Chapter 114: Quiet Hunt (Patreon)

The elk went down before Drakul's swing finished its arc, the greatsword's edge parting the neck clean and sending the head into the ferns a body-length off.

"No, no, no." Seluna dropped her bow arm, string still humming. "You do not swing a greatsword at the elk. You use a bow."

"What is the difference?" Drakul lifted the carcass by one hind leg, the weight nothing to his grip. "It is dead either way."

"But that's not the spirit of the hunt." She gestured at the ruined neck. "That's brute forcing it."

"Technically, she has a point." Vespera's voice came from the treeline, unhurried. "Hunting is usually done with a bow. Sometimes a spear."

Drakul let the carcass hang, considering the animal, then the bow slung across Seluna's shoulder. "This is more complicated than I had thought." He turned the leg in his grip once. "So. What is done with it now?"

"Usually we gut it and drain the blood first, then—"

"That will not be a problem." He set the carcass down on a flat stone and opened its belly with a single pass of one claw, the cut precise and shallow enough to spare the hide. A pull of will drew the organs free through the incision without his hand entering the wound, laying them in a neat, glistening row on the moss. The blood came next, rising out of the flesh in threads that gathered above the carcass and folded inward, compressing into a small sphere that pulsed the same dull red as the sword sheathed at his back. He opened his mouth and swallowed it whole.

"Done."

Seluna stared at the row of organs, then at the sphere already gone, then at him. "That's—" She shook her head slowly. "Well. Wow." She rallied. "So we still need to carry it back before the meat spoils. Except we haven't actually hunted anything properly yet."

"That will not be a problem either." Drakul turned to Vespera and lifted the carcass by one hind leg, the whole animal swinging up as the joints permitted. He held it toward her without speaking.

Vespera unfolded her hands slowly. She looked at the elk. She looked at him. The sigh came out measured, unhurried, the sound of someone revisiting a decision they had already made and finding it unchanged. She stepped forward and took the leg from him, and the elk's body sank downward into the shadow pooled at her feet, darkening and narrowing until it was gone.

"I have room for one more, that size." She folded her hands back into her sleeves. "No more than that."

"One will be enough."

Sylrena had gone quiet through all of it, arms crossed, watching the spot where the carcass had vanished with the same expression she might have given a card trick she suspected was rigged. She looked between Vespera's shadow, the empty stretch of moss where a dead elk had lain moments before, and Drakul, who had already turned his attention back up the trail as though nothing about the last few minutes required further comment.

"Right." She adjusted her quiver and started walking. "Let's go track another animal."

*

The Baroness Lisvane ascended the dais alone. The crown settled against hair still damp with the sweat of a fight she'd never believed she'd win. Below her, knee after knee struck marble across the court that had spent years despising her, until one stubborn back remained—then, at last, bent along with the rest.

She let the silence stretch a moment longer than courtesy demanded. Every lord who had smiled at her ruin now pressed his forehead to the stone floor, and not one of them dared lift his eyes to see what victory had cost her. Let them wonder. Let them never learn how many graves had paved this road, nor whose hands had dug them. The crown was hers now, and so, at last, was the silence that came with it.

Lilith closed the book on the last line, thumb resting against the spine, and allowed herself a beat of genuine satisfaction. Ruthless plotting, patient cruelty, and the girl got the throne anyway. Somebody in this world had good taste.

The scream tore through the tree's upper branches right on cue, muffled by three floors of living wood but unmistakably Cassius.

That's my signal.

She sent the thought out toward the courtyard below, aimed at a presence she could always find now, mischief bright as a struck match. Wrap it up for today. We'll come by tomorrow.

A flutter answered before she'd finished the sentence, wings against leaves, and Nyssa dropped onto the terrace railing in a spray of dislodged bark dust, grinning wide enough to show every one of her small sharp teeth.

"But I was just getting to the good part, Mistress." She hung upside down from the rail by one clawed foot, hair spilling toward the boards. "He hasn't even cried yet today."

"There will be other days." Lilith set the book on her lap. "And we need him angry, not crazy."

"Crazy would hit harder." Nyssa swung upright, perching properly now, wings folding with the crisp snap of something enjoying itself too much to be tired. "One good push and he starts talking to the wine decanter."

"Maybe. But I want to keep some plausible deniability." Lilith tipped her head toward the sound of Helena's voice drifting up, low and placating, the sound of someone steering a large ship away from a reef. "Besides, angry is more useful than broken. I want him boiling over at the worst possible moment, not curled up somewhere talking to furniture."

Nyssa's eyes narrowed with delight, already running ahead of her. "In front of the Queen."

"In front of the Queen."

The fairy did a little spin in the air, fists pumping, thistle-crown catching the light. "Oh, I can already see it. He'll turn the colour of his own robes." She landed back on the rail, considerably more pleased with herself than the situation strictly warranted. "As you wish. I'll go quiet for the day. Won't even touch his tea."

"Generous of you."

