Eli was standing in a field.
He’d seen it before. It was the same field he visited in dreams ever since his father died, a quiet, lonely place full of high, damp grass and blinking fireflies. A grayness at the horizon hinted that the sun had just set, and a man stood at the other end of the field, a silent figure watching the sky.
Eli took a step toward him, and the noose tightened around his neck.
“Wait.” Eli reached for the rope, clawing at it with his fingers. The skin around his neck was slick with blood, and the rope was so tight it was pushing against something hard and painful in Eli’s throat, making it hard to speak. “Help me.”
The figure stood there. Fireflies drifted in the dark like stars unmoored from the sky, and Eli became aware of his body collapsing under him as his lungs strained too far and his heart hammered and his limbs buzzed with lack of air. His ankles twisted under him, and the noose dragged him up, wrenching his body so that his toes barely brushed the tips of the grass.
“Please,” he begged.
“Not yet,” the man at the other side of the field said. As darkness folded Eli in its embrace a second time, the man reached out to catch a firefly in his palm.
When Eli openedhis eyes again, stars shone over Duciel.
There were so many of them. They seemed too close, like the fireflies drifting over the grass in his dream. It was as though Eli could reach out a hand and scoop them up in his fingers, but when he tried, he could barely lift his right arm. He caught a glimpse of his hand, which was caked in red earth, and let it drop with a gasp that sent pain rolling up his throat.
“So this is what has happened to the great de Valois line.”
Eli tensed as a shadow blotted out the stars. A wolf stood over him, fur black as the sky, eyes glowing a faint gold that illuminated his muzzle. His paws were almost the size of Eli’s head, and he moved with the sinuous grace of a predator eyeing a wounded rabbit. Eli pushed himself to his feet, and the wolf bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile.
“How—” Eli doubled over, coughing as his throat convulsed. His voice came out in a faint rattle, and he could feel something fluttering in his throat. “How can you talk? Am I dead?”
“Oh, no, de Valois.” The wolf circled him, taking in Eli’s filthy shift and dirty limbs. His breath turned to steam in the cold night air. “Not anymore. Though you did die. The king hanged you, the rope crushed your throat, and they buried you in a pauper’s grave. You, the proud descendant of Emeric de Valois, dumped in the dirt like so much trash.”
Eli turned to keep an eye on the wolf as he moved. Eli’s feet were as bare and dirty as the rest of him, and he grimaced at the familiar sting of resentment that he’d never been allowed to learn how to fight—not that even Sabre’s fencing lessons would have prepared him for a talking wolf the size of a carriage.
“Then what is this?” Eli asked. “What areyou?”
“I brought you back, de Valois,” the wolf said. He stopped, swinging his enormous head to face Eli. “Your soul hadn’t yet crossed the river. It lingered in your throat when I dragged you from the grave, and it was a simple thing to breathe the wind of life into your lungs. And now that I have given you this second chance at a life you likely do not deserve, Iownyou.”
Eli’s hackles rose, despite the fear that rippled through him. “No one owns me.” Every word stung his throat. “You’re just my conscience, maybe. A hallucination. My mind dying while I’m on the gallows.”
The wolf lunged, throwing Eli into the ground. The wolf clamped his teeth around Eli’s outstretched right arm, and he slowly bit down. Blood welled up and over Eli’s skin in rivulets as Eli cried out in pain. When the wolf finally let go, blood stained his jaws.
“The world is wider than you’ll ever know, de Valois,” the wolf snarled. “Filled with fearsome, terrible things—some morefearsome and terrible than I, but none of those are here with gravedirt in their claws and your lifeblood on their tongue.”
Eli stared at his arm. Blood was still flowing, dark crimson in the glow of the wolf’s eyes. He was alive. He’d been hanged and buried, but he was alive again, lying in the dirt with blood on his shift and terror worming its way into his heart.
“Mother,” he said, getting to his knees. Blood sank into the upturned earth beneath him. “Sabre.Sabre.”
The wolf blocked his way as Eli tried to stagger toward the main streets of the city. “Your mother is dead, de Valois, and your brother is alive but beyond your grasp. It is your own fate that should concern you.”
“My fate is my own.” Eli swayed, heart hammering, and the wolf bent his head.
“Foolish child,” he crooned. “Silly g?—”
“Boy,” Eli said. “I’m a boy. Eli de Valois, and you don’t have a claim on me.Everyonethinks they have a claim on me. Everyone tries to use me. I’m done being used.” He took another step toward the wolf, determined to walk through him if he had to. He might have ruined everything, he might have betrayed Sabre, but he wasn’t about to leave Sabre for whatever counted as the king’s mercy.
“Even I cannot save you if you return to Duciel now,” the wolf said, and closed the distance between them. His breath was hot on Eli’s face. “Rage all you like, boy. You were mine the moment I pulled you from your grave by the throat.” He hunched over, and his form shifted like a shadow moving with the flicker of a candle. Instead of a wolf, a man stood before Eli, beautiful and young, with a boyish face and golden curls wreathed with dying flowers. A ruby glittered at his throat, and his cloak was in tatters, stirring in a wind Eli couldn’t feel. A cloven horn hung on one hip, an empty sheath on the other.
“I am Tristan of the Wild Hunt, de Valois,” he said, lifting Eli’s chin with one finger. “And you will—” He shuddered. “You will make right—” His body twitched violently, and his face changed shape, becoming owllike, eyes too wide, nose sharp and thin like a beak, chin shrinking, feathers sprouting in his hair. He shrieked, high and shrill, and Eli clapped his hands over his ears as the shadows moved again and the wolf returned, panting and rumbling with a low, feral growl.
Eli thought of the pictures in his old storybook at home, his father running his hands over the terrifying illustrations of knights being hunted down on ancient battlefields, and terror crystallized into a weight at the pit of his stomach.
“Too long I have hunted alone,” Tristan growled, looming over Eli. “Now I can barely manifest at all, and my full strength is hidden from me. It was a de Valois who struck at the heart of my power. It will be a de Valois who makes it right.”
Eli opened his mouth to protest, and Tristan snapped his powerful jaws inches from Eli’s face.
