The Hunt

by Frost Kay

  Don’t be an idiot. This is a test. Use your time to spy.

  Rina and her son swept Tempest away from the bakery, introducing her to what felt like every person in the village. She was given apples to eat, and a smoked sausage pie, and a cinnamon pastry that reminded her of the one Juniper had given her before her trial. With every person she met Tempest was given more food than she knew what to do with. Eventually she could take no more.

  “Rina, I could not possibly eat another bite!” Tempest exclaimed when they finally sat down on the rim of a rough-hewn well. “Everyone is so generous with their food. Why are you being so nice to me?” She eyed the fawn and gestured to her hair. “You know what I am.”

  Rina gave her the same patient smile she used with her son. “You are not like the others.”

  “Because I am a woman?”

  “Because you have compassion and you’re not blinded by prejudice. Not once today have you treated anyone you came across as inferior. That is why we are kind to you even though you’re suspicious of us. We have no intention to harm anyone. Our village only wants to live in peace.”

  Tempest nodded. There wasn’t anything so much as a pail of water out of place in the village. She had been welcomed into homes and shops and gardens, and nothing was awry. Nobody acted as if they were hiding anything or as if they wanted Tempest gone.

  It was simply… a village. She wanted to trust it was true, but it felt too surreal. Places like this don’t exist in the real world.

  “Not everything is as it seems, Tempest,” Rima said. “Trust only your own observations and experiences. Those in power on any side always have an agenda.”

  Wasn’t that the truth. “I’ll think about what you’ve said,” she replied truthfully.

  “Pyre believes—”

  “That she’s got a good heart,” Pyre cut in, seemingly appearing from out of nowhere. He sat down beside Tempest, his forest-green cloak flouncing about his shoulders as he did so. It was the same cloak he’d worn the night Tempest had fought him, though the hole her dagger had cut into it had been repaired with golden thread.

  “You don’t know anything about my heart, you stupid fox.”

  “I know that in the time you’ve spent with Nyx and Briggs, you’ve treated them with respect and dignity. That isn’t for show.” He touched his nose. “We’ve a great sense of smell. You can lie to yourself but not to me.”

  “Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, no matter to whom they were born.”

  “A rare sentiment,” Rina commented softly. “For anyone.”

  “Except for me,” Pyre retorted. “My Hound doesn’t quite like me.”

  “No one likes you,” the shifter teased and waved a hand, walking away.

  Tempest squinted at his gaudy attire. “What was supposed to attract me to a scoundrel? The pompous clothes or devilish tongue?”

  A wicked gleam entered his eyes. “I’d be happy to show you exactly what—”

  She slapped a hand over his mouth and shook her head, laughing before she could stop herself. It sounded like something Maxim would say. Perhaps it was because she’d finally been allowed outside, or because she had spent a day with people who did not want something from her, or because she had been allowed to simply be Tempest instead of a Hound or a captive, but she was in a good mood. It made her want to laugh and joke and mock-insult people, just as she had done back in Dotae with her uncles and servant friends.

  Pyre’s golden eyes narrowed for but a moment. His long fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her hand away from his mouth, but not before nipping one fingertip. “So, you have a sense of humor, after all. I was beginning to wonder if you were as straight-laced as your arrows.”

  “You don’t know me very well.”

  “How about letting me get to know you, then, and I’ll do the same in return?”

  Tempest hesitated. This was exactly the opportunity she was looking for and yet… it seemed even more dangerous now. Like the stakes were higher. “Only if you give me back my bow.”

  “And so begins the bartering,” he groaned. “I’ll let you get to know me first. And the entire group of rebels, really.”

  She darted her head up at the mentioned of rebels. “You wouldn’t be so stupid.” Surely, he didn’t mean to introduce her to those helping with the rebellion. It couldn’t be that easy.

  “We have a meeting tonight that I’d like you to join.”

  Her mouth bobbed, and she didn’t know what to say.

  The skin around Pyre’s eyes tightened. He was no longer smiling. “I’m doing this to show I trust you. To show you how much I want you to know what is truly going on. Will you go to the meeting?”

