Page 81 of Teeth To Rip & Tear

“I’ll wait right here,” Mitchell assured me. “But I can’t go in, Doll. He has given me an order, and I cannot disobey.”

I reached out, patting Mitchell’s chest. I’d hoped the motion would be reassuring, but it felt like a desperate grab. “I understand,” I assured him, returning to the door. “Wait for me?”

The vein in Mitchell’s jaw ticked. “As long as it takes.”

Instead of the Huntsman’s study, I walked through the door to find a long hallway. Every inch of the wall space was filled with mounts. Dead animal heads and small creatures on tiny shelves protruding from the walls.

White stag head after white stag head, a manticore’s tail, tiny pixies frozen as they danced in a ring, mounted in a jar on the shelf.

The room stank of dust and stagnant air. I hurried forward; despite my unwillingness to see the Huntsman, I didn’t want to be surrounded by stuffed dead creatures.

Finally, I passed through the archway at the end of the corridor, though the stink did not abate.

The Huntsman appeared deep in thought, staring out the window at the moving parts of the castle. He wore his signature blood-red jacket, buttoned to the collar. His fingernails were bloody as if he’d dipped a hand into someone’s chest and ripped out their heart.

I stopped, frozen, hoping he wouldn't see me if I didn’t move.

He kept me waiting for a moment before he turned to me; his strange square pupils were so large that it was impossible to tell where his irises began.

“You were meant to fix this.” He sneered.

My eyes rounded. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it felt like one of those cases of ‘whoever speaks first loses.’

“Can you see the path she has woven for me? My beloved Éabha?” The Huntsman turned back to the window. “The soothsayer has told me I cannot escape my fate unless a Weaver can break the threads that bind me. Can you see them?”

Though I didn’t want to help him, not after he had kidnapped me and brought me to the Aos Sí, I squinted and studied the Huntsman with a renewed interest.

What I had first assumed was a shadowy miasma of magic that clung to him, something wholly belonging to the Huntsman, appeared to be shackled. I couldn’t see the intricacies without getting closer, but Weavers could shift reality. They could knit fate.

My grandmother used to wax poetic about her power in the Aos Sí and how much she had given up to escape. She hadtold me herself that she had made plans. The coin would help me, and I would know when to use it.

At the time, I had viewed her words as a whimsical comfort, but they might have been more accurate than I’d realized.

I couldn’t lie and say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind—that my grandmother had designed my destiny.

I remained silent.

The Huntsman looked down his nose at me, swaying as he pushed away from his desk. Drunk.

“You’re useless!” He snarled.

I flinched, hearing Joel’s voice layered over his. I remained silent.

“What’s the point of you if you can’t help me!” His teeth were gritted as he whirled toward his desk with unleashed madness and began to tear the books and papers apart. “Find the young Weaver in Locket.” He brandished a book. “She will weave a new reality!” As the Huntsman flicked through the pages, I recognized my grandmother’s cramped handwriting even at a distance.

I hadn’t found her journal in the library, and now I knew why.

“If I weave what you want, will you let me go?” The words left my mouth before I realized, but I couldn’t reel them back in once they were out.

The Huntsman threw the journal at me. The heavy leather volume hit me on the side of the head. Ithurt, but I grabbed the book as it fell.

He approached me, his face red with anger and his teeth bared—sharp and serrated.

He reached for my neck.

And I lost it.

Joel had reached for my neck. He’s pressed his hands around my throat hard enough to leave fingerprint bruises on my skin. He had choked me, hoping to kill me.

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