Page 80 of Lost in the Dark

Breath plumed before her, and a shiver wracked her body.

She glanced at the castle behind her, at its twisting spires of darkened stone, carved gargoyles crying along the eaves. She couldn’t go back inside. Neither could she leave. Frozen in the woods, she watched a hare foraging at the base of a tree. It kept looking around, as if seeing danger beneath each frosted leaf.

She understood how it felt.

A flash of red caught her gaze and her fingers tightened against her cloak.

A moor fox slowly stalked toward the rabbit, only visible from her position higher on the hill. Its unsuspecting target wouldn’t stand a chance. A step in any direction, the snap of a small twig, was all she needed to warn the hare. But she found herself unable to move. What did it mean to be a hare, doomed to be forever hunted? Or a fox, bound to carry out its function?

Should she and the hare simply accept their fate?

Certain of its safety, the hare hunkered over a patch of grass. And the red tip of the fox’s tail drew closer.

“Run!” Anna cried, picking up her skirts and rushing forward. “Run!”

But it was too late.

Even as the hare’s ears shot up, the fox leapt from the tall grass. The hare barely had time to twitch before teeth clamped around its neck. Such a small creature, yet it loosed such a scream. High-pitched and keening and full of painful inevitability. The desperate sound burrowed into her chest.

“Leave it.” Boots slipping on the damp earth, she kept moving.

Her toes skidded into a rounded stone, one that looked to have worked free from the south wing and rolled down the hill. She picked it up, felt the power of it, heavy and round in her hand.

This fox and the dead hare in its mouth could not change their lot.

But she could.

She flung the stone at the fox with all her might. “Leave it be!”

It struck the creature in its side, and it dropped the rabbit with an affronted cry. The fox spun around and spotted her, and clearly her appearance struck no fear into anything, for it refused to leave its prey.

Ears flattening on its head, it bared its teeth at her.

She bared hers right back.

“Leave,” she hissed. “This is mine. I claim it and these lands.”

Her father had taught her well, and she’d spent years protecting the fowl on her family’s meager land. She might hate taking life, but she knew how to dress a kill—and knew the value of a rabbit stew in the depths of winter. Without taking her eyes from the fox, she crouched down and picked up another stone.

“Leave,” she said again. “Or I will take your life as well.”

It gave a final, furious hiss and vanished into the brush.

Letting the stone fall to the earth with a dull thud, she knelt beside the hare and trailed a finger down its back. “I am sorry I did not save you, dear hare. But in your death, I think perhaps you saved me.”

She bowed her head.

I give thanks to the golden gods and hope their wings open wide to welcome your spirit home.

Then she took hold of its hind legs and marched up the hill.

It must be snowing, as her face was damp when she entered the main hall. No matter. She neither looked up at the sky or down at what she carried. She’d made her decision, and she would carry it out.

“Anna? Anna what has happened…” Enulf’s voice, laced in worry, reached her. Followed by the uneven tread of hunting boots upon the stone hall.

Unwilling to reply, she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.

“Anna, wait!”

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