Page 9 of The Witch's Rite
She steps back, I step forward. She steps to her right, I step to my left.
The fire flashes in her eyes, and her pink lips quirk up in one corner—taunting, teasing. With a snapping of her skirt, she turns to flee, and my body reacts immediately, surging after her.
The hunt has begun.
I chase my queen about the fire. The contrast of darkness and light makes me dizzy, and the scent of smoke and the beat of the drums puts a spell on me.
With each turn about the fire, with the cheering and encouragement of the crowd, something inside me shifts.
My focus becomes wholly commanded by the May Queen. With each flash of her pale skirt against the darkening night, my excitement grows. Each time I draw near to her, so near I can almost reach out and touch her, she pulls just out of my grasp, escaping me for yet another dizzying ring around the fire. Her scent—like lavender and strawberry wine—dares me to draw closer, even as she continues to evade me.
Then, finally, she casts a look back at me, one of desire, of yearning, inviting me to pursue her, to catch her and make her my own.
And then she flees from the fire, toward the dark line of trees against the backdrop of the hill. Her long hair ripples like water about her shoulders, a shadowed veil falling across the pale fabric of her dress.
The revelers part around her, cheering as she runs. Likewise, they raise their voices as I chase after her, trailing her away from the light and warmth of the bonfire and into the stillness of the forest.
As the Horned God, the forest is my domain, the hunt my purpose. When they were painting my body and weaving leaves into my hair, I was laughing, smiling, perhaps even finding some small joke in the entire ritual.
Until I sawher.
And now that I’m here, darting around trees in pursuit of my fleeing maiden, something different comes over me, as if the man in me has become lost to the hunter.
Iwillcatch the May Queen, and I will make her my bride.
Chapter 8
Aurora
TREES BLUR BY ON EITHER side of me as I run. My feet are swift over the forest floor, each footfall muffled by the leaves and pine needles from seasons past. The sounds of reveling drift as I flee, leaving only the sound of my breath and of the Horned God’s pursuit.
Rowan. Rowan is my Horned God.
Upon seeing him across from me, his hair like flames and his broad shoulders bare, I felt a wave of desire so strong it nearly took me to my knees. Even now, the heart beating erratically in my chest does so for more reasons than one.
As he chased me around the fire, my mind spun like ribbons about the Maypole.
How can I yearn for him so strongly when I already have another? How can my body hunger to be touched by new hands when I’ve only just come to know the ones that touch me now? I was at war with myself, telling myself not to want him when everything inside me screamed otherwise.
But now, as I run through the shadows of the forest, Rowan breaking through the undergrowth behind me, I feel something new come over me. It’s as if the goddess Brigid herself reaches down to touch my crown, to place a spell upon me. And with her touch, my apprehension fades away, falling from my shoulders like a shroud removed by a lover’s gentle hands.
All that’s left in its wake is desire.
But even so, I run.
If I’m to be his, he will earn me, win my hand, just as the stories say.
When I feel a hand upon my wrist, long fingers closing around my bones, I know I’m caught.
Rowan’s hand captures me, and then he’s tugging me to a sudden stop, yanking me into his bare chest. Before I can catch my breath, he’s pushing my back against a tree, trapping me in the confines of his lean arms as his hands on the rough bark cage me in.
Our tandem panted breaths are loud in the night. I can’t hear anything over our breathing and the pounding of my own heart.
Rowan looms over me, his face and brilliant eyes cast into shadow. In the darkness, the antlers rising high above his shoulders look like they’re truly a part of him, like the chase through the trees transformed him, leaving him part stag.
He’s truly become the horned one, the king of the hunt.
And I his willing prey.
