Page 113 of Fated to the Hunters
“When are you heading to the trail?” she asked, peering over the spread-out maps on the table.
“In a few days,” Mateo answered, looking up for the first time in a while. “We want to be sure you’re all settled.”
“And one of you is going to stay with me at first?”
“Yes. We’ll take turns,” Mateo reassured.
“As long as you don’t make me choose, I’m good.”
“A good fist fight will do just fine,” Ezra chuckled, taking a sip of the lemonade he’d chosen for himself.
“I thought you might want to keep injuries to a minimum with having to keep your strength.”
Ezra shrugged. “Fine—no serious injuries then.”
Her gaze drifted off. Vince loved seeing her out and spreading her wings. She’d been cooped up for so long in her family’s tower, and now the world was her oyster. It was beautiful to look at how much she enjoyed the simplest of things. He wondered how often she’d fantasised about a day like this: getting to explore a new town, something as simple as enjoying a glass of lemonade in the sun.
They also treated her to a piece of cake—it would have been more but she refused a second—before heading back to their cabin. Mateo had made sure to pay the owner to stock the pantry and fridge, so they had food for at least a week. They would refill it again between hiking the trails so Scarlett wouldn’t have to worry about doing it herself.
Once back in the cabin, Scarlett claimed one of the rocking chairs on the porch for herself and looked over the valley beneath them. When Vince went out to top up her juice, she smiled up at him with the most curious eyes.
“You grew up a hunter too.”
“I did.”
“Do you have a book about magical creatures too?”
“I do. Would you like to see it?”
“I would love to.”
He happily fetched it for her, presenting it with a strange feeling of pride in his heart.
Scarlett took the book, indicating for him to take the empty chair next to her. “Did you write this one? Mateo said he handwrote his.”
“I did. This is actually my third.”
“You wrote the entire book three times?”
“I did.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“My father disliked the first two and burned them. He made me rewrite it until he was satisfied.”
Blood drained from Scarlett’s face, her jaw falling open in surprise. “He burned them because he simply didn’t like it?”
He’d buried those memories deep in a chest and locked them away in the back of his mind. His heart had shattered when he watched his father burn his hard work to ashes. “They were hard to read.”
“Oh, Vince.” She held out her hand and he gratefully took it. “I’m so sorry. It would’ve destroyed me if someone had burned my first sketches. They were horrendous, but I spent hours upon hours making them. I would’ve never touched a single blank paper ever again.”
“I had no other choice.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” She trailed off, her free hand running over the leatherbound copy of hisCreature Collection.
“Are you looking for something specific?”
Scarlett shook her head and carefully, as if she was too scared to bend the pages, opened the book in her lap. “No. I was just wondering if yours and Mateo’s are different. I read through his on the way here.”
