Page 53 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

“I cannot sense what is really beyond the illusion so we should not linger here any longer,” I told him.

“Agreed,” said Sage as he finally removed that helmet, and it felt like I could breathe again when I finally met his beautiful eyes. The haze of dread the armour generated dissipated almost instantly. “Ciaran was hit. Would you be willing to heal him so he can fly? But only if you have the strength to spare,” he added more sternly.

I rolled my eyes and exhaled hard to show him my exasperation but then nodded. Sage’s lips curved with the temptation to smile, but he managed to maintain a stoic expression as he guided us to Ciaran.

I could not see anything of the other rider aside from a swirl of deeper shadows before Sage expanded his shield from around us out further to encompass all the others. This allowed Ciaran to disperse his shadows so we could see him along with Pyrope who I was startled to find was standing right next to me.

The golden-haired rider was seated on the ground with his vargr bracing over him as if to block him from any more missiles with his own body. A short arrow shaft protruded from therider’s upper left thigh, and his green blood stained his pant leg. The scent was a sweet nectar and rose fragrance that wafted into the air, and it was sure to attract more of the Fuath soon.

I moved toward them quietly but also very cautiously when the gold vargr’s head swung in my direction, and he growled at me. I knew by then that it would be unwise to approach a vargr that was defending his rider, but we also did not have time to tiptoe.

“I need to heal you quickly,” I whispered to Ciaran and raised my hands in a gesture of peace.

“Aingeal,” Ciaran said, the only time I had ever heard him speak so gently as he stroked his mount’s chest.

Aingeal did not want to move, but he did grudgingly, still glaring at me as he backed off enough to give me access to his rider. He continued to hover over us so close that I could feel his hot breath fanning the back of my head while I knelt down next to Ciaran.

The rider was clearly in pain, tension forming frown lines around his mouth and dark tawny brows, but I could also tell that he was nervous. Wary of the magic I would use to heal him and unconvinced of my intentions.

Even after everything I’d done, hestilldistrusted me.

The razor sharp impulse to punish and wound him back was almost undeniable, but I had not realized just how tired I was of maintaining that facade. I was just so fuckingtiredof always having to fight tooth and nail for everything. So I refrained from retaliating. Besides, it was not like I didn’t understand why people disliked me when I was the one who’d mastered the art of being unlikeable. Distancing people from me had kept me safe, and the reward of my peace and security at the time had been worth the cost of a self-imposed isolation.

“You want me to pull it out for you or do you want to do it yourself?” I asked Ciaran, keeping my voice low.

He did not hesitate. The rider gritted his teeth and gripped the arrow shaft down close to his leg. I was admittedly impressed when he began to pull it out with a slow but steady pace. I thought he might make a noise, but aside from a few sharp inhales and a low grunt, he removed the arrow without much fuss.

The green stain on his pants darkened and widened, and a fresh burst of the sweet scent of his blood bloomed in the air even after I’d healed him. It wouldn’t be long before it brought the Fuath down upon us.

“We need to move,” Sage said to Ciaran as he took my hand to pull me back to my feet.

“Agreed. I still cannot believe they are able to create such a convincing—” Ciaran began.

A tremor of horror spread from the roots of the forest and blared into my mind. A collective scream of warning before I sensed the Fuath stampeding through the ward.

“Down!” I shouted just before their hideous screeches pierced the air behind us.

Sage reacted fast, swinging me to the ground and then bracing over me to shield me with his back, but I heard the telltale thumping of dozens of bow strings. We were about to be caught in a deadly barrage of arrows, and even if his armour might save us, it would not save the vargr. So I made a decision and shoved him aside.

“Summer!” he shouted, but I’d already sent out a blast of magic that reacted with every molecule of moisture in the grass between us and the Fuath. A wall of water materialized in front of us to catch the cloud of arrows, leaving the grass all wilted and the river completely dry.

“Sweet Elements,” I heard Ciaran breathe just as the colossal weight of all that water became too much for my depleted strength. I cried out in pain when my control slipped, andthen the massive wall of water collapsed, shaking the earth and rumbling like a waterfall. I used the last of my exhausted power to push it toward the Fuath, and the immense wave swept most of them back into the empty riverbed and washed them downstream.

I could hardly get a breath. The air sawed brutally into my lungs like shards of glass in my throat. My limbs felt so heavy and clumsy, like hapless stumps rather than real arms and legs. I’d collapsed onto my back, staring up in a daze at the darkening sky, and Sage bent over me looking terrified as he grabbed my face. He was shouting at me, but I couldn't make out his words when his voice sounded far away and muffled like I was underwater.

He pulled me upright and was just about to sling my arm over his shoulder so he could lift me when there was a loud pop and the whirl of air moving fast. I raised my head just as a hot gust of foul smelling wind blasted us, blowing my braid over my shoulder, and I stared in horror as the concealment ward burst.

Fuath did not inherently possess the elemental magic of the fey, so they used a hybrid power. Something Ivie, the aes sídhe village healer who was also Orlaith’s sister, needed to heal her patients as well. Healing was not a gift of the Unseelie fey in Winter and Autumn, but the domain of Seelie fey, like me, from Summer and Spring. So Ivie knew enough of this magic to guess that such an illusion ward would have required a mixture of spell components to be positioned around the desired perimeter. She’d also theorized that destroying one container of components might disable the whole spell, and it seemed she might have been right about that.

The ward was fragmenting, probably because the wave of water had disrupted at least one of the containers filled with spell ingredients. I couldn’t even feel proud because I was suddenly choking on the awful, chemical scent of the Fuathmagic. It felt hot and sticky on my skin, and it tasted so unnatural on my tongue and in my lungs that I wanted to be sick. The air wavered, shimmering in front of us as the illusion disintegrated until we could see glimpses of what really lay beyond the river bank.

The forest was on fire. Heavy smoke drifted across the clearing now that the ward was no longer containing it and blackened the sky overhead. Beyond the charred skeletons of the autumn trees were the bones of the village that had also been torched.

But what was even more staggering than the smoke, the chemical smell of unnatural magic, and the burning forest and village, were screams only I could hear. I tried to cover my furred ears, but the cries of the forest were something that I heard through my blood and in my heart. Tears instantly began streaming down my cheeks as silent sobs racked my body.

Sage and Ciaran were both equally struck, horrified as they beheld the utter ruination of Sage’s beloved home.

But my wave of water had not gone unnoticed.

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