Page 46 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
“What was that?” I called out, already knowing the answer, even as I struggled to look over my shoulder at the source of the noise without threatening my place in the saddle.
“The mother’s found us.”
Another roar reverberated through the plains as we finally reached the top of the ridge, the very tips of the trees starting to appear on the other side. And not a moment too soon.
That second roar was far too close for comfort.
We plunged into the forest, becoming nothing more than a blur of stampeding hooves and arms raised up to combat the worst of the hanging branches slapping into my face. It would be a wonder if I escaped this forest without being torn to ribbons.
These were a sparser forest, the trees old and tall and straight, the heavy scent of pine and rotting needles filling the air. It was not the Wildness, thankfully, with twisting roots meant to ensnare us. But it also did little to slow the bear still following us, unforgettable thanks to the forest-shaking crash it made when it first plunged into the forest behind us.
Our horses pushed forward, fast as their sweat-glistening legs could carry us—though not, I thought, for our benefit, but for their own. I saw the way their nostril flared at their eyes rolled in their sockets, the fear of the fiend even more alive in them than it was in me.
And I, for one, was surprised Zev had not yet doubled over from the feel of my own racing heart against his.
The next roar resonated far too close for comfort. I turned my head back to get a look., only to immediately wish that I hadn’t.
I’d thought Zev’s shifted form was impressive, the bear he used to save me once from the Wildness’ grip so huge it seemed impossible.
But this, this creature barreling after us in a fury, it was nothing short ofimmense.
I’d seen human homes smaller than the creature that now pursued us.
“It’s closing in,” I shout up ahead, only realizing in that minute that I’ve fallen to the back of the group.
Up ahead, I saw all three of my fae, Shiel, Zev, and Finch, exchange a wordless glance. Without saying anything, Zev peeled to the left and Finch to the right, their horses disappearing into the gloom so that only Shiel remainedalongside me. He dropped back to my side, our horses barely able to fit alongside each other beneath the pines.
“We can’t outrun it, even here,” Shiel called out, his breath nearly as labored as the horse’s beneath him. “We’re going to have to fight. Our decoy didn’t work, so we’re going to have to try something else.”
“And that is?” I asked.
Shiel lifted his hand and pointed up ahead. “Bait.”
I followed in the direction he pointed and saw the trees growing thicker—too thick to race the horses through. But also, perhaps, too thick for the fiend to barrel in after us, unhindered.
I didn’t need to ask who the bait was.
I already knew who the bear was really after.
It was towards these trees that Shiel directed us, keeping our pace until the very last second. He took hold of my horse’s reigns as he dug his heels into his own, both the mares beneath us skidding to a halt so suddenly it was a small miracle neither of us was thrown. He practically tackled me out of my own saddle, my feet barely touching the ground before the horses had bolted off behind us.
He was already dragging me into the thickest part of the forest, towards the largest pine tree I’d seen yet. He knelt, and boosted me upward, practically throwing me up into the lowest branches of the tree before spinning on his heel to face the direction we’d come while he pulled that sword from his scabbard and braced it.
“Climb, Aurra,” he growled, without looking back at me. “If you want any of us to live today, climb,now.”
A strange sense of helplessness overtook me as I began to scale the side of the tree, my hands quickly growing sticky with sap. It’s all I can do to focus on climbing, on finding the next handhold and the next and the next without succumbing to theintense desire to stop and look back, to see the moment that fiend finally catches up to us.
Out of the corner of my vision, I see the flash of fur.
Orange fur.
One of the boys had shifted already into his fox form, darting between the trees with such speed that he was almost impossible to pinpoint.
Or, at least, for a human.
Almost as soon as I spot the flash of fur, I’m not the only one. The fiend bear flashes through the trees next, the trunks of the trees groaning as it snaps of their lower branches with ease.
Down below, I saw Shiel circling the tree I now climbed, his back to the trunk as he tried to keep the tip of his spear pointed towards the fiend.
