Page 68 of Hunted
“Wait for what? We’re done here. We have to retreat.”
“Not until my grandmother opens that portal!”
“Amara, there’s no time. We have to go, maybe we can outrun it until tomorrow.”
I shook my head, lifted myself off the ground, and took my Fae form again. “Wait…” I said, extending a hand to Valerian. I extended another hand toward the creature and approached it, slowly.
“What are you doing?” Pepper called out. “Child, don’t get close to it!”
“I’m done fighting this thing,” I yelled. “Fighting, and running, and fighting, and running—there will be no end to this.”
“What’s your plan here?” Evie asked. “You can’t talk to this thing!”
I threw her a hard stare. “We haven’t even tried,” I said.
The monster wasn’t walking toward me. It hadn’t even made a move, in fact. It stood tall, its hands by its side, darkness swirling around it. In one hand it held that long, obsidian blade that drank in the darkness and spat out a lethal glimmer. There was nothing in its eyes. No expression to read, no tiredness to perceive. Nothing.
But there had to be something.
This wasn’t some mindless automation. It was a creature, a manifestation of Fate; a hunter. I had to believe there was a force within it capable of reason, capable of understanding. We had tried everything with this monster but this. Literally, everything.
The only thing left to do… was to try to communicate.
“Hey,” I called out to it, taking another step toward the creature with one of my hands outstretched. “I would like very much for you not to hurt me with that sword of yours right now… all I want to do is talk.”
A cold gust of air whipped up between us, disturbing the snow on the ground. It said nothing.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said, “I don’t know who or what you are. I know you want us gone, I know you have been sent here to hunt us both down… but I can also smell the taint on you. That’s dark magic, isn’t it? Magic that shouldn’t be there?”
Another chilling gust of air pushed through us, this one encircling me, too. I could smell the foul odor of dark magic even in my Fae form, and smelling it brought up feelings of anguish, that pain I had felt earlier when I had heard it shriek.
“That’s it,” I said, “That shouldn’t be there… that’s not you. Someone is using you, aren’t they? They have corrupted your purpose.”
The creature lifted its skull-like head slightly, but only slightly. It groaned, and somewhere inside of that sound, I thought I heard the word “speak,” being uttered.
Valerian’s eyes widened. He looked like he was about to move in, but I shook my hand at him. “Stop,” I hissed, then I gave the creature my attention again. “I know who did this to you,” I said. “I know what she did, and why she did it. I am asking you now, if you can, to give me time to go back and fix this.”
“No time,” it groaned. “You must not exist.”
“But I do exist. I am the one who should exist, not whoever sent you to end me. You are being manipulated.”
“Irrelevant,” it howled.
“No! No. Extremely relevant. Please. I beg you. Let me go back to Arcadia and find the woman who cursed me… I will make her stop what she’s doing, and that will free you.”
“Conflicted,” it moaned. “You are lying.”
“I’m not. I swear it. I am the reason this is all happening. I am the reason nobody knows who I am. I am the reason nobody knows who he is. I am the reason you are being manipulated. I’m the only one who can set things right.”
“Amara?” Valerian asked. “What are you talking about?”
I looked over at him, and my heart surged into my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said.Here it comes.“I should have told you sooner.”
“Told me what?”
I took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I didn’t want to marry some idiot lord… they were going to make me sit through the Royal Selection and end up chained to Lord Cyr my whole life. All I wanted was to not be in the Selection anymore.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”