Possess them.
Once it had been her habit to roll the polished runestones through her fingers, delighting in the feel of their smooth bodies. Their roiling power seeded deep inside, begging for release.
Once she would have never parted from them.
But these were different times, and she pushed the emotion away, ignoring the pull of the stones. Each one called to her in its own special way. Out of the twenty stones, eight came from the Nine Mortal Houses.
Only the Halvorshyrd Rune was missing—the rarest runestone of them all. In fact, as long as she’d hunted runestones in the crumbling cities of the Bane, no one had ever produced a true Halvorshyrd Rune.
She sighed through her teeth as she felt Bell’s stone against her fingertips.
His was the smallest. A flat, murky opal, cracked and dull from age, it wasn’t the prettiest of the stones, nor the smoothest. Most would have passed it over for the stunning runestone made of pure amber, or the large, egg-shaped stone with the elegant House Bolevick Rune carved deep into its jade surface.
But the shiniest stones were usually the least powerful.
Pocketing Bell’s runestone, she knotted the ribbon, the purse disappearing in her hands again. The runes could have bought her freedom long ago—and more.
So much more.
The branch above her swayed as she rehung her invisible treasure.
Once the stones were safely in place, she ran a finger over the black dahlia pinned to the top of her baldric, circling the insignia that marked her as the prince’s companion guard.
Loyalty to Bell is more important than freedom. Remember that.
She repeated the speech as she carefully began shimmying down the tree. By now, the words were practically a mantra. Countless nights she’d talked herself out of leaving, the oath she swore to Bell like a chain wrapped around her neck.
Her promise to serve him was stronger than the homesickness, agony, and loneliness that carved an ever-growing hole inside her chest. To know where she came from, who her people were.
To know where she belonged . . . if anywhere.
Exhaling, she shut out her thoughts and prepared to navigate a tricky section of the tree. The trunk was too thick to scale down and the branches too thin to safely hold.
Before she could find a way down, a scream tore through the woods. She froze, straining to hear above the groaning sound of the forest as the wind tugged at her hat, whipping the branches back and forth in the air and churning the mist below into a frenzied mass of ivory.
The fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted one by one.
Steady now. Fear swirled through her, heady and potent. The trick was accepting the emotion and letting it pass through her.
She waited until the fear abated before nocking the red arrow tipped with jessamine.
No, not strong enough.
Replacing it with the oleander-soaked green arrow, she released a breath and squinted down at the forest floor, searching for the slightest movement within the mist.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she breathed.
A twig snapped below.
Her chest tightened until it ached. Pressing into the tree’s trunk for steadiness, she whipped right and left, breaking a workable space for her bow in the tangled wall of branches. Then she pulled the bowstring taut and waited.
Snuffling noises filled the silence, the same sound the king’s hunting dogs made when they were on a scent.
Usually when she came to these woods to hunt, she ensured she was downwind. But tonight . . . tonight she’d been impatient to find Bell’s present. She’d been distracted.
An unforgivable sin in the night forest.
Wafts of mist rolled back as two hulking forms appeared. The lead beast had the girth of a bull and was tall enough to scrape its back down the lowest branch of her tree. Long, black fur jutted from its body in tufts. The scent of wet dog and raw meat, similar to the smells from the butcher shop near the market, invaded her nose and made her gag.
The monster gaped up at her with eyes like hot coals. An unearthly noise—part shriek, part whine—shot from its parted jaws, the moonlight refracting off jagged rows of white teeth.
The tree shook as the beast lifted on its hind legs and rested a huge paw on the trunk. Its black claws sunk deep into the bark, and the tree shivered and moaned.
The second creature was gliding quietly through the mist, stealthy and cat-like despite the bulky muscles straining beneath its pelt.
Images from the bound parchment in Bell’s beloved library called Beasts of the Netherworld came to mind. But the terrifying, bull-like beasts weren’t catalogued inside the stiff, yellowed pages of text.
An unnatural scream pierced the quiet. Her mouth went cotton-dry, the bow wobbling in her hands.
She didn’t need a book to tell her the arrow was worthless. Even if the iron tip managed to pierce the thick armor of fur, the runepoison couldn’t take down something this large.
Still, she pointed at the creature’s face—its right eye, to be exact—and prepared to fight, if necessary.
Suddenly, the beast slammed the tree with its two huge, black paws, hitting it over and over. The impact rattled her bones.
The monsters were trying to knock her down.
She hugged the tree trunk for support, scraping her cheek against the rough bark as she struggled to hold her weapon, but the arrow slipped from her fingers and plunged into the fog below.
All at once, the shaking stopped. The air went quiet. Even the trees quit weeping.
She plucked another arrow from her quiver, her labored breath cutting the silence. Both creatures were sitting, their long, black-spotted tongues hanging from their panting mouths. Each sported triangular ears that were pinned back flat against their thick skulls.
They watched her quietly, the only sound a low whining.
The air was frigid; each breath was like swallowing shards of glass. She cried out as shadows fluttered through the air—ravens, hundreds of them, screeching and cawing as they alighted in the trees.
Where had they come from?
Before Haven could answer that question, her world boiled down to one sensation: a presence. At the same time, fear swirled in her veins, a deep, primal terror she’d never felt before.
Instead of passing through her, the fear grew stronger, stronger.
Until it threatened to paralyze her.
The thick branch she stood on quivered with the weight of something—something heavy enough to depress the branch several feet.
She held her breath, sure the branch would snap, but thank the Shadeling it just bent low and then held.
Gathering her courage, she pivoted to face it. Whatever it was. A shimmering outline wavered the air, but when she squinted to focus on the distortion, it shifted just slightly—as if taunting her.
She squinted and was rewarded with what appeared to be the long limbed shape of a . . . man. Then the distortion once again transformed, rolling in and out of her vision.
Just like she’d done a hundred times before, she exhaled, releasing her terror to the wind.
Every Shadowling could die if one knew where and how to strike. Whatever this was, she hadn’t had time to discover its vulnerabilities, so she defaulted to her failsafe.
An arrow pointed at where she guessed its wicked heart to be.
“I see you,” she hissed. The beasts below snarled as she pulled the bowstring taut. “Show yourself, Shadowling.”
Her heart hammered against her sternum as the silence stretched into a minute. Maybe she was hallucinating. Perhaps—perhaps the Devouring had found a way past the runestone protecting her. Perhaps the twisted magick had taken her mind.