The moment he’s close enough, his calloused fingers dig into my arm. My feet stumble across the stone, and that racing energy in my chest threatens to lash out once more.
“How many times have I told you, girl? How many times?”
Too many times.
Shame turns my stomach to lead.
“It was an accident.” I try to plead quietly so the waiting crowd won’t hear.
“I am tired of your antics. Tired of waiting for you to tear apart my kingdom!” He wrenches me close to him and though the whispers of the court continue, all I hear is rushing power swirling in my ears as I stare up at the hateful man above me. “Your magic is more than you can handle. You are an embarrassment to this family.”
The shame sinks a little deeper, turning to knives in my gut that threaten to tear me open.You are an embarrassment.The sentence repeats again and again in my head.
“Release me,” I say quietly. Calmly.Urgently.
My nails dig into my palm, and still he shakes me, bruising my flesh with every hard jerk of his hand. Lightning bolts of magic are crackling under my skin, out of sight but too close to the surface.
“Melic, my love, no one was harmed,” my mother tells him in a stream of smoothing words that neither he nor I truly hear. Her petite form looks even smaller next to my father’s impressive height. My brother, Merrick, is at her side watching with a carefully neutral expression. Several of my other brothers, Arius, Theoden, Basilus, Casimir, and Zale scowl from the sidelines, all of them looking far too much like our father.
“I’m done with you,” my father growls.
Those four little words crack the small hold I had on the writhing magic within me. It slips through every mental barrier I’ve ever composed, pressing against my skin, seeping through my pores.
Power is exploding from me in a current of wind that tears at my hair and my dress. I stiffen as if that one small movement will force it back within me. It doesn’t.
All it does is unleash the king’s.
Between one blink and the next, my vision is blotted out into total darkness.
My lashes flutter as my eyes open slowly. Trill’s hands are long gone. As are the constantly prying eyes of my brothers. Silence envelopes me. The scent of fire-roasted meats and the mead the men were drinking has been replaced with the smell of wet grass.
Branches sway in the breeze from a big willow tree at my side, dimly lit by a fire a fraction of the size of what had been created for Yule. The sky can barely be seen past its long, cascading limbs.
There are no twinkling lights here. No decorations.
Only dirt underneath my aching knees and above me, my father casts his dark attention across my crumpled body. My dress is dusty, wrinkled, tattered from whatever magical leap we’ve just taken.... ruined.
Cold seeps in through the thin material. There is no magic here to spell it away, and I shiver while my breath fogs in the air. My heart is pounding in my ears, nearly drowning out the steps of three figures who bat away the hanging branches a moment later. I look to my father and then to the mysterious faces surrounding me, struggling to breathe.
A man with captivating lavender eyes kneels low before meeting my gaze fully. He’s a respectable distance from me, but that doesn’t stop my fingers from curling around the nearest twig to wield it like a sword.
The stranger’s closeness scares me, but not nearly as much as the words he speaks next:
“Welcome to the Wild Hunt.”
1
Violence
I am unseen.I have a name, a title even, yet to most, I’m still no one but a shadow among a world of darkness.
Only three things help me cling to my waning sanity in between the living and the dead. One: I’ve convinced my three companions that I’m mute. (I’m not, but I’ve lied for so long, it’s only right that I see how long I can keep the ruse going.) Two: My existence is somehow a thorn in Jeriko’s side. So I’ll live just to be petty.
And the last thing, the most important...Three: I’ll never let my father know he almost broke me.
Ever.
So to say that my existence is solely to spite others would be an accurate statement. Hey, I have to live for something, right?
