Page 69 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

Almost immediately, the boar’s body sags as if it’d been waiting for such a thing. This time when she whines, the sound is more relieved and grateful than anything else.

When Ruen returns, he makes no sound. There’s no loud, bumbling crashing, just an empty patch of grass at my side one moment and a dark body on one bended knee in the next. “Here.” He holds out a canteen and when I frown at him in confusion, knowing damn well I hadn’t seen him carrying it earlier, he grins lightly. “I took it from one of the others,” he admits, answering my unspoken question.

I take it and upend the contents, dumping the water over the wound, trying to clear the blood away to see how bad the damage is.

“It’s bad.” I don’t need Ruen’s words to know that what he says is true, but somehow I’d hoped it wouldn’t be. The cut is too deep and almost as soon as we clean away the blood with water, more comes gushing out.

A thump disturbs my chaotic thoughts enough for me to drag my eyes away from the animal to see Maral on the ground, cursing as he twists and gets to his feet. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demands. “You think you can come up and take my kill? Go kill your own beast.”

“She is not a beast,” I snap.

Maral’s dark eyes turn towards me and then they roll. “Ugh,” he scoffs. “Don’t tell me you're some sort of animal lover. This is aHunt.” He says the word as if it’s supposed to mean something to me. All it means is death to me.

Maral grunts and scowls at the four of us—five including the boar on the ground. I do not doubt that his next words are spoken only because his group abandoned him. “Fine then,” he snaps, holding his hands up and taking a step back, more specifically away from Kalix. “Keep the damn thing, but know that I will kill another. I will kill more than any of you before the Hunt is over.”

“What if they aren’t animals?” I demand. “What if they were like you or me?”

Maral looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Makeda had said it would happen. That no one would believe. She was right. He merely shakes his head at my questions and doesn't answer them as he moves to where his fallen sword lies and picks it up, returning it to his side before jogging off to rejoin his friends.

When he’s gone, Theos drifts closer. “Kiera?”

Biting down on my lower lip, I look back to the boar whose labored breathing is slowing with each passing second. “It’s dying, Kiera,” Ruen says. “You should have let him put the creature out of its misery.”

“It’s not a creature,” I say. “It’s not a beast.”

“What do you mean?” Theos asks as he comes up alongside me, going to his knees on the grass and dirt. Blood turns the green around us a rusty red color.

I swallow back the ache in my throat as the boar’s eyes look at me. There’s no hope in them. She knows she’s dying and that I can’t help her. All I can do is take away the pain, make her not feel it quite so much as she takes her last breath.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, the words a croak in my throat.

“What are you sorry for?” Ruen asks, but I don’t answer. The words weren’t for him anyway. They were for her.

With both hands pressed to her bleeding wound, I bend my forehead over the boar’s side and close my eyes, locking back the tears that wish to flood my cheeks. How can I make them see? How can I tell them in a way that they will believe? How can I make them understand?

The last part of Makeda’s oath to me echoes in my head.

Sense not with your flesh.

My eyes open. The pulses of blood from the wound have slowed to a trickle over my fingertips—as if it’s no longer flowing in response to a heart trying to beat past its capacity. I glance at the boar’s face, finding her eyes open and unseeing. Empty. I clench my jaw hard enough that I feel something crack and pain shoot through the bone beneath my ear.

She doesn’t change but continues to maintain the form beneath us. It pisses me off. This isn’t her. She isn’t an animal.

Sense not with your flesh.

I am no great warrior like Caedmon wants me to be. I am no emotionless assassin as Ophelia tried to make me. But I also can’t leave her like this either. I don’t know what I’m fucking doing when I let my shadows out again. They withdraw from her cooling body to wrap around her flesh.

Ruen and Theos get to their feet and back up when I compel the shadows to lift her in the air. I reach down and pluck the dagger at my waist free while leaving the two strapped on either side of my chest in place. Turning my palm over, I sense a collective silence fall over the clearing as I drag the tip of the weapon over my flesh, watching the well of crimson blood that appears in an instant.

The sound of wind ceases. The rustle of leaves, the chirping of actual animals and insects—it all goes quiet. Even the Darkhavens don’t seem to be breathing behind me as I hold out my offering to the shadows. They take it willingly, consuming my blood—sucking it into the darkness I have wrapped around the boar’s body. They move faster and faster, all hints of the animal inside hidden from view as they converge on the body.

My heart thuds wildly in my breast as I lower my hand. A single drop of blood falls to the dirt before the wound finishes knitting—far slower than it should. By the time it lands on the soil, the shadows are lowering the once animal back to the ground. I suck in a breath and call them back to me.

They disperse in an instant and reveal the truth that Maral wouldn’t understand or believe.

“By the Gods…” Theos’ whisper is horrified at the sight before him.

Booted feet move forward until all three of them are at my sides, staring down at the fresh image before them. Going down on one bent knee, I reach for the naked girl’s open eyes—the same color as her boar—and close them.

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