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Her heart or her people. Only she can decide.
Hated, cursed, outcasted. It was Eleena Asterin's life ever since she was blamed to have betrayed her village. So when she is offered a task to earn back her honour and prid...
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Western woods. Hidden cave. Fresh food. Double-loop snare. Close to running water.
I repeated Kallistê's brief instructions as I walked out of the manor, through the cultivated gardens, across the wild, rolling grassy hills beyond them, over clear streams, and into the spring woods beyond. No one had stopped me—no one had even been around to see me leave, bow and quiver across my back, Kallistê's knife at my side. I lugged along a satchel stuffed with a freshly cooked meal courtesy of the baffled kitchen staff, and had tucked an extra blade into my boot.
The lands were as empty as the manor itself, though I occasionally glimpsed something shining in the corner of my eye. Every time I turned to look, the shimmering transformed into the sunlight dancing on a nearby stream, or the wind fluttering the leaves of a lone sycamore atop a knoll. As I passed a large pond nestled at the foot of a towering hill, I could have sworn I saw four shining female heads poking up from the bright water, watching me. I hurried my steps.
Only birds and the chittering and rustling of small animals sounded as I entered the green western forest. I'd never ridden through these woods on my hunts with Kallistê. There was no path here, nothing tame about it. Oaks, elms, and beeches intertwined in a thick weave, almost strangling the trickle of sunlight that crept in through the dense canopy. The moss-covered earth swallowed any sound I made.
Old—this forest was ancient. And alive, in a way that I couldn't describe but could only feel, deep in the marrow of my bones. Perhaps I was the first human in five hundred years to walk beneath those heavy, dark branches, to inhale the freshness of spring leaves masking the damp, thick rot.
The Alger's cave—running water. I made my way through the woods, breath tight in my throat. Night was the dangerous time, I reminded myself. I had only a few hours until sunset.
Even if the Baphomet had stalked us in the daylight.
The Baphomet was dead, and whatever horror Phoebus was now dealing with dwelled in another part of these lands. Elanor. I wondered in what ways Phoebus had to answer to its Imperial Lord, or if it was his Imperial Lord who had ripped off Kallistê's finger. Maybe it was a rebel hoard of Unseelie Faeries—the them whom Kallistê had mentioned and perhaps the current attackers—that instilled such fear in them. I pushed away the thought.
I kept my steps light, my eyes and ears open, and my heartbeat steady. Shortcomings or no, I could still hunt. And the answers I needed were worth it.
I finally found the Alger's cave—perhaps three times my height and tucked into a fairly dark corner of a huddle of birch trees—then stalked in ever-widening circles until I encountered the nearest stream. Not deep, but so wide that I'd have to take a running leap to cross it. Kallistê had said to find running water, and this was close enough to make escape possible. If I needed to escape. Hopefully, I wouldn't.
I traced and then retraced several different routes to the stream. And a few alternate routes, should my access to it somehow be blocked. And when I was sure of every root and rock and hollow in the surrounding area, I returned to the darkness of the Alger's cave and laid my snare.
