Chapter 3 The Hunt

Lirael's POV

I realized it the moment he walked through that door.

Not immediately, not in the first second, but in the way things dawn on you when your body understands something before your brain catches up. That pull in my chest. That pressure settling over the room the way it settled over every room he walked into. I had felt that exact weight for two weeks. In the forest. In my bedroom. On the hill path right before I rolled down it.

It was him.

It had always been him.

My eyes went wide and I watched his face, watched those silver eyes, and I saw it there, the confirmation, bright and satisfied and deeply, deeply amused. Like he had been waiting for this exact moment. Like he had arranged the chairs and the lighting and my arrival specifically so he could watch the understanding break across my face.

His mouth curved.

"You walked right into my trap, little spark."

I opened my mouth. I don't know what I was going to say, whether I was going to deny it or demand an explanation or simply scream, but before any sound came out a shriek tore through the manor from somewhere deep inside it. Not a short sound. A long one, ragged and high, the kind that means something has gone very wrong very fast.

A maid came running through the far door, her face white, her hands shaking. "My lord, it's Lord Chaos, the spell, someone cast a…"

Xalric turned from me. Just like that, like I was a thing he had set down and would pick back up in a moment. He moved toward the inner corridor and then stopped, and without looking back said, "You stay here."

I stayed. For about four seconds.

Then the guards came through with Seraphina between them.

She was fighting them, which was the first thing I noticed, twisting against their grip with her hair completely loose and her face flushed with effort. The second thing I noticed was that she was losing, which almost never happened, which meant whatever spell she had tried to cast had taken more out of her than she'd planned for.

"Seraphina." I was already moving, crossing the room, my hands reaching for her before I had a plan past getting to her. "Seraphina, are you hurt, what happened—"

Xalric stepped into my path.

He didn't grab me. He simply stood there, between me and my sister, and the space he occupied was enough. I stopped like I had walked into a wall.

He looked at Seraphina the way judges look at things they have already decided about.

"You cast a spell to unmake my brother," he said, "and stole spiritual energy from this manor to do it. That is treason against the ruler of Ebonveil." His voice hadn't changed at all. Still quiet. Still smooth. Still going everywhere at once. "You and your sister, as your accomplice, will be put to death."

The room tilted.

I heard the words and understood each one separately but they took a moment to arrange themselves into meaning. Death. He had said death. He had said it the way someone says pass the salt, like the weight of it didn't register, like it was simply the next logical item on a list.

Of course he knew. He had been following me for two weeks. He had led me here, hadn't he, or allowed me to come here, or both, because Seraphina had said the security was light and I had believed her and walked through the door and sat in the chair and rehearsed my lines and not once considered that maybe it had been easy because he had made it easy.

My eyes were stinging. I pressed my teeth together hard.

"My sister has nothing to do with this." Seraphina's voice was strained but clear, still sharp even now. "She didn't know the details of the plan. She was just the door."

"She walked through it," Xalric said, and turned away from her.

The guards were already pulling her toward the corridor. I watched her face, watched her look at me, and I saw her mouth moving. Not speaking. Casting. Her lips were forming shapes too deliberate to be words, too quiet to be heard, and I recognized the rhythm of it even though I had no power of my own, I had watched her cast my whole life.

I read her lips.

Get her away from this doom. Make her disappear from this room.

The air grabbed me.

That was the only way I could describe it, something took hold and pulled, and between one breath and the next I was outside, standing on the gravel path beyond the manor's outer gate with the cold hitting my face and my sister's voice cutting through everything else like a blade.

Run. Run. Run, Lirael, run.

My legs were already moving before I decided to move them. I didn't look back. I couldn't look back. Seraphina's voice was still in my head, shrill and urgent, and I ran the way I ran through the forest on hunts, low and fast, using the muscle memory of years because my mind was too loud to think with. I had no weapon. I had left my rifle at home because Seraphina had said we needed to look like we belonged there, and I had listened, and now I had nothing. No weapon, no horse, no plan, no direction except away.

Chase her.

I heard it behind me. His voice, carrying over the distance like distance meant nothing to it.

I ran harder.

For a stretch of time I couldn't measure I thought I might actually make it. I was fast. I had always been fast, built for it, years of hunting on difficult ground in difficult weather making my legs know what to do even when I didn't. The road opened into a stretch of open land past the manor's outer wall and I crossed it with everything I had, arms pumping, breath burning, the cold air tearing at my face.

Then I heard the horse.

Not close yet, but coming. The rhythm of it steady and unhurried in the way that things move when they are not worried about catching you, only about the timing of it. I turned my head once, just once, and wished immediately that I hadn't.

He was on a horse the color of smoke, a creature that moved like it wasn't entirely solid, and he had a scythe across his lap, and he was not riding fast. He was riding at exactly the pace required to close the distance slowly, deliberately, like this was a thing he was enjoying.

My legs failed.

I don't know if it was fear or exhaustion or just my body hitting its limit all at once, but my knees buckled and I went down, hitting the ground hard, hands scraping, and I tried to get back up and couldn't get the coordination right. I scrambled forward on hands and knees toward the tree line, telling myself to get up, get up, get to the trees, maybe in the trees I had a chance.

He landed in front of me.

Not rode around me. Landed, like he had simply stepped off the horse and the ground accepted him, and suddenly he was there between me and the trees, close enough that his shadow fell over me where I was still half crouched on the ground. I backed up until my back hit the trunk of a tree that had appeared behind me and I had nowhere left to go.

I looked up at him.

He crouched down to my level, which was somehow worse than him standing over me, and tilted his head slightly. Those silver eyes moved over my face with something that was almost entertained, the expression of someone watching a good story reach an expected ending.

"It's a bore to catch you so easily, little spark." He rested his arm across his knee, completely relaxed and unhurried. "So here is what we'll do. I'll give you five whole minutes." He glanced around at the tree line and back to me.

"Run. I promise I'll hunt you properly this time.”