“Half a day, give or take. We all left early this time. You have anything sweet in your cupboards, brother? I’ve got a craving for human food.” She flexed her shoulders. “The flight was wearisome and long.” A pair of wings fluttered at her back, broadened to stretch almost the full width of the narrow room, then fell into place, neat and tight between her shoulder blades.
I cut her a thick slice of white cake, heavy with frosting, put it on a plate and handed it to her. She ran a slender finger along the icing, then slid it into her mouth with a smile. She ate with her fingers, an act some humans would call uncivilized. But in my land, only the host is allowed a knife and fork, too many fierce fights have started and ended over the use of cutlery during meals.
“Where’s your human?” she asked, her mouth full, a smear of dark frosting on her cheek.
Sage was walking behind me now, as we went up to my private chambers at the top of the house. Three flights of stairs, through the door to my room, and then we were outside again, on the widow’s walk. I always feel better outside, with the wind in my hair and the trees close enough to smell. I think it’s instinctive—it’s much easier to fly, to escape, when you’re outdoors.
The moon greeted us, near full and commanding, making it difficult for me to think clearly. It rested at the top of the tree line, a swollen silver disc challenging her sister, the sun, for possession of the earth and all within it.
“I’m not sure where he is,” I answered, as I stared down at the green across the street where the cabin was situated, just opposite the bed and breakfast. Maddie was down there, talking on a phone, her son and dog playing in the leaves. Without thinking, I closed my eyes and pulled her fragrance into my lungs, estimated how far away she was, how long it would take me to get to her. I’ve always thought of humans as prey. It’s hard to stop.
“You’ve let Driscoll run wild, over hill and dale,” my sister said in her best accusatory tone. “He should be sitting right there, at that desk, ready to greet me with a bow and a shiver, but he’s not. And you’ve grown thin because of it.”
“I’ve grown weary of his dreams is all.”
“And the old dreams, the ones of Lily. Are they gone?”
I sighed. This was a familiar argument. I didn’t answer.
“That’s what I feared,” she said. “They’ll make you sick, if you keep on. Dreams that old should be forgotten.”
“You want me to forget my wife?”
“She’s dead, Ash, been dead longer than most humans have been alive. Nothing in the curse says you can’t mate again, though you always seem to cast your gaze in the wrong direction.”
We were both staring down at Maddie now, I, with rumbling in my gut, my sister, with distaste.
“Mayhaps a good hunt will set your bones at ease,” she said, a hopeful gleam in her eyes.
Even now it was difficult to focus on the words my sister spoke, for part of me was lifting my head toward the moon and catching that human’s fragrance on the wind. Her dreams were growing stronger, I could feel it.
But something that beautiful had to be avoided.
I’d learned that lesson once already.
“How many are coming for the Hunt?” I asked, forcing my attention back onto my sister.
Sage leaned against the railing and stared down at webbed fingers. She seemed to be counting, lips moving. “Four, I think. No, five, including me.”
I raised an eyebrow, waited for details.
“Sienna.” A female, one of her handmaidens. Sage always traveled with an escort, ever since she had married Willow, one of the High Princes, himself. “Thane and River.” No doubt the cause for the carrion stench that hung thick in the forest today. I already regretted sending an invitation to those two.
Then I realized that Sage had stopped talking. She made a long, dramatic pause, and lowered her voice as if someone was listening to us. As if any of the humans cared about my indiscretions.
“And Elspeth.”
It should have made all the difference. My daughter was coming here; the half-breed child I had abandoned, the one I had kidnapped from her human mother and then exiled into a foreign land—my homeland. It should have caught my attention, caused me to wonder why she was here, why now. But it didn’t.
Because that was when Maddie and her boy and their dog headed toward the creek and the Ponderosa Trail—toward the outermost boundary of Ticonderoga Falls. Hadn’t Driscoll warned them? Didn’t some part of her still remember? It was dangerous to go too deep into the woods, especially on days like today. When the moon was almost full, and the Hunt itself hung ready and eager on the horizon.