Page 39 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

Evidently, I would not be getting rid of my uncle or my cravings so easily.

I was standing in a dank, underground hallway that was roughly hewn from rock with metal brackets drilled into the walls to support torchlights. An oppressive magic was heavy in the air, dulling my sense of the flames, and my feet were drawn toward the wall of darkness at the end of the corridor. Once I reached it, I found it was a stairwell descending even deeper into the earth.

I glanced up at the last torch, the iron buzzing against my fey senses. I lifted my hand and called one of the gauntlets from my Wild Hunt armour to me. The glove covered my hand, its magic acting as a protective barrier so I could reach for the iron handle of the torch without the toxic metal burning my fey flesh.

I descended the stairs, listening carefully to the steady dripping of water which echoed up from the pitch dark. The blackness was dense, so heavy that it almost seemed to be a sentient thing trying to swallow the light flickering so weakly from my torch.

At the bottom of the steps was a small room, but my attention did not linger on the simple furniture that was pressed up against the walls. I cringed at the strong smells of liquor, blood, and excrement, but I continued across the small room to stand before a barred doorway. My light would not pierce the darkness beyond the stone archway and heavy iron bars. It was as if the light was being repelled by that same heavy magic that made this tomb-like place feel like I was suffocating.

A prison. One meant to confine something powerful.

As soon as I came to this realization, something stirred in the dark beyond the bars. Soft flesh moved hesitantly across the grimy stone, and I saw dirty, white clothing, perhaps a dress, appear in the dark. Something crawled toward me on all fours with knobby knees and long, dark hair, and the uncanninessof it made me uneasy. If I hadn’t known this was one of the prophetic dreams I frequently had thanks to my sensitivity to the Tithriall, then I would have become defensive, but I knew it was a premonition.

An unusually vivid one.

A form crept slowly into my view, slinking cautiously out of the darkness. It took me a moment to realize it was a humanoid female because of how gaunt she was and the animalistic way she moved. Her hands were illuminated first by my light as she came near, and I saw thin, crooked fingers and scabby knuckles scarred by fire. Some of her fingernails were long and jagged. Some were misshapen and marred by grooves. And others were missing entirely, exposing her nail beds caked in filth and dry blood.

I easily recognized the hands of someone who had been meticulously tortured for a very long time.

She was crouching low to the ground as she neared me and winced from the glare of the light, but the torchlight finally gleamed upon her face. There were yellow bruises around her narrow jaw and throat, her lip was split open, and her nose had healed crookedly. Her hair was loose and knotted, and her dress was torn and filthy.

She finally managed to open her eyes long enough for me to catch a glimpse of their colour, and I was instantly struck by the mismatching orbs, one amber and one blue. There were streaks of red amidst her dark curls that I assumed must be fresh blood.

She drew in a hissing breath, as if in surprise, and it made her cough. The dry, hacking sound was horribly loud in the silence of her prison and made me flinch.

“It’syou…” she whispered in a bastardized dialect of Sìth Gaeilge, the most common language spoken by fey, but I could still understand her accent.

Cocking my head in curiosity, I knelt to see her better while she tried to push her matted hair out of her face to see me as well. Her strange eyes flickered between my face and the flames as if she was mesmerized by them.

“A fire witch,” I guessed. Undoubtedly a powerful one too if this whole prison was meant to keep her confined.

“Nuala,” she corrected me, her voice weak and rough from lengthy disuse. Tears formed in her eyes as she settled more comfortably on the floor and stared at me. “You are not really here. Not yet.”

I was surprised and not sure how to respond. I’d had many prophetic dreams in which the Tithriall would show me future allies, including Ornella. But this was the first time that someone had ever shared the dream with me. This witch was as aware of me as I was of her, and it was so vivid. I could hear her thin chest rattling with every laboured breath. She was sick.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Nuala,” she reminded me. “I have been here waiting for you since I was a child.”

“And how do you know me?”

“I’ve seen you. In the flames,” she clarified as her eyes slid from mine to the torch between us. The fire flickered eerily in her strange eyes, sharpening the purple hollows beneath them.

“You are a Seer,” I realized aloud, and she nodded.

“Yours.”

“Mine?”

“I am meant to be. I have been waiting,” she stressed, her tears spilling over her dirty cheeks as she began to reach for the bars between us before lowering her hand. Desperation flashed in her eyes. “Please… I have been waiting for so long, please come and take me away from this place! And when you do…”

Nuala hesitated as a fierce anger suddenly ignited in those strange, mismatched eyes.

“Burn. Them. All,” she growled.

Chapter twelve

THE PRINCE OF FLAME AND SHADOW

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