunning the Hunt, but I’m being firmly reminded that Destan is fae, and therefore faster, stronger, and more resilient. His long legs carry him nimbly up the path, as I push myself onwards, trying to match his pace with gritted teeth.

“This doesn’t look like the way I came before,” I say, glancing over the uneven track, punctuated with jagged rock as the path travels further up into the peaks ahead of us. “Maybe this trail will be harder for the horses? We could still stay ahead of them.”

Destan’s face twists with doubt, and I know I’m grasping, but it’s the best hope my brain can come up with in this moment. Panic nips at the edge of my reason, and I’m starting to feel desperate with fear. If the Hunt catches us, I’m sure they’ll kill Destan, though I doubt it will be quick. As Ruskin’s best friend, they’ll make him suffer first, and I have a missing finger that shows exactly the kind of “fun” the Hunt’s members like to have with their victims. Then, when they’ve made me watch my friend die bleeding and screaming, they’ll take me to Evanthe, and she’ll set about torturing me into agreeing to remove the protections I put on the founding stone. I’ve held up under torture once before, but that was when I knew I was protecting Ruskin, when I knew I had a reason to fight. If he’s already gone…

No, I tell myself firmly. I won’t let myself believe it. You will see him again. You will find him.

Not yet, though. He took on Evanthe to buy us time, to give me a chance to get away, and I won’t make his efforts meaningless by getting caught now. That promise gives me some strength. I can’t help him if I’m dead. The whinny of horses grows louder and Destan doubles back, leaning over an overhanging rock to try to catch sight of exactly how close the Hunt is.

A whizz of metal zips through air and he staggers back, hitting the ground. I feel something warm and wet flick across my arm and look down to see blood freckling my skin. Destan sits there, looking dazed, and I stare down at the shaft of wood protruding out the back of his arm, tipped with a bronze arrowhead pink with shredded flesh.

“Destan!” I drop down beside him, examining the wound. Mom’s work as a healer gave me a strong stomach, but I still feel a lurch of nausea at the way his skin is pulled taut around the sharp metal. It’s pierced straight through, I think, only hitting flesh and muscle. But I can’t remove it with the care it needs now. Not when the hoofbeats grow ever nearer. There’s no time. There’s just no time.

Destan looks at me with the slightly glazed look of someone battling waves of pain.

“We can’t outrun them, Eleanor,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

My mind whirls, picking up ideas and throwing them aside. I try to block out the noise of the Hunt, the trail of blood now slowly trickling down Destan’s arm, and the internal scream I’m holding back whenever I think of Ruskin.

“Then we’ll just have to take them out,” I say, starting to help Destan up by hooking a shoulder under his good arm and heaving until my knees groan.

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