“Well, Sabre was always—my dear!” Lord Blanchet sat up as Eli started to cough. “Are you quite well?”
Eli gasped for breath, staring down at the teacup in his hands. Ashes clouded the cup, and his tongue was coated with them, thick and bitter. He tried spitting them into a handkerchief and grimaced at the mess it made on the lacy fabric.
The food they give will turn to ash in your mouth.
Around him, the old Blanchet house rattled as though shaken by thunder. Eli stood, setting the tea down on the table.
“I have to go,” he said.
“But my dear, you can’t.” Lord Blanchet stood as well, fumbling with his robe. “It isn’t safe.”
“I know. It isn’t.” Eli looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve put you in too much danger by coming here.”
“Finish your tea, at least,” Lord Blanchet said. “I need time to arrange for a carriage.”
Eli paused, looking at the lumps of ash floating in his teacup. Lord Blanchet’s tea was still untouched, steam rising in the cool night air, and Eli glanced up to see a hint of panic in his eyes.Behind that, as he approached with his hands at his belt, Eli saw something else beneath the fear. It reminded him too much of the wolf that had circled him at the paupers’ graves.
And everywhere you will be hunted,Tristan had said.By hawk and owl and mortals touched by my realm.
The old house groaned, and Eli took a step back as something flashed beneath the folds of Lord Blanchet’s robe.
“You have to understand the position I’m in,” Lord Blanchet said, and Eli tensed as Lord Blanchet pulled out a long, thin dagger. The wild spark in his eye was brighter now, and Eli wondered if Tristan himself was whispering in his ear, goading him on. “If the king learns you came to me, he’ll come after all of us. Better to deliver you to him, then—better a quick, quiet death. Drink your tea, my dear.”
“I can’t,” Eli said, the taste of ash still on his tongue. “Just let me go. No one needs to know.”
“He’ll find out. His dog, de Mortain, was knocking around a few weeks past. Mortain is the one who signs his orders of execution, and he’s too clever by half. He’ll know you came to me and that I didn’t turn you away.” He stepped closer. “It’s a shame you didn’t get your brother’s sentence. I was always quite fond of you, you know. Quite fond.”
“My brother’s sentence?” Eli’s shoulders thumped into the wall. It trembled at his back, and kept trembling, as though the house were shuddering in the cold.
“Too late for that,” Lord Blanchet said. He grabbed Eli’s throat, and Eli hissed in pain, dragging his nails down Lord Blanchet’s arm in an attempt to make him let go. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps there’s time. I can always—” he started pushing at the hem of his sleep pants with the hand that held the knife. “Always take you in the morning. Still time. Always were such a lovely girl.”
Eli kicked out. His bare foot connected with Lord Blanchet’s middle, and there was a clatter as the dagger went sliding over the floor. Lord Blanchet let go of Eli to double over his stomach, and Eli grabbed the knife, holding it in front of him with both hands.
“Duplicitous whore,” Lord Blanchet spat, and lunged. Eli slashed out unthinkingly—there was a cry, the crimson of blood—and plunged the dagger into the meat of Lord Blanchet’s chest. Lord Blanchet roared in pain and shoved Eli on his back, and Eli felt the heat of him as he loomed like a boar tearing through the woods. Eli wrenched out the dagger with blood-slick hands—and thrust it in again, and again, sobbing and breathless, until Lord Blanchet collapsed on top of him.
Eli pushed him onto his back and stared at the mess he’d made of Lord Blanchet’s stomach and chest. Lord Blanchet’s eyes were open, and dust spilled over his mouth as the boards of the ceiling started to buckle.
“I…I trusted you,” Eli said, as Lord Blanchet’s lips quivered and a pipe burst above them, sending water running down one side of the wall. “I trusted you!”
Something crashed in the hallway, and Eli got to his feet, still holding the bloody dagger.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said, as a window shattered. Lord Blanchet didn’t move, blood pooling over the floor as his beautiful country house started to fall to pieces around him.
Eli ran. The hallway outside was already caved in, a mess of dust and debris, and Eli had to crawl under broken boards as the roof started collapsing into the second floor with a booming crash. Broken glass and bits of metal cut his hands and feet as he staggered to the front door, and he threw himself onto the lawn. The house let out a horrendous last groan of pain before foldingin on itself, burying Lord Blanchet, and Eli’s last hope of rescue, forever.
Reynard woketo the sound of thunder.
“Fucking spirits,” he said, nearly falling off the bench of his cart as Unicorn, his horse, stamped and tossed her head in a panic. He’d been watching the Blanchet house for most of the night—not so he could slip inside and steal the Blanchet crest, of course, not at all—but the sound of crickets in the bushes and the cool breeze must have lulled him to sleep. That wasn’t usually a problem, but so far as he could remember, he didn’t often fall asleep during a heist to wake again and find the house had collapsed in the night.
“Well, maybe that’s a sign,” he said, shoving his cap over his reddish-brown hair as he watched the second floor of the house slide into the first. He’d been on the lookout for a big, noble Starian family with too many cousins and nephews to count. A noble title would help bring legitimacy to his plans when he was traipsing about the Starian countryside, and it wasn’t as if a big house like the Blanchets would notice if a few items bearing the family crest went missing. Now, as the house sent up plumes of dust and a fire started to burn deep within the rubble, Rey figured he could do without a Starian title this time.
It was shaping up to be what Rey called a Wild Night, a night when the atmosphere went taut with tension like a storm about to break, and the dark corners of Staria unfolded to reveal the uncertain chaos beneath. It was a night when firstborn sons woke up to find their true loves had scampered off somewhere in need of finding, when princes peered into looking glasses to see someone else’s eyes staring back, when the king of the WildHunt stalked the high grasses and the Green Man’s walking stick thumped in the woods. It was a night when stories happened.
Spirits in Staria weren’t gods. Rey knew that better than most, because after all, he was one. They were all stories. Someone carved a face in a tree and a few weeks later, people started telling stories about a Green Man in the woods. After a few years of that, the shadows would deepen and the Green Man would emerge fully formed, stitched together out of hundreds of tales. There wasn’t just one story that brought them to life—there were hundreds, thousands, and however real the spirits felt, they were still bound to the storytellers of Staria.
Rey was better at seeing those threads of magic weaving through Staria than most. Trickster, some people called him. Others called him the Red-Haired Man or the Wandering Fox. Some said he’d come to life in a widow’s cookpot and run off with her chickens and her prettiest son. Some said he’d earned his powers in a forest spring after running from a furious miller.
Only Rey knew the truth—and tricksters, as a rule, never revealed much about themselves. It didn’t matter what he used to be, now that he was something bigger than a man. Rey used his ability to change form to keep one paw ahead of the mob until he could find his next great adventure. It didn’t stop people from chasing him, of course, but it did make it easier to drag laundry through the mud and disappear when vengeful villagers came running. Over the years, he’d learned to keep an eye out for Wild Nights, when houses collapsed out of nowhere and Starian stories emerged from the dark. He loved and feared stories, drawn to them with the rapt fascination of a small creature stepping into the jaws of a trap.
