Page 86 of Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

And that was…it wasfun.

A smile dared my lips as I glanced behind me only for a second before taking a sharp left. Opposite my strongest side. Maybe it wouldn’t detour him, but any normal person wouldn’t have guessed it. Humans, by nature, follow their strongest side.

Right.

Goosebumps spread across my skin, the thrill bubbling in my stomach, warming it.

Everything was falling apart.

Mark was leaving.

Mom hated me for failing.

The last ten years of my life were meaningless. Building something for my brother that he would never see.

I was pathetic. My Mom had been telling me that for my entire life. Useless. Nothing.

Now I was being hunted. Not by a demon or by the castle guards, but by something so much older, so much darker, so much more sinister than anything else in theworld.

And Iliked it.

I shouldn’t like it. I should be terrified, and I was. The rational part of me was terrified of being caught, but then there was a deep, dark, irrational part of me, the part I hated so fucking much that some days I wished I could just cut it out of me, that part was laughing maniacally, wanting him to try harder.

I rubbed my face, the remaining Asilos Root muck flaking away, clearing my vision a little more as my hair whipped behind me, the rain pelting down through the trees. It was pitch black outside. The sun had already set, the moonlight drifting through the breaks in the branches above.

I had run a long time, taken multiple left turns, a few right just to throw him off hopefully.

I finally saw freedom come into view. The edge of the city, the cobblestone street. I had taken the long way, trying to get closer to my house so it’d be less likely for the guards to see me, but I found myself skidding to a stop at what I suddenly saw before me.

My eyes widened, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I tried to force myself to quiet.

It wasn’t Trick I saw waiting for me just on the other side of the treeline, it was a woman with beautiful red hair, accompanied by two white-robed people on either side of her. They were speaking to a pair of knights in hushed tones.

I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to breathe, to slow my heart. I was fine. I was still in the woods; they couldn’t see me.

“…well why haven’t you caught this person?” the woman asked the guards. A witch. She had to be a witch. Evanora? It would explain the lack of robes. Shit. If that was Evanora Fairshield, I needed to go. I needed to run far away from here, find another point of entry.

“They seem to be an expert at evading us. All they leave behind is blood-splattered walls and piles of bodies. There’s no weapon, no signature, no anything.”

“Hmm,” she sighed. “Well, alright then.” She glanced to the robe on her right. “We have no use for them.”

A hand slammed over my mouth.

My eyes widened and I grabbed the arm, digging my nails into the person’s flesh. The fear pounded through me, dripping down my legs with the rain. I slammed my foot back into them, struggling against the firm grip.

“Shh,” Trick mumbled, the warmth of his body searing against my skin. “I found you.”

Despite my fear of him, I relaxed a hair because at least it wasn’t a witch or guard. At least it was someone I knew even if he was insane.

The Forbidden Magic swam from the hands hidden under the robes, consuming the two guards in seconds, leaving them as nothing but husks of what they had once been.

I fought against him, tried to get away if only to get deeper into the woods, to hide.

“They’re talking about me,” Trick whispered, his voice guttural. “They’re talking about how many people I’ve slaughtered in this city in the last year I’ve been here. They’ve found those four men that fucked you.”

My eyes widened. Mom had spoken to us about thosedeaths. The serial killer going around brutally dismembering people in the city within the last year. I hadn’t put it together. Howstupiddid a person have to be not to put that together?

“If you had wanted to get away,” he began quietly, “you would have run straight for the city. But you took the long way. You wanted to be caught.”

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