A whistle, high-pitched but wavering, whips through the air behind us. Mira doesn’t seem to register it, but my ears have been fine-tuned to that sound for a decade.
The shot is amateurish, and thankfully gives just enough warning for me to dodge the bolt that whizzes past my head and thumps into a tree in front of me.
Mira gasps.
"Just keep going," I tell her, my breaths ragged and harsh. Before my chase through Gravenburg with Gregor, it had been a while since I'd run like this, and even longer since I've had to do it on such an empty stomach. "Don't run straight. Zigzag."
We break apart, weaving in and out of the trees as we trudge forward.
My mind is a pendulum of activity, one thought of possible escape swinging into the next. We could climb up a tree and wait for them to pass—but they're too close and they'd see us scaling the branches. We could turn around and try to fight—but with what? Our bare hands? They'd break our knuckles and use our splintered bones as straws to bleed us dry. We could separate, one of us heading north while the other heads south—but we'd just be running into more danger, considering there are noctis all over these woods, and then we'd have to face it alone.
Suddenly it dawns on me that the female noctis won't be able to nock another bolt. Not while we’re all scrambling through the forest. Our sporadic movement is all but meaningless, only costing us valuable seconds and distance.
I check beside me for signs of Mira andnotice our paths are much wider apart than I'd like them to be. I cut a hard left and try to devour the space between us, yet the way she darts between the trees has no rhyme or reason—it would've served her well, if there was any threat of another projectile coming our way. But even when I look behind me, I can see that neither noctis is taking aim.
"Mira!" I shout, hoping that my volume won't draw the attention of even more noctis who might be nearby. "Stay close!"
Running full-speed, she turns her head toward me at the same moment she collides into someone else.
Just our fucking luck.
"Mira!"
I forget about the others chasing us. I forget about needing to run as far away from them as possible. My feet skid in the dirt as I course-direct, charging after the moans and groans of Mira and the male noctis she's run into.
But as I barrelthrough a particularly dense thicket of bushes, I find not a noctis, but more humans. Four additional figures register in my sight, but it's just the one that I hone in on.
"Rowland!"
My arms are around his sweat-slicked neck before he can answer and he's burying his face into my hair.
"Charlotte! Thank the gods. I was worried I wouldn't find you."
Beside us, I'm deftly aware of Mira and Lewis gathering themselves off the ground.
"Watch where you're going!" he snaps, hands busy dusting off the dirt from his already-stained and worn clothes.
His lack of urgency makes me remember my own. "We're being followed," I blurt between panted breaths.
"By who?" Rowland asks, eyes scanning the forest behind us.
Mira is panting as well. "There are two of them. A male and a female. I think we...I think we killed—"
"He was going to kill us," I remind her before guilt can cloud her judgment. "We're in the Hunt. It was either be eaten or fight back."
"I don't see anything," Rowland says, his attention still locked behind us. "I don't hear anything either."
Tilting my head so my hair falls away from my ear, I strain to listen, but I realize he’s right. There’s no sign of them barreling through the woods any longer. Only the unnatural quiet of a forest that should be heavy with screams and bloodshed.
There are two other people amid Rowland’s company, the man who I believe Lewis has so affectionately called Dunce, and the man who aided Rowland the night he tried breaking us out of the prison—Julian, if I remember correctly.
Julian speaks now. "How far behind you did you say they were?"
Between the four of them, he looks the most uneasy, despite trying to hide half of his face in the sheer, lavender scarf draped around his neck.
"They should be—" My head snaps around in a desperate search of the deadly noctis. But I find none. It’s as if they just disappeared. Which is far more unsettling than it would be to see them crashing through the foliage. "That's...impossible. They were right behind us. The girl has bone-white hair; she shouldn't be difficult to spot."
"The Devonshire bitch?" Lewis sneers, smacking his knuckles into his palms. "I've been waiting for this."
