Page 23 of The Huntmaster

"Thank you," she whispered into the darkness of the hut. "For earlier. In the springs. For... stopping them."

The words caught me off guard. The simple, human sincerity of her gratitude felt like a physical blow to hearts, making the harsh words I’d spat at her earlier taste like ash in my mouth. I stood there for a long moment, the silence of the hut thick with things I didn't know how to say.

"Not all poisons are bad, Ly-ra," I said, my voice barely more than a breath. "Only time will tell if you are the cure or the end."

I looked back over my shoulder one last time, seeing her golden hair spilling across the dark furs like a fallen star.

"Zha-ka shei, Vra-ka shei," I whispered. Goodnight, Bloom of the Frost.

Chapter 16

Lyra

The heat was the first thing I felt. It wasn't the humid warmth of the jungle, but something far more intimate, a heavy, radiating fever that seemed to sink directly into my marrow. I was back in the grotto, but the cavern had transformed into a cathedral of pulsing light. The crimson water was gone, replaced by a pool of liquid mercury that shimmered with an ethereal, silver glow.

Kaelen-Thul was there.

He loomed over me, his skin slick and gleaming, his gold markings glowing with such intensity they left trails of light in the steam. I didn't feel the fear that usually kept me stiff in his presence. Instead, there was a hunger so sharp it felt like a physical ache.

When his hands found my waist, the leather of my clothes simply wasn't there. His palms were rough, calloused, and searingly hot against my bare hips. He pulled me flush against the hard, rigid planes of his chest, and I let out a broken gasp, my head falling back to expose my throat to him.

His forked tongue flickered out, tracing the sensitive line of my collarbone before dipping into the hollow of my throat. The sensation was electric—a sharp, wet heat that sent tremors straight to the damp ache between my thighs. I could feel him against me, thick and demanding, the iridescent glow of his skin pulsing brighter wherever our bodies touched.

"Kaelen," I whimpered, my fingers digging into the powerful muscles of his shoulders, urging him closer, wanting to lose myself in the overwhelming weight of him.

He lifted me easily, my legs wrapping around his waist as he backed me against the smooth, damp stone of the grotto wall. His mouth moved to mine, tasting of that sweet, intoxicating sap, his kiss a primal claim that left me breathless. His hand slid down, his large fingers finding the centre of my heat, moving with a devastating, rhythmic pressure that had me arching against him, my vision blurring with white-hot pleasure.

Just as the world felt like it was about to shatter, just as I was on the verge of a release that felt more real than anything I’d ever known, he pulled back.

"You are mine, star-woman," he rasped.

But the voice wasn't deep. It wasn't his. It was higher, thinner, laced with a jagged, oily cruelty.

I blinked, and the noble, copper face of the Huntmaster melted away like wax. The skin paled to a sickly red. The obsidian eyes bled into a predatory, mocking amber. The face narrowed into a lean, sharp sneer that I recognised with a jolt of pure terror.

It was Vahn.

He laughed—a dry, rattling sound that echoed off the cavern walls. His hands, once warm, turned into ice-cold talons that sank deep into my hips, drawing silver blood that ran down my legs.

The grotto vanished instantly.

I was suspended in a void of swirling, toxic mist. Then, a vibration started—a frequency that rattled my teeth and hummed in my marrow. Out of the fog emerged a figure that defied every law of biology I knew. It was towering, ethereal, woven from what looked like glowing white nervous systems and ancient, fossilised wood. It had no face, only a mask of shifting light and two burning stars where eyes should be. I stared up at it, paralysed by its sheer, cosmic weight.

"Vra-ka shei..." the entity sighed, its voice a thousand whispers layered over a single, booming bass. "The Bloom of the Frost... the fracture has arrived."

I tried to scream, but my throat was filled with dry ash.

"K'shara vahn, Ly-ra," the being intoned, the alien words branding themselves onto my mind like hot irons. "The Pulse falters. The Huntmaster guards a flame that will consume the forest. The Severed come for the star... and the Great Tree will weep in cinders."

The mist around the creature turned a violent, screaming orange. The temperature shifted from freezing to a blistering, skin-peeling heat. I looked down and saw the Great Tree below, but it was a skeletal ruin. Rivers of fire ran where the sap once flowed. The screaming wasn't coming from people—it was coming from the wood itself as it charred and collapsed.

The world began to buckle. A tectonic roar filled the air. The fire surged up, a wall of living flame that reached for me like a hungry hand.

"Kaelen!" I shrieked.

I lunged upward, my eyes snapping open to the dim, blue-black shadows of the hut.

I was tangled in the furs, my breath coming in broken, sobbing gulps. My skin was slick with a cold, greasy sweat, and my heart was hammering so hard against my ribs I thought it might crack them. The silence of the hut was deafening, broken only by the low, dying hiss of the blue embers in the hearth.