Page 17 of Dark Hunter's Touch
He spread his wings—black as his mood, to match his hunter heart—and launched into the mist.
Chapter 5
Olette ran.
This time, there would be no escape.
She had gone south along the coast, as quickly as she could, hoping the salty air and flowing water would disguise her scent and her tracks. When her thighs started to seize from the running, she flew, though using her fae magics would draw the hunters’ attention. Not that flying gave her much advantage in speed or distance; sylfana wings were meant for coy fluttering, not fleeing.
But she had to get far away—not to save herself. The Wild Hunt was too close this time to lie, even to herself, about having a chance to evade the hounds.
She had to lead them as far as she could from Vaile.
The memory of his fingers trailing down her wings made her falter, and she landed with a harsh sob in a spray of sand at the edge of the high-water mark. Thankfully, much of the coast was still wild, and with night coming, the span of beach was empty except for one strutting gull. The bird gave her a sideways glance of professional disdain at her fumbled landing and launched himself inland.
She sank to a crouch, one leg folded under her in the wet sand. She hugged her other knee so the pendant pressed into her breastbone. The muscles in her thighs and wings quivered from exertion. The sensation was nowhere near as pleasant as the night before when Vaile’s touch had inspired shivers of desire. She drew the hot memory around her to ward off the chill since her halter dress wasn’t much protection from the settling mist.
She needed just another moment to remember the tilt of his smile and how it had lifted her heart like a perfect breeze angled beneath her wings. Another moment, and then she would force herself to rise and run.
But she didn’t rise, because more than his touch she longed for the piercing intensity of his gaze, how he had looked past the illusions and gave her what she so wanted: a chance to feel.
Her throat ached from the wheezing gasps. No wonder more than one of her sylfana sisters had kept their human lovers entranced, never to find their way back to the world. No wonder the queen was stealing and binding the power of emotion. More than the endless running, more than the strain of flight, Olette was crippled by the truth that she would never again feel this way.
She stifled the sobs. Fae tears were too dangerous to shed in the sunlit world. Any magical thing might fall—poison, evil dreams, a river to drown a village. More reasons the faedrealii abided under prohibitions against the Undoing.
Not that she would have to feel anything much longer…
While she mourned, the mist had grown heavy and pressed too close to be natural. She lifted her face, and the droplets beaded on her lashes.
Through the swirling veil, the three hounds paced. Under heavy studded steel collars, their nine heads hung low, blunt muzzles fixed on her scent, panting up geysers of sand. At least she had led them a merry chase—merry for them anyway.
She pushed herself upright, grabbing the pendant as it swung drunkenly, and locked her wobbling knees. Mere exhaustion… She was too numb to feel fear.
The center hound lifted its middle head, and the red-yellow glint of its eye pierced the mist.
But the hounds didn’t lunge toward her as she expected. Without a sound, they fanned out to surround her. As they prowled in shrinking circles, their claws left tracks filling with water like fatal wounds in the sand; they could have her in pieces in less than a heartbeat.
Equally silent, another dark shape coalesced through the mist. Black wings arced sharply above the figure, nothing like the languid drape of her wings.
It was a hunter, a being as remorseless as the sylfaniia were silly. Facing him now, she wondered why she had ever thought she had a chance, even in the good old days when she was still lying to herself.
This made her stolen time with Vaile even more wondrous. She lifted her chin as she waited for the hunter’s inevitable command to attack.
He halted, still wreathed in the mist. One of the hounds raised its head and whined, eager for her blood, no doubt. The hunter snapped his finger and pointed. The hound half closed its red-yellow eyes in appeasement, and all three slunk back to his side.
She locked her gaze on the hunter’s finger. A stone gleamed in his ring. Hunters usually armed themselves with amber in flaming colors like the hound’s eyes. The fossilized tree resin held magics perfectly suspended, much as it encased insects, leaves and small stones. But this amber ring was blue.
Blue, like the pendant around her neck.
Her fist clenched around the stone, driving the edge of the steel bezel into her flesh. Though the iron was too refined to hurt her, still her heart constricted painfully. “Vaile. If that is your name. I have never heard of blue amber.”
“Olette. And yes, that is my name, though I give it as rarely as one finds blue amber.” He stepped out of the fog he had woven to disguise himself from her.
Actually, part of that fog—the seductive lie that pure sensation would save her—she had held together herself. Her own fault. But it shredded now on the sharp talons that topped his wings and the cold, cruel winds of reality.
All that time she had been fighting against the faedrealii’s love of delusion she had never wanted it so badly as this moment. She would just have to reweave it herself, out of the tattered threads of her pride.
Lies and pride offered thin coverage at the moment, though, so she drew the edges of her aching wings around her as she tilted her chin imperiously. “One night. That is all we were supposed to have together. That night is long past.”
