A Beast's Tale

Chapter 38

Ivetta wasn't at the funeral.

An uneasy feeling formed in my gut, looking around as I stepped out of the carriage. There was the priest, and a crowd of villagers who must have known her mother, but Ivetta wasn't there. I ignored the stunned expressions of all gathered and walked up to the priest.

"Prince Chevalier, I'm glad you could join us," he said, his brown eyes nervous but his smile friendly, as it had been two days ago when I spoke with him and arranged the funeral.

"Where is Ivetta?"

He looked back at the crowd, and I saw a touch of anxiety in his eyes. "I haven't seen her."

A big, burly man came tearing into the cemetery, his beefy face red with exertion as he came to a stop in front of the priest.

"It's Ivetta," he said, gasping for breath. "She's gone."

"Gone?" I snapped, grabbing him by the collar. "What do you mean, gone?"

His eyes widened as he looked up at me, and he shook his head. "It looks like there was a fight - there's a dead man at the door-"

"Show me." I half dragged him to the carriage, barking orders at the coachman as I pushed the burly man inside. The horses were in motion before I shut the carriage door.

"Who are you?"

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. "John Stotts, your highness. Ivetta's neighbor."

"When did you last see her?"

"Yesterday afternoon. The missus and I brought over a meal to offer our condolences."

The carriage came to a halt, and I leaped out and stared at the body in the pool of blood next to the door, the guard I'd stationed there to protect Ivetta. His face was frozen in a permanent expression of shock, his throat slit from ear to ear, his sword still in its sheath. The door itself was barely hanging on by one hinge. Inside, the dirt was a mass of footprints and skid marks, the table and chairs had been thrown up against a wall and shattered, the meal brought by the Stotts' was plastered across another wall. The blanket had been ripped from the bed and lay discarded on the floor next to her shoes, and a torn scrap of the red skirt was all that remained of her. Droplets of blood in the dirt, bloody fingerprints smeared on the door. If any of that blood was hers-

"And you didn't hear anything?" I demanded.

"No, not a thing. And I checked with the missus and the kids. Nobody heard or saw anything."

Whatever happened here couldn't have been quiet. But if it occurred quickly enough, if it was over almost before it began, maybe it could have been dismissed as a dream.

I stepped back out into the sunlight. Just outside the doorway, hoofprints facing all different directions had churned the dirt and blood together into a sickly red mud. A single, small, bloody footprint hadn't been trampled and erased. She'd obviously fought hard, based on the disaster inside, but she'd still been able to walk out before she was taken away by horseback. A horse could cover a lot of ground in a few hours, and the blood in the dirt was already congealing. She could already be halfway to Obsidian.

"How often are horses ridden through here?" I asked, following the hoofprints with my eyes. They led away from the village, west into the forest. West to Obsidian.

"Very rarely. None yesterday or today."

Except for last night. But that meant the trail was clear.

I turned back to the carriage. "Gather a search party and follow those tracks." Then, without waiting for his response, I barked my next order to the coachman. "The palace. Now."