Page 35 of Untethering Dark

Snowcapped pines encircled the pond, its frozen surface unblemished save for the few places fallen branches jutted out of the ice.

Astrid brushed snow off a log and sat, patting the spot beside her.

He joined her, dead wood creaking softly under the combined weight. But it held.

Tipping his head toward the sky, he glimpsed a shooting star streaking by.

The universe owed him a wish, and he wished for the safety of all that he loved.

One would think that a beast such as himself wouldn’t know what it felt to love. But he loved this forest, his home, and every living creature inhabiting it. There was a time when he loved a group of humans, too, dedicated his existence to protecting them...

Until they reached too high, let greed and senseless cruelty rule them, and it festered into something evil.

Guttural screams. Flayed flesh. Chanting before a fire so tall it singed the branches of nearby trees.

His mind slammed shut, leaving nothing but a dark, empty hole in memory.

The thing he couldn’t, or didn’t want to remember, was long, long ago—some thousands of years in the past. That locked door in his mind creaked and splintered and tried to wrench itself open almost a century ago, when more great evil poisoned the land. Evil acts always brought him back to this, too terrible to bear remembering.

For a time, they just sat in silence, finding peace in the cold and quiet solitude of a winter’s night. In all his existence, had he ever just sat with somebody? He couldn’t recall that he had.

“I don’t like to let anger or hunger rule me,” he said. “If and when I devour, I want it to be because I choose to do it.”

“Do you often get to choose?”

“Control is a precarious thing, especially when living a life driven by hunting instincts, but yes, I mostly feel like the choice is mine.” Until a set of fiery, red eyes unraveled him completely. Something was brewing in his forest, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was several steps behind. And he didn’t like that it reminded him of evils past. “Why didn’t you run?”

“I saw that you were afraid.” Astrid stared out at the pond’s glassy, frozen surface; hands braced to either side of her, curling with the curve of the log. But with just a little more scrutiny,he saw they were clenched, the knuckles bone white and nails digging into dead wood. “Memory makes prey out of all of us.”

Chapter Eleven

After giving Fritz and Liesel lots of ear scritches and making sure they had enough food to last the day, Astrid began her trek down the mountain to Baden-Gottsdorf in the gray hour before sunrise. She needed to warn her friends about the poachers and strange magic afoot.

An hour, then two, passed with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company.

Something had scared Gudariks. And it was a look she’d seen before, on Demos.

One moment, they were strolling through a Grecian forest, laughing and chatting; the next, she was holding his trembling body after he’d run off and hid within the hollow of a tree. When he finally spoke, he only told her that he spent years running from the Romans who ruthlessly hunted him and his people.

To this day, she didn’t know what set Demos off on their walk, just that it had been sudden and debilitating. To see it repeated in Gudariks chilled her to the bone. When his hackles rose and he slunk back, pushing her behind him,putting his bodybetween hers and the perceived threat, she wanted to hack whatever provoked that reaction to bits. But she couldn’t slay a memory.

If Astrid didn’t need to reach her friends, she would’ve stayed with him all night. Talk, sit in silence, stare at stars until the sun came up, it didn’t matter. No one should be alone after being brought so low by memory’s long reach. She would’ve held him again, too, if he asked.

Something, or someone, in Gudariks’s past haunted him. But what could scare a creature of terror?

Whatever strange, ancient magic was at play here was too powerful to ignore, and a threat to the forest god was a threat to the forest itself. Something she could not abide.

How poachers were connected to such magic remained to be seen, but they had better hope Johanna found them before she did. Because Astrid wouldn’t hesitate to do to them what they had done to the wolf.

From the forest, Astrid cut through Johanna and Suri’s open backyard to their renovated, modernized farmhouse. It was an old byre dwelling characterized by its wooden shingles and a hip roof that descended to the height of the ground floor. She didn’t go through town unless she needed to buy supplies. It was faster this way and people tended to get skittish when she was around.

Something in her alarmed the prey animal in them.

After removing her snowshoes and leaning them against the side of the house, she knocked on the door.

A curtain swished in the window to the right, and two beats later, the door swung open, Suri filling the threshold, all beaming smiles. The next thing Astrid knew, she was being crushed in one of their famously tight bear hugs.

“Astrid! My favorite Hexe. What a surprise! To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

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