Page 19 of Dark Hunter's Touch
She whirled and ran.
The hounds howled in delight at the renewal of the chase. Their claws hissed in the sand behind her.
With their hot breath on her heels, she took a half-dozen steps and launched herself out of the hunter’s mist into the crystalline night sky.
A sylfana’s wings might not be made for high-speed chases, but desperate fury pumped fresh power past her aches. The breeze belled under her wings, urging her upward. She thrust herself higher with each stroke and swirl.
The woeful howl of the earthbound hounds, deprived of their prey, echoed in the air, but a darker pressure threatened her from behind.
Without looking back, she darted sideways. She tucked her shoulder and angled her wing to catch the wind. The force tumbled her end over end, and she jolted onto the new trajectory like a butterfly catching erratic breezes.
Vaile overshot her like a black eagle—a cursing eagle. The downdraft from his heavy wing beat almost sucked the air out from under her, but she caught the rising edge of the vortex in his wake and flitted away, out over the waves.
She would not lie to herself. She could tease the hunter only so long; his strength and stamina completely eclipsed hers. He could fly circles around her—literally. Even now, he was looping around in pursuit, and though she might dodge him with a butterfly’s whimsy, he would double back again and again. But she would not walk meekly back into her prison. He would have to drag her back. And he would have to catch her first.
He dove. She dodged. They had skipped the winged faes’ aerial foreplay in their first encounter, and now the dance was a deadly game with only one winner. Another lunge and evasion, but this time she lost altitude. The spray from the waves tickled her legs and added damp weight to her wings. Another reckless midair tumble edged her farther out to sea.
Too far.
Her heart crashed in her chest, louder than the waves breaking on the shore that now seemed frighteningly far away.
“Olette, come back. Olette!”
When she had thought he was human, she told him that the fae believed names had power, but only now did she appreciate how that string of syllables that defined her could lift her—as when he had shouted her name on the verge of his release—or tear her apart as it did now. How she longed for her faelies.
He overflew her, and she darted to evade him, but her wings were tiring. Her bones burned with exhaustion, and the fitful wind of her knack whistled a weak apology past her ears. She faltered, and her wingtip grazed the water.
She gasped as she cartwheeled through the air. Her fingers touched the water. She closed her eyes to wait for the chill kiss of the ocean. This was not such an unexpected way to die—in the embrace of the ocean as cold, relentless and unchanging as the faedrealiiitself, but oh no, she had never meant to bring Vaile down with her.
A heavy weight slammed between her helplessly spreading wings, and her eyes snapped open at the impact as Vaile, clamping his arm around her belly, tried to lift them from the fatal plunge.
The trailing edges of his wings hit the water with a vicious slap, and water sprayed up around them. He strained against gravity and the weight of water, as if by the magic of his ferocious will alone he could power them skyward.
His leathery wings snapped out to full extension, shedding droplets in a shimmering arch that caught the moonlight. For a heartbeat, they hung together, suspended in the monochrome rainbow of night-dark ocean, pale foam and silvery droplets. Then one more powerful downward thrust rocked her head back against his shoulder, and they shot free, high above the waves.
She had never commanded such power on the wing, and the wild thrill of it made her pulse sing in her veins.
Or maybe that was Vaile’s arm, locked tight under her breasts.
“Drop me,” she hissed. “Leave me to drown.”
“Let you escape, you mean? After all I did to hunt you down? That’smyknack, you know. I always find what I want.”
“Your prey.”
“You.”
Why would he tell her his knack? Maybe he thought telling her would keep her from running again. As if she would ever have another chance. Back in the faedrealii, her desires would wither, like her rarely used wings. Returning to a sylfana’s carefree, thoughtless existence, she would forget everything she had felt. She would even forget how badly she had wanted to feel at all. Nor would she be bothered by the cruelty of Vaile’s betrayal—cold comfort at that. “Just tear off my wings, and drop me in the ocean.”
His breath was a warm sigh in her ear, and his bare chest almost scorched the damp folds of her wings trapped between their bodies. “Olette—”
“Whatever you do to me, it will be no worse than what the queen has in mind.”
He tightened his grasp. “Even she is not so…well, she is that cruel, and you said you have seen worse from her, but you haven’t done anything that unforgivable. Yet.”
“I led that man not to his death but to the loss of everything that made him who he was, from his delights to his fears. I gave him to the queen, and she took all that from him. And worst of all?” Held against him so close, she could only speak the truth. “I told myself that I was running away to make his sacrifice meaningful, to make sure that even though he had been used up, I would never again be used to ensnare another man. But the truth is, when I saw those treasures of his emotions, I wanted to feel them too. Like our queen, I wanted to take that passion, all of it, and that is why I will never forgive myself.”
The wind of their flight nudged tears from her eyes—just salty water. There was no magic of emotion in them.
