Page 28 of Bounty Hunter

The back of my neck tingles with awareness, and I quickly spin to my left just as mist forms into a darker shadow and lunges from my left. Its shapeless, gaping mouth angles for my chest with a skin-crawling rasp in its attempt to suck the lucent magic from my soul for its own survival. I thrust my sword where it should be, but it’s gone, and I only slice through mist so thick that now I can’t even see my hands in front of my face. I have no idea where Vera is. I take slow steps to where I thinkshe was last, hoping that lack of a struggle means the murk hasn’t found her yet.

“Vera?” I ask, my voice low, as I turn in all directions.

My brain begins to turn foggy, my thoughts churning like thick mud. I see Darvy and Rhosse in front of me. They’re here. I smile in relief before I remember that the three of us are in a battle of some sort.What battle?My gaze swerves back and forth as I search. My friends end up in a different spot than they were when I spin around again. That’s okay—they’re here and alive. I stride toward them and watch as they pull magic to prepare for the fight, and I feel a rush of relief and camaraderie that was missing just moments ago. Why? I pull magic, and just when I begin to wonder why it’s not working, they fall dead and gloam overtakes their forms like a rabid dog, twisting and snapping. I shout and rush to their aid. But just as I swing my sword at the gloam, it’s gone. Steel strikes dirt with a thud.

I turn.Where is it? Where is… what?I cover my eyes with a hand as I try to pull my thoughts from the mud they’ve been immersed in.What am I fighting?But my muscles burn with fatigue even just lifting my arm, and the hand grasping my sword is slick with sweat. I hear a feminine voice shouting, but it’s muffled and difficult to discern. I recover one word from the string of others.Hallucination.It’s enough. I lift my gaze and search. I see the dim shimmer of light through the mist and blink several times to make sure it’s not another hallucination created by the murk.

The mist gets thinner, and my thoughts clearer, the closer I get until I realize it’s Vera, holding a ball of lucent in her hand. Shock erupts through me. She’s an Originator. And she must be powerful in her own right to hold off a murk attack like this on her own with that tiny lucent orb. The mist isn’t as quickly condensing around her, due to her lucent magic, but it’s slowlyfilling in. Her comments from yesterday make more sense now, but I don’t have time to think over it. I blink, and she’s gone. I hear her scream, but it sounds like it’s coming from all directions at once. I begin to turn, then stop and try to gain my bearings again, but my eyes burn, and my movements begin to feel increasingly sluggish once more. The murk mist is so dense now that it feels difficult to inhale, like I’m breathing in pudding.

Then like the beginnings of a tornado, the fog begins to pull and spin in thick clouds around me. My hair and clothing begin to forcefully whip around my body. I grip my sword firmly, holding it tightly as the murk attempts to rip it from my grasp with its powerful, gale-force winds. My eyes struggle to blink, tears streaming from their corners, and then the funnel tightens. The wind has gathered loose debris from the forest floor, and I lift my arms to protect myself from the loose rocks, sticks, sharp leaves, and thorns that seem to be attacking me. I feel the sting of cuts on my face, neck, and hands. I feel the hit of larger rocks battering my body and know there will be bruises if I survive.

Tighter and tighter, the wind narrows, sucking the last precious bits of oxygen from my grasp, bit by precious bit, until it stops and instantaneously gathers into the dark oxygen-stealing blanket that is murk. It’s all over me, suffocating. All I see is black. I shout as I feel it pulling my magic to the surface of my soul through my chest—it feels like death. My breathing sounds like a sharp wheeze, and my blindness is accentuated with bright dots due to my lack of air. I hear Vera shouting but can’t make out what she’s saying. My body burns with murk-induced fatigue, and it takes all my will power to lift my arm. With a wild swing that my weapons trainer would balk at, I slice through part of it with my sword, and it temporarily fallsaway, gives a long, drawn out rasp, and comes at me again. Blackness once again enshrouds me, and I pull my magic so hard against the cuff I’m surprised it holds.

