Maeve
There is nothing I can do but fall. I stretch my arm, trying to summon any power I can siphon from the sliver of moon visible through the clouds. I’m empty and falling at what feels like the speed of light. I’m honestly thankful for the fear and adrenaline buzzing through my veins at the moment because it’s the only thing keeping me from being sucked in a full-blown power-depletion coma.
Soren’s arm is ripped from my waist when we breach the trees. He shouts in pain, but his voice is drowned out by snapping branches and rustling leaves as I plummet to the forest floor.
I land with a crunch in a thicket of thorn bushes. I’m wearing jeans and a light sweater, but it’s not enough to stop the thorns from shredding into my clothes, piercing my skin as I try to roll out of the bush.
“Maeve?” Soren shouts, panting my name somewhere nearby, but I can’t see him. It’s the middle of the night, and without the moonlight to illuminate the forest, I can’t see a damn thing. “MAEVE!”
“I’m right here!” I snarl, whimpering in frustration as I try to untangle myself from the thorns. My hair is stuck in the branches, wound painfully in the same places where Soren yanked entire chunks loose not even a full day ago.
The forest around me rustles as Soren appears, his eyes glowing in the darkness while he assesses my situation and decides to just pull me out of the bush, but my screech of pain makes him question his next move. “You need to relax!”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I scream, swiping at his face with my nails. He rears back, catching me by the wrist, and yanks with all of his strength. My hair pulls branches free and my howl of agony is covered by the sound of the wind rushing through the forest, but Soren wraps an arm around my waist, limping us away from the thorn bush.
Tears I refuse to shed sting my eyes when I shove him away, hard. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I choke out, shaking as the adrenaline fades, and the pain of the thorns covering my body allows that freezing, bone numbing chill to creep in. I stumble away from him, bracing myself on a tree and lowering to my knees.
“What’s wrong with you now?” he asks from several feet away. “We can’t stay here.”
I realize I no longer have the moonstone. I must have dropped it when we fell. I close my eyes, shaking my head before reaching down to start pulling thorns from my sweater, then my fingers. My hands shake when I reply, “Don’t talk to me right now.”
He huffs a breath. I glance at him as he stares up at the massive bridge–a true marvel of engineering designed by Blake’s father, Sydney, and his grandfather, Isaac. It took over a decade to build just this section of the railroad, the miles-long bridge coasting over the treetops by seventy feet, keeping the ancient forest untouched. Blinking lights flicker along the bridge high above the trees.
I shakily rise and pull my sweater over my head, discarding it at the base of the tree. It’s not a cold night by any means, but my skin still tingles in the night air. My tight tank top is going to have to do, for now.
I’m more worried about the thorns stuck between my fingers and the twigs tangled in my hair at the moment, and I have to keep my mind off my depleted powers.
I glance at Soren, who has his back turned to me as he stares up at the bridge.
“There’s a town nearby,” I say into the dark, sniffling while yanking out a particularly stubborn splinter.
“I know, but that’s the first place they’ll look,” he replies dryly, turning to face me. He scans my bare arms before his eyes slide to my discarded sweater. “There’s another village ten miles from here. We have to backtrack. They think I’m headed to Twin Rivers, so they’ll go east. We’re going to go west.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I snarl, reaching up to pull twigs from my hair.
“Great,” he says with a relieved sigh, promptly turns on his heel, and… walks away.
I stay stationary for a few seconds in complete shock before coming back to my senses. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
He stops roughly fifty yards away, turning back in my direction. “Exactly where I said I’d be going. To the east. To a village to the east.” His tone is sharply condescending and frustrated, like he’s not talking to a royal. Not just any royal, either. Me.
He’s not…. He’s not afraid of me in the slightest.
He’s looking me in the eyes without flinching.
That’s entirely new for me.
“Shift then,” I shout, plucking a thorn from the tender skin on the side of my neck, drawing a few drops of blood. Under my breath, I grumble, “Dumbass.”
“I heard that.”
“Well, you are one! You’re going to walk ten miles in the dark, unarmed?”
“And what are you going to do? Huh? Stand around and wait for someone to save you?”
“My powers will return, and then I’m leaving, and I’m putting a fucking bounty on your head the second I get back to Moonrise!”
“Thank the Goddess!” he shouts, barking a sharp laugh. “Gods, I’ve been so bored lately, Maeve. Please, sick every warrior in your kingdom on me, I beg you!”
“It’s Princess Maeve to you, dickhead!”
He raises both hands and boldly flips me off, then turns, and continues walking into the night.
“Soren!”
“WHAT?!” he whirls, his expression etched with exasperation. “What do you want? Do you want my help or not? For fuck’s sake–”
“You don’t get to yell at me,” I growl, limping in his direction. “You started this. You stole from me–”
“And you made the stupid decision to try to follow me–”
“You STOLE from me! You’re a thief! You–you came to the ball to scope out the castle that night, didn’t you? That’s what you were up to in the western wing–”
He cuts me off with a wave of the hand when I close in on him. “How did you know that?”
“Because I was there.”
“You weren’t. I was alone–” he cuts himself off, his expression shifting from utter annoyance to that bright, charming smirk. “No way.”
“What?”
“You’re the cat?”
I straighten my shoulders. “Yes. What about it?”