"Only because it's for you." She hopped onto Lilith's shoulder as she rose, claws finding purchase against the fabric there with the ease of long habit. "So. Where to next, mistress?"

"Let's find out if Drakul and Vespera actually went hunting, or if I need to march up that mountain and drag them there myself."

"They'd better have gone." Nyssa's wings buzzed once against Lilith's ear. "Your orders are absolute, whether they remember that or not."

"I wouldn't call them absolute." Lilith started down the corridor, the book tucked under one arm, boots quiet against wood grown smooth by centuries of other feet. "Just strongly worded."

"With you, it amounts to the same thing." Nyssa threw a small fist at the air, gleeful. "Don't worry, Mistress. If they haven't figured it out, I'll show them exactly how to relax."

*

The deer stood in a break of ferns, head down, unaware of six eyes fixed on it from behind a fallen log. Sylrena crouched beside Drakul, adjusting his elbow with two fingers.

"Anchor to the corner of your mouth. Not your cheek." She tapped the string. "And you're not punching a wall, you're drawing it back."

Seluna knelt on his other side, watching the deer through the ferns. "Lead a little ahead of where it stands. Not where it is. Where it will be."

His arm held the draw without a tremor, the tension no more than a held breath to him. "I understand the principle."

"Principle isn't the same as feel," Sylrena said. "Ease into the release. Don't rip it."

He drew the string back another inch to settle the shot the way she'd shown him, and the wood gave out with a crack loud enough to send birds up from three trees at once. The limb snapped clean at the riser, one half spinning off into the bracken. The deer bolted before the sound finished echoing, white tail flashing once through the undergrowth and gone.

Vespera, leaning against a birch a few paces back, made a short sound through her nose.

Sylrena stared at the ruined bow in Drakul's hand, then at the two halves of it. "That was mine."

"I noticed." Drakul turned the broken piece over, examining the splinters at the fracture. "I applied more force than the wood could hold."

"You applied more force than a castle gate could hold." Sylrena took the pieces from him and held them as if they might still be argued back into shape. "This bow was carved before I was a ranger."

Seluna's laugh escaped in one short burst before she pressed a hand over her mouth, not quickly enough to catch it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Syl. It's just—the look on your face."

"Laugh it up." Sylrena turned the broken limb, running a thumb along the splintered grain. "I have to go back and explain to Master Elvanyr why his work is in two pieces."

"I'll compensate you for it," Drakul said.

Sylrena's head came up. "How? It's Spiritwood. You don't buy Spiritwood. It's grown for the bow it's meant to become, and it takes decades before it's ready to be cut, let alone strung." She shook the broken limb once, as if the wood itself might contradict him. "There isn't a purse in Terramund that fixes this."

"There's no need for you to take this on," Seluna said, straightening. "Let me sort it out for her." She glanced at the two pieces, then back at Drakul, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. "It's fine, truly. Nobody's going to hold a broken bow against you."

"That will not be necessary." Drakul held up a hand. "It was my error. I intend to correct it myself. And even if I cannot replace the bow precisely, I may have something suitable."

Sylrena narrowed her eyes at him. "You told us you didn't have a bow."

"I said I hadn't brought one." He folded his arms. "That is a different statement. I have accumulated a number of them over the years, for reasons that had little to do with archery."

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to side with Seluna on this." Sylrena set the broken pieces down against the log, gentler than the fall she'd given them a moment ago. "It's not that I doubt you. I don't. But I can't sit idle while something gets sent for. Whatever I look like standing here, I'm still a ranger, and rangers need a working bow before nightfall, not next week."

"That would not be a problem," Drakul said. "I can retrieve it now."

Sylrena's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, now?"

Seluna tilted her head, looking between them. "Do you know magic? I thought you were a warrior."

"Indeed." Drakul inclined his head slightly. "Though I still possess certain innate abilities beyond swordsmanship."

"Then how—" Seluna started, then waved the question off with her hand before he could answer it, glancing at the low slant of light coming through the canopy. "Never mind. Whatever it is, we'll sort out the bow after the hunt. Right now, that deer is halfway to the next valley, and if we don't find something else before dusk we're walking back empty-handed." She pointed at the empty clearing, ferns still swaying where the animal had crashed through them. "New target. Let's move."

"As you wish," Drakul said.

Sylrena mouthed something at Seluna behind a raised hand, low enough that no human ear across the clearing would have caught it. What about my bow?

Seluna leaned close and murmured back, just as quietly, certain of her privacy. "If you don't like whatever he pulls out of nowhere, I'll get you something better from the vault myself. Don't worry."

Sylrena's mouth eased into something closer to a smile, and she slung the broken pieces of Elvanyr's bow over her shoulder by its remaining string.

Drakul said nothing about what he had heard. He fell into step behind the two women as they moved off through the ferns, tracking the deer's path by the bent stems and the faint scent of its passing. He let the silence hold the words he could have spoken and chose, for the moment, to keep.