Hounded [Wild Hunt Series: 2]

11: The Match

Play with Fire -- Sam Tinnesz

Growing up in a small town, working with cattle or being holed up in my room with clay and colorful paints, there wasn't much time, money, or places for obscene mockeries of romance and dance. My mother was an EMT. My stepdad took care of the farm and helped the neighbors when something mechanical broke down. We weren't caricatures of humans parading about ruddy flowers and bone. 

We weren't monsters.

I missed my parents. 

And though I felt it, I tried not to think about the guilt behind what I'd seen and what I'd asked of Ajax. His eyes, the yellowed rot of old fish and roiling worms, and the hate behind that dead facade, had my skin crawling. I saw Ajax in the masked dancers, Akta's limping puppet, twisting past satyrs and grinning masks and the few lambs in the crowd of wolves. I picked up the hem of my dress and moved faster, to the outskirts, as if I could run from the thought, as if standing beside a dead cat's bones and a couple bouquets could cast out the haunt. 

While the Walrus had inferred that my friends where trying to be friendly with the neighbors, it was easy to spot the group of wary-eyed women. I wouldn't have called them friendly, or even trying very hard. I think it was sinking in with them, as it was with me, that with each passing second the temporary reprieve, the honeymoon affair between predator and prey, was drawing to a close. There was uncertainty ahead for them, and death for the others.

The wolves were hungry. Tomorrow they'd feast.

Those trapped with the other Lords did not seem inclined to greet my friends, family, now, I decided; we were all we had left; and among the other demons the freed women were not entirely welcomed, except by the lesser creatures, the ones that reeked of ambition and slime and shaded corners. Yazmin waved, but when I asked her where Dakota was this evening—this was exactly the event the blonde would enjoy—she had no real idea. Val flat-out refused to say. 

"Sorry, Tay," Val said. "She'd pull my tongue out if I told you."

I frowned. "And you're more scared of her than you are me?"

"Well, yeah." Val shrugged, running a hand over her freckled shoulder. Yazmin smiled agreeably behind her. "Kota didn't promise to keep us safe."

I spoke to them for a few songs further, and then I was off skirting the edges in search of Chiro. He wasn't going to be in the middle of this. He was smarter than that. After that demonstration, if he made the foolish mistake of rustling up a real fight, this time I'd kill him myself.

I found him where I'd expected him; or maybe where he'd expect me to have gone. He sat on a bench outside the great hall, fingers roving absently over the top of Gabe's head. Both heads turned at the click of my heels. 

"Chiro," I said, as the door closed behind me. The muffled melody carried on. I tugged the King's cloak around my shoulders as if it could insulate me from the music. Gabe's claws slipped across the stone tile. The big dog careened into me, and I pet him this time, I pet him, and thought about the little scarred calf. They'd always been on my side, I thought, nosing the hound away to take a long look at his owner. Since the night I'd been killed, they'd been on my side in some weird, twisted way.

Chiro rose. I considered the man who'd overseen my arrival in this world, but I didn't hate him like I hated the others. After what we'd gone through, I wasn't sure I ever could.

"Lady Wilson," he said nodding politely, speaking in the clipped tone of someone who'd just had the rug pulled out from under him. "Come to take anything else from me?"