“You’re a cat shifter–”
“No, those don’t exist. I can just… shape-shift–”
“And out of all the things you could choose from, you shift into a cat? A big, fluffy, white cat?” He blinks down at me, then breaks into howling laughter that makes my cheeks burn with a blush so fierce I feel it heat me from within.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I rush out, my lower lip trembling. “You don’t get to–to stand here and make fun of me!” I give him a rough shove, but he barely budges and continues that laughter that sinks into my bones and makes me see red. “You know what, fuck you! You’re laughing at me when I should be the one laughing because you’re nothing but a thief. You have to steal your way through life–”
“You don’t know anything about me–”
“I know you’re broke. You don’t have a single dollar to your name–”
“I have ten dollars, to be exact. How much cash do you have on you at the moment, huh? Does your bird form come with a little purse–”
I smack the hell out of him. He flexes his jaw, grunting softly. “That hurt.”
“Good.”
“Are you done? Or are you going to continue to pout in the middle of the woods? Those guys… they’re going to come for us. You don’t want to be here when they come looking.”
“Who were they?”
“Bounty hunters.”
I shake my head. His tone makes me believe he’s not telling the full truth. “Why are they called Hounds? I’ve never heard that term before.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, being a prim, proper, well-bred lady,” he says with a smirk, then rolls his eyes to the east. “Seriously, if you’re going to come with me, we need to go–”
“You work for Hannibal.”
The charming smile is scrubbed from his mouth in an instant.
I take a step toward him. “You work for Hannibal Arachnis. The Spider–”
“I don’t work for him.”
“That’s a lie. You know who he is.”
“Yes, I do. But I don’t work for him. Not directly.”
“So you were lying–”
He grits his teeth, his eyes shining in the faint glow of the flashing red beacons on the bridge looming over our heads. “You need to come with me. I can keep you safe for the night, and you can go back to your castle in the morning, once you get your powers back.”
“You work for Hannibal–”
“I don’t,” he asserts, growling the words.
“But you work for someone he knows–”
“I owe a debt, nothing more.”
“For what?”
A distant howl breaks the silence in the forest all around us. Soren looks over the top of my head, his hand absently wrapping around the curve of my bare upper arm. “We need to move.”
He gives me a little tug, but I dig in my heels. He glares down at me.
“Maeve–”
“Bring me to him.”
“What?”
“Bring me to Hannibal. Take me to him.”
He scans my eyes, arching his brows. “Did you hit your head, or are you always this fucking stupid?”
I wind back and send my fist flying toward his face, but he catches it, squeezing until my bones scrape together. Another howl, closer this time, jolts me back to total awareness and sends a chill of warning licking up my spine, but Soren’s eyes are locked on mine.
“We’re leaving. I’m not going to have your blood staining my hands. Come on.” He tugs me roughly once, then twice, until my feet finally start moving.
“You owe me an explanation,” I growl, letting him lead me to the east, away from the bridge and deep into the forest.
His hand doesn’t leave my arm, his touch warming my skin as he guides us through the dark like he’s been here before and knows exactly where we’re going.
“For what?”
“Stealing my jewelry.”
“I’m a thief. You said it yourself.”
“There’s more to it. You said you owe a debt–”
“It would have been paid off had you not burned my apartment down with all of my money still inside.”
“I didn’t–” I cut myself off with a sigh. “You know what, I probably did do that. Nothing I can do about it now, as it stands, seeing as I’m hundreds of miles away from Moonrise.” The mountains nearby are still topped with snow–snow that never melts. Miles west of here, along the base of those mountains, a tunnel acts as the border to Crescent Falls.
We’re about as deep as we can be in the Roguelands now.
“Why aren’t you shifting? I could just ride on your back.”
“I can’t.”
I pause my steps, forcing him to come to a halt. “What? Why?”
“Because I’ve been wearing a silver band for five years,” he says with marked frustration. “Is that enough? Have I answered all of your questions?”
“What was it for?”
Soren exhales deeply, nostrils flaring with annoyance. “What do you think it was for, Princess?”
There’s a glimmer in his eyes I don’t think I like. Grief, I think. Deep seated, something that’s been festering for a long, long time.
“Is the Viper your boss?”
He doesn’t say anything, but his expression gives me my answer. He starts walking again, tucking his hands in the pockets of his stolen pants. I struggle to keep up with his swift, long stride, but we walk like this in silence for several achingly long miles. The howls fade in the opposite direction as the stars tilt overhead, barely visible through the treetops.
When the silence becomes too much, I ask, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“So you’ve been wearing silver since you could shift? Or longer than that?”
“I was twenty-one when she–when I joined.”
“Joined what–”
“Enough. I can’t take it anymore,” he says under his breath. “Please, I haven’t slept in days.”
“You owe me–”
“I don’t owe you shit, Maeve.” He points through the trees where a small town erupts into view, only a few lights flickering in the dead of night, but there is a small hotel tucked on the outskirts along a narrow, dirt road just to the left of us through the trees. “We’re here.”
“You owe me an apology,” I cut in, and his eyes meet mine. “For breaking my necklace.”
He’s quiet for several seconds. I watch him take a breath as he holds my gaze, looking into my eyes like he’s totally, completely unfazed by the promise of what I am, what I can do, what kind of pain I could inflict if I had my powers.
He sees right through me.
“I’m not sorry in the slightest.” He turns from me, stalking into the village, giving me a view of the tension gripping his broad shoulders and the way his hands curl into fists in his pockets.