Lancaster took a moment to reply, but finally answered, “If you’re the last direct descendant of the queen, maybe we should be searching for Bounties where?—”
An agonized screech rang through the training camp, drowning his theory.
It cut off in a gargle that could only mean one thing.
My gaze sliced to Lancaster’s, and I whispered, “Death.”
Without a word, we sprinted in the direction of the scream. The training ring turned into madness, humans rushing every which way, their senses not as attune as a fae or Bounty to decipher precisely where the cry had come from.
“Lower ranks, fall back!” I hadn’t realized Lislee, the human commander, was on our heels, but she was shouting orders to her trainees, instructing only those who were confident to charge.
“It sounded like the western ring,” Lancaster growled to me, without a hint of breathlessness despite the running. He whipped branches out of the way without any care as to splinters. There were multiple training circuits built into clearings in the camp, separated by patches of cyphers.
Another ragged scream pierced the air, this one dragged out. Lancaster kept pace beside me.
“Run faster!” I yelled. His stare swept over me without missing a step, reluctance heavy in his gaze. But I ordered, “Go, or this cypher dagger will find a new home when more lives are lost unnecessarily!”
Lancaster swallowed any response to my threat. He reached out and created that same long sword I’d seen before as effortlessly as if he’d been doing it for centuries.
“Be careful,” he commanded, making me meet his eye.
I ducked sweeping cypher branches. “You, too, Hunter.”
And he was gone, leaving only me, Lislee, and a handful of Mystiques and humans to charge the ring from the southern edge.
The screams mounted as we arrived, bursting through the trees and leaping the hay bale border. Blood splattered the scene, and in the center?—
“Oh my Gods,” I panted, stuttering to a halt.
Three bodies piled up, hearts wrenched from their chests. And standing in the center of them, head tipped back on a gleeful, crackling song and a beating organ still in her palm, was the same woman I’d seen plucking feathers from the carcasses of birds in the forest.
Only this time, it washumanslifeless before her.
She cooed that same folktale, her dress somehow immaculate despite the gore on her skin and the earth beneath her bare feet.
“Oh my Gods,” I repeated.
Behind me, someone retched. At the sound, the woman’s head snapped in our direction, and she paused. Stepping directly over the bodies, she glided toward us.
I pulled a dagger in each hand, allowing the steel to stifle the horror thrumming through me.
How was she here?Whowas she? Did she really kill those humans with her bare hands as the blood to her elbows suggested?
And where in the fucking realms was Lancaster?
“Ah, it is you.” She posed the statement like a part of her song, but her eyes never left my face.
At my back, Lislee and the few remaining soldiers fanned out around me.
With one hand and without breaking eye contact, the woman snapped out a wrist. And it went directly through a fleeing human’s chest.
Bile stung the back of my throat, but I forced it down. I didn’t allow my knees to shake or my grip to falter.
“Who areyou?” I snapped.
A haughty smile split her lips. “I am Vaneiare,” she sang.
“Perhaps I should have phrased that differently.Whatare you?”