Of all the struggles I’ve had in my life, being absent of my magic has never been one of them, and I think it might be the worst. I see Vera’s light press through its form on the opposite side, and immediately, with her lucent magic, the murk’s power weakens enough that my vision clears. I lift my sword before the murk can dissipate again and stab straight through it. The charm around my weapon practically sizzles as it comes in contact with the murk’s physical gloam form, neutralizing it into a wisp of air that rises and disappears in seconds. I stand there panting and wipe a smear of blood across my face with my sleeve, taking great gulps of air and feeling relief as the burn and fog leaves my body.

“Enchanted sword? Those are pricey.” Vera lifts a shapely brow and looks pointedly at it while her orb snuffs out as if it was never there.

I sheathe my sword, more grateful for it than I’ve ever been. It’s my only lifeline at this point. “And you’re an Originator.”

She shrugs like it’s no big deal, brushes past me, and continues in the direction we were headed before the murk appeared. I follow, but my mind is turning as it continues to clear. Originators, especially those who can share raw magic like those I employ, are sought after by all factions of magic. It makes sense now, why she would be working with bounty hunters. Their ability to increase another person’s magic, like a magical conductor of sorts, is extremely valuable and has only become more so as magic has begun to decay at a steady pace. The energy required to pull and use magic has become almost unsustainable, but having an Originator changes everything. Healers, hunters, even other types of Originators, need moremagic. She’s exactly what I need to find the flower since I was forced to leave my personal Originators with my kingdom, and it wouldn’t have been right to ask Nadiette to help me with this mission. I feel a stab of guilt again at the way I had to end things, but there’s nothing for it.

I push the thoughts away and refocus on the woman ahead of me. Suddenly, I find I’m not quite as angry toward her as I was a few minutes ago. I’ve found a powerful Originator, now I just need to hire her. I could find another Originator if she says no, but another Originator doesn’t also carry knowledge about the Tulips. I want this one. I want her.

There’s just the small fact that she doesn’t currently view us on equal grounds, me being her prisoner and all. I frown and lift the cuff to see its links around my wrist. With my current state of luck, as soon as she delivers me to the officials, my glamour will still be working so well they’ll lock me up and leave me there until it wears off or Darvy and Rhosse show up—if they ever do. A deep sorrow stabs through my chest. The hallucination caused by the murk felt too real, seeing them torn apart by gloam as if I was watching them die a second time. I force the image out of my head, unwilling to mourn. There’s a chance they are alive, and I’m not giving up hope. My two closest friends aren’t dead. They can’t be.

Back to the matter at hand—I don’t have time to rot in prison. And I don’t intend to end up there. Better by far, is convincing her of my character and my law-abiding reputation. She doesn’t need to know I’m king, but I need her to trust me. I’ve got a week to sway her opinion. In the meantime, I need to put together the offer of a lifetime to get her help.

Chapter 21

Ikar

Aday later, we’re still making our way through what is called the Black Canyons. We’ve kept a quick pace, our only real stop the murk attack, and half a night’s sleep. Seems that the wannabe hunter doesn’t like these canyons much. I would laugh, but I admit that their twists and turns and tight spaces seem never-ending, and maybe they are, if you don’t choose the right path. The first sun sets, and I would have grown even more concerned with the lack of a forthcoming exit, except I notice that the canyon walls aren’t quite as steep, the crevices wider. Soon, evidence of green shrubs overtaking the prickly, stick-like weeds adds to my optimism. The second sun sets, but we continue. It’s not until the third sun is on its way down that Vera finally stops.

We stand in a small flat field of grass, the shadowy tree line several yards distant on all sides. Canyon walls are miles apart by this point, and I grudgingly admit she seems to know how to survive. I look over my shoulder at the Black Canyon far behind us in the distance. Grown, experienced men have lost their way between those narrow walls time and time again. Ifshe has luck, it must be a hefty amount. I shrug, no complaints from me. I’ll not be questioning anything that speeds this journey up.

