Page 101 of Untethering Dark

“And how are you going to do that? Kill every person that enters the forest? Humans take notice of that sort of thing. You’d be overrun in days. If you’d watched the world as closely as you claim, you’d know that.”

A feral, rapid smile spread. “Your witch’s mother cast a spell to keep us in, and I’ve just the curse to usurp its intention. It won’t be us she’s keeping in but outsiders out.” She noddedtoward Johanna. “It’s a shame that one’s edict gave us less intruders to purge, but we’ll enjoy what we’ve been given.”

Heldin was no better than the conquerors she scorned.

All he’d wanted from the humans was respect. Respect for him, this forest, and its children. He never intended to hoard it all for himself, yet his actions had inspired one who did.

Twisting his head away from her blade, he snapped his jaws, aiming to take hand and knife whole. Laughing, she scuttled back, and with a flick of her wrist, the ropes binding his limbs cinched tight, straining his joints. Any tighter and they’d dislocate.

But that’s when he noticed it. A tangle of silver white hair was tied in twine to the belt at Heldin’s waist.

“What did you do?” he growled.

“What? Oh, this.” Plucking Astrid’s hair from her belt, the cruel witch swirled it down his chest, making him flinch. “How do you think I subdued you so thoroughly? These bindings, the dart. I took something from the one you loved most and poisoned it against you.”

The poacher breaking into Astrid’s home, stealing her hair. Heldin had ordered it.

It was all for this. To make him a weak and pliable sacrifice.

“You didn’t need to kill her.”

Her eyes flicked up, and then as quick as a snake, she snatched the ribbon Astrid had wrapped around his antlers. It must’ve come unraveled. A wonder it hadn’t been lost entirely when the poachers dragged him through the forest.

With a cruel twist of her lips, she tossed it into the fire.

He lurched forward, as if he might pluck it from the flames, but he barely rocked the tanning frame, his bindings biting ruthlessly.

“Sentiment.” She clucked her tongue. “What a fool you are.”

“Why?” he pressed, clenching his fangs tight. He imagined crushing her bones between them.

Her expression hardened. “Am I not owed a bit of vengeance? You betrayed us, twice over. Thousands of years we suffered in Otherworldly torment, all while you skated through the centuries without retribution, squandering your kingdom. Did you think we’d just lie down and swallow the fate you forsook us to? Did you think you’d escaped us? That you were safe? Well, no more, Wald Vater. That time has ended. Your reckoning is upon you.”

And with that, she drew her blade across his chest.

Chapter Forty-Eight

To Suri’s credit, they didn’t vomit at the macabre sight before them. The impaled, flayed bodies. Heldin’s deranged followers adorning themselves with strips of bloody, tattered skin, hooting and hollering and baying at the moon. Suri stared down the enemy with an unexpected calm, dusting snow off their third and final drone, kitchen knives tucked into their boots.

Astrid wouldn’t be alone in meting out carnage this night.

With a quiet buzz, the drone lifted and disappeared into the canopy of the trees. The revelry was so loud, their enemy didn’t so much as twitch at the sound. “Free our loved ones first,” Suri bid. “Then make these fiends regret ever daring to come back. I’ll clear a path for you.”

Astrid moved quickly and silently from their shadowy hiding place amongst the trees to the tanning frame in which Johanna was bound. No one looked her way, their attentions on Gudariks on the other side of the bonfire. One of Heldin’s acolytes was stealing the hide from his chest in small strips, like someone might peel an apple. For now, Gudariks took it in quiet agony. But the torture had only just begun.

Rage bubbled and brewed, a noxious potion that would poison and destroy, and these murderers would have their taste. They were not long for this world.

Approaching from behind without the crunch of snow, Astrid whispered, “Johanna, it’s me, Astrid. I’m going to cut you loose.”

The ranger jumped but gave the barest nod to acknowledge that she heard and understood.

Drawing on the moisture in the air, Astrid forged a knife from ice, the magic making it sharper than even the finest steel blade. She carefully sliced her friend free.

Rubbing her wrists, Johanna began to turn, then stumbled back at the sight of her.

Astrid grabbed the front of her coat and cupped one clawed hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. “It’s still me,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. Johanna’s right eye was swollen shut, and there was a cut across her cheek. Although she didn’t appear to have any other injuries, that didn’t dim the reality around them.

If Astrid had come any later, Johanna easily could’ve been one of the flayed.

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