Hunted [Wild Hunt Series: 1]

10: Loyalty

My forehead pressed into the side of the stone staircase for a few long seconds before I picked myself up, sniffling, wiping my eyes, trying not to think about what I'd just seen. How I'd just seen it.

I had demon's blood in me. My father was a demon. And that meant Mom...

Did she know? Had she been here? Or had I been conceived in some one night stand, where he was gone by morning and they never met again? And had she heard me, just now, just before I'd been thrust back into the Mid? She'd said my name. Her lips had formed "Tay" as if she'd known. Maybe this place was the reason why she never liked looking at my monstrous sculptures and makeup designs. Maybe, I thought with a guilty conscious, I shouldn't have tried scaring her so many times. 

But now wasn't the time for regrets and questions. I'd been given a chance and only one, and a nagging feeling crept in that I'd be a lot safer in the forest than I was anywhere on castle grounds. On homesteads,  you understood that the forest was a wild entity, that it had a life of its own, that it breathed and hurt and raged, that it could snuff you out in an instant. If you didn't, you died, simple as that. While Mom's homestead was a bit more connected than some of the ones in the far north, I still felt more comfortable with tangled roots and creaking limbs than I did in a populated, walled-in castle. The monsters out there couldn't be any worse than the ones in here. 

 Wary of another pop-up vision, I spiraled down what seemed a thousand steps and a hundred flickering torches, until the winding tower ended at a wide hall with a warm breeze. The right wall opened every several feet into crumbling, arched windows and viewing points of some kind of crowded marketplace. After checking to see if I was followed, I stopped at one such vantage point, braced my aching fingers against the rock, and observed the chaos from two stories high.

Vendors hawked their wares beside colorful tents and overflowing tables. Jewelry, weaponry, scarves, fine fabrics, trinkets, pots, spices and herbs and hanging meats—anything you wanted you could find here. Here and there I recognized the faces of men from the Hunt's party; they were generally better dressed, cleaner, handsomer, and against the poorer crowded they appeared as giants among men.

Demons among demons, I corrected myself, as a ring-nosed Minotaur kicked a chubby, sheepish peddler into a stall of exotic fruits. More than one bystander stole the rolling produce as the fat man struggled to his feet. The Minotaur bellowed laughter in thick snorts, squashed what looked like a cross between an eggplant and a watermelon, and stamped away. Since arriving I hadn't felt hungry, but the act of eating: my body wanted to chew something, it wanted to drink, it wanted everything to carry on as if a sword hadn't skewered me.

I watched the spectacle clear before turning my attention onto the other vendors. Knowing where I planned to go made it a lot easier to act like I knew what I was doing when I joined the the marketplace. "A lady makes her own way." Yeah. Because that would help me buy clothes and a weapon without any money. Or bones, or feathers, or whatever these people traded with.

After observing their interactions for several minutes, I settled on an old woman with a hunched back and cane. She wore a lavish ballgown that scrunched in an odd way over her body. Several very human women came in and out of her tent with friendly smiles and bundles of clothes. She seemed to be the one most likely to show a bit of sympathy for my cause. Next, I assessed the weapons dealers, but none of them looked kinder than any other. The one beside the old woman's stall—manned by a thick-armed, trollish fellow—would do.

And finally, a butcher. Again, none of the bloody aprons looked friendlier than the next, and I figured I'd just try them all if I had to. 

A weapon, clothes, and food. I could survive a night on that.