“We’ll stop here,” Vera says, as she removes her pack. She’s hardly looked in my direction today, and now is no different. I’m not sure if she’s scared of me, disgusted by my presence, or both. I’ve experienced neither of those directed toward me as the king. The opposite, in fact. People bowing so extravagantly they nearly fold in half, simpering women with their eyes on the throne beside me, and others planning ways in which to get ahead of another in my court—it’s all quite exhausting. I watch for a moment as she busies herself preparing a place for a small fire, continuing to ignore me. At least I know where she stands.

I gather wood while I wrestle with the fact that she’s in charge here. I’m not used to taking orders from anyone—it’s been years since I’ve had to. But while I press my lips shut and force myself not to say anything I think about the last person who truly had the power to give me an order—my father. What would he say about my current situation? For a moment on this journey, I was two steps ahead, but now I feel as if I’m five behind. I try to imagine what he’d say. How to get out of this? He was a peacemaking king, a uniter of the low kings and the people, and he was loved for it more than anything else he accomplished. He’d tell me to be humble and win her over with kindness and respect, which I already know I need to do in order to win her trust as I’ve planned, but those are the last things I want to offer right now.

I see Vera startle from the corner of my eye as I place the wood for a fire and follow her line of sight. All I see is the Black Canyon in the distance and the sparse beginnings of forest trees at the edges of this large field. Maybe she senses something I can’t see, but I’m magically helpless, so I don’t know.The gloam creatures normally lurk in shadow, but here, at least the moon shines brightly. Light won’t keep them away, but it helps. I warily eye the trees at the edge of the field, but all is still.

Earlier in the evening, I used my bow to shoot a rabbit that appeared to be following us. Odd behavior for a rabbit, but I’ve seen stranger. I now cook it over our small fire while Vera settles and watches, quietly perched on a rough log she tipped on its side. A small bird, that looks more like a wad of fluffy, fresh cotton than anything that can fly, glides through camp and lands on her shoulder with a happy chirp. I watch, intrigued, as her face visibly softens and her eyes widen with pleasure.

“Rupi,” Vera whisper-greets the bird with a tender smile.

She lifts a finger, and the bird hops onto it, wrapping its tiny feet around securely. It turns its head and looks at me with a judgmental, tiny, black eye encircled with a small gray ring, and lets out another chirp from its black beak that can be no longer than the tip of a flat quill. It’s fluffy white all over. The fuzz around its face gives it a soft, friendly look that’s at odds with the black eye directing a glare my way. The body of the bird is, at most, two inches long. Its tail another two inches. It’s tiny. And somehow, oddly familiar, though I don’t recall ever seeing a bird of this variety before.

“Is this your… pet?” I ask, as I turn the rabbit over the fire, waiting for Vera to snap at me for asking a question again.

Instead, she smiles affectionately at it, and I’m caught off guard by the soft tone of her voice. “Yeah, her name is Rupi.”

Vera pulls a small bag from her pack and pours out a tiny pile of seed in her hand, the fluffy bird eagerly hops on her palm and begins pecking. It pauses with a seed in its beak and jerks its head toward the forest, seeming to listen. Then whennothing jumps out, continues cracking the seed and pecking for more. Vera watches quietly. Then the bird hops back to her shoulder where she promptly ruffles up her feathers and nestles into the warm crook between her shoulder and neck, cushioned by her cloak, looking like something so round and fluffy it belongs in a children’s book.

“And what about the squirrel from earlier?” I’m positive it followed us for at least twelve miles.

A hint of wariness enters her eyes, but she laughs. “Just a friendly squirrel.” She shrugs her shoulders.

A friendly squirrel? Right. I’m beginning to think she’s some sort of animal whisperer. I decide not to mention the rabbit, since my questioning appears to be making her uncomfortable and I fear she’ll quit talking altogether. Animal whisperers are a subset of the hunter faction, as Rhosse is, but she can’t possibly be of the hunter faction because I saw with my own eyes her ability to pull raw lucent magic. She’s an Originator, isn’t she? I look a little closer at her, expecting the explanation to reveal itself. It doesn’t seem to add up, so I decide I’ve made more of the friendly animal situation than I need to. There are bigger things to be worried about, like survival.

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