“You don’t know him. What do you think he’d do if it came down to it and he needed to escape? He would sacrifice us to save his life, Estrella. You cannot trust anyone but me, do you understand?” Brann asked, gripping my hand in his and staring down at me. “There are things you don’t know. Things you were never meant to know…” he trailed off, his head raising as he looked into the distance in the night.
“What is it, Brann?” I asked, following his line of sight. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of him telling me to be quiet. We stood in silence for a moment, watching the darkness through the trees until finally I heard what had made him freeze in place.
Hoof beats.
The howls of the hounds on the wind.
They battered against my heart as they came on the wind, driving me forward after one more exchanged look with Brann. We’d stumbled around in the dark for too long, looking for a new hiding place, thanks to his ridiculous idea to wander out at night.
Anything was better than this.
Sweat trickled down my back as I ran, and dripped all the way to the hands that pumped at my sides. My cloak got caught on a branch, tearing my head back with the force of it. I fought to pull it free, struggling against the grip on my throat. “Leave it!” Brann ordered, and I reached up with trembling fingers to unknot the tie at my throat.
My body ached. Everything hurt, and I was so damn tired I thought about standing still and letting them take me. I was under no illusion that the magic coursing through my body would protect me from the Wild Hunt itself—not when it came from a Fae.
Three breaths passed as I fumbled. In and out in rapid succession, the sound drowning out everything else as I coughed with the exertion threatening to break my body, but once freed I turned back toward Brann and ran at his side. Leaping over a large tree root and nearly falling on my face, my breath coming in short, desperate pants, I growled, “We should have stayed in the fucking barn!” When I turned to him with a glare, his apologetic stare met mine, and he nodded as he pushed his body to the limit.
All we’d consumed was a loaf of bread shared between us immediately after leaving the barn, and the lack of fluid in his body made his body sag. He hadn’t been fortunate enough to drink the water from Caelum’s canteen. I kept pace at his side, when he would have needed to drag me along under any other circumstances.
“Brann!” I gasped, reaching out to grab his arm and jerk him to a stop. What I saw through the trees was a surer death than what chased us. He skidded to a stop beside me, his foot only a few steps from the edge of a cliff. The channel far below was so deep it looked black, even with the moon gleaming overhead in the sky. The fall was impossible to survive. It would turn a body into a mangled mess of limbs and blood.
Three more breaths wheezed out of my chest.
I turned a terrified glance to Brann, spinning to look behind me. The hoof beats grew louder, echoing through the forest at our backs until I knew with absolute certainty they were gaining on us.
My brother pulled his arm free from mine, blinking rapidly as a shaky breath left him. His fingers brushed against mine as he shifted our hands to lace our fingers together. He turned toward me as if in slow motion, his eyes sad and gleaming in the moonlight. “Together,” he murmured softly.
My skull throbbed with how hard I shook my head. “No. Run.” Refusing to acknowledge what he’d offered as a solution, I tilted my head to the left and the opening I knew he would have if I offered myself up as a distraction.
He could go home. He could take care of our mother instead of dying pointlessly.
Brann gripped my hand tighter, smiling softly as he shook his head. “She cannot have you. Together,” he repeated, leaning down to rest his chin on top of my head. In the background, the Wild Hunt drew closer. I could practically feel the skeletal horses' harsh breaths on my neck. “One.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, the word jagged as it bubbled up my throat. “Two,” I said, holding back the sob that clenched my heart in my chest. Fear consumed me. Fear of the unknown.
Fear of the pain that might come before the moment of death finally brought peace.
“Three,” Brann and I said together, darting the last few paces to the edge of the cliff. My legs shook with each step and my heart stalled in my chest as my foot pushed off the ledge. Cold air rushed up the skirts of my dress, dancing around my legs in a moment of suspension. For those brief few seconds, everything was weightless around me, hanging in limbo as I waited for the blackness of death to rush in and swallow me whole.
Still, Brann’s hand clenched mine as we flew.
And then we fell.
A scream tore free from my throat, pulled from the depths of my soul as my terror reached an apex. I didn’t want to die, but better death than an eternity in a prison. I’d already made that choice once.
Something slithered over my stomach, pulling my focus in those endless moments of suspension. Brann’s gaze was harsh on whatever he saw on my stomach, and when he met my eyes one last time, all I saw was a guilty apology and resignation.
He knew as well as I did in that moment that he was going to leave me alone, after all.
“No!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, the sound shrill and somehow other. My body snapped to a sudden halt as the shadows around my waist solidified. Something cracked within my body, and sharp pain radiated through my torso as I hung limply for a moment.
Brann continued to fall, and my shoulder popped, echoing above the sound of waves crashing against the shore below when Brann continued to fall. Grasping his hand with my other one, I held on more tightly and refused to drop him as my shoulder throbbed with the aching pain of dislocation and hung limply at my side.
His fingers slipped through mine, slickened with sweat by our escape attempt, and he hung below me, his eyes on mine and pleading. "Let go, Estrella," he whispered, releasing my hand. I shook my head through the pain, clinging to him even though, in the back of my head, I already suspected it was pointless.
The solid shadows at my waist retracted, pulling me back up toward the top of the cliff as I squirmed in my pathetic bid for freedom. We should have both been dead.
A strong hand gripped the back of my dress as I crested the top, hauling me up the final distance until he could lay me out on the forest floor. Brann’s body landed atop mine, sprawling across me as I tried to force air back into my lungs. The inky shadows at my waist retracted, slithering over the fabric of my dress. Wheezing breaths wracked me as my entire body throbbed with pain. My right arm hung limply at my side; even just the thought of moving it making it ache with warning.
Brann moved slowly, slipping his hand beneath the sleeve of my dress and taking the dagger he’d strapped there. A spectral ghost of a man stood over me, glaring down at the way I grimaced beneath Brann’s body and unaware of his slow, cautious movements to arm himself.