  This was the opportunity she had been waiting for. And, after spending a day surrounded by the kind of people the plague was killing off—the kind of people Pyre kept insisting he was protecting—Tempest needed answers to all the questions she’d been asking since leaving Dotae.

  There was no other answer she could give Pyre but yes.

  Tempest

  Tempest spent the entire evening after returning from the village pacing back and forth in her cottage, cursing the skirts she wore that hampered her movements.

  Pyre had said the rebel meeting was that night, but not when during the night it would be, so she had no bloody idea when he would show up at her door. At one point, she threw a wooden cup of water into the fire, frustrated and confused beyond reckoning, but she immediately regretted it when she watched the vessel char and crack and, eventually, burn right down into ash.

  It had been easy to believe the shifters were innocent when she was sitting in the sunshine surrounded by generous, welcoming strangers. But one village was not the entire shifter population, and though Tempest had no doubt in her mind that the people she’d met today were genuine and innocent, that didn’t mean she trusted the rebels. Far from it. The shifters Pyre led—the ones who had protested her presence, the ones who had attacked her—were the people Tempest trusted least of all. Who, in turn, did not trust her. They had been willing to kill her without knowing anything about her, so deep was their hatred and suspicion. Pyre hadn’t outright said they were from the rebellion but Nyx’s reaction to Tempest’s identity was a dead giveaway. She could not imagine they would like her being privy to their plans and secrets.

  And yet Pyre was trusting her, by taking her to the rebel meeting. The question was why? Were they that desperate to have her on their side? Tempest hated having such expectations sitting heavy on her shoulders. She already had the wishes of King Destin and the Crown upon her, the weight of which was so extreme that Tempest felt like curling up in bed and pretending to be ill when Pyre came to collect her.

  “I cannot do this,” she sighed, shaking her head in the process, the empty cottage saying nothing in return to her mutterings.

  Tempest laced up her boots—the only part of her own clothing she still wore, since the rest of her garb was either torn or dirty—and searched her bag for a comb. She dragged it through her long hair without paying much attention to what she was doing. She simply needed to keep busy and distracted until Pyre showed up, otherwise Tempest felt like she might go insane.

  The kitsune shifter knocked on the cottage door a mere ten minutes later and let himself in without waiting for Tempest to tell him he could enter. Wordlessly, he stood by the doorway, which unnerved her to no end. What was going on in his head? Were they really going to a meeting or was it an execution? That was another thought that kept popping up. He nodded toward the door, and she took the silent hint to exit the cottage. Pyre closed the door behind her and lit a lantern.

  “Since you can’t see as well as me in the darkness,” he said. Going by the tone of his voice, Tempest realized that he didn’t mean this as a jibe or insult—it was merely a fact.

  She nodded her thanks, then took the lantern’s handle from Pyre when he proffered it to her. “How far away is the meeting?”

  “Not far.” Pyre
sniffed the air, scowled, and then looked at Tempest. She inched back a little.

  “What is it?” she asked, more nervous than ever. Could he smell her emotions? The fear?

  His scowl deepened. “Are you cold?”

  “I—what? What made you ask that?”

  “Normally I can smell you,” Pyre explained, tapping his nose. “But I can’t right now, which means you’re retaining body heat. Don’t you have a cloak?”

  Tempest didn’t know how to interpret this knowledge of Pyre’s hyperawareness of her. He is a fox, he’s hyperaware of everyone.

  She focused on the lantern as she said, “My cloak was badly damaged, remember? Torn to shreds by the spikes in the bottom of that pit I fell in.” A pause. “I’ve been stuck indoors for three weeks, and Nyx needed her cloak when she walked home tonight. It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d need one tonight.”

  Pyre’s expression was thoughtful as he considered this. “I should have Briggs knit one for you.”

  “Briggs?”

  “Oh, he’s an avid knitter.” He grinned, back to his usual, easy-going self in an instant. It startled Tempest to see how easily Pyre could shift from one mood to the next. The grumpy old man. “Do you have a color you’d prefer?”

  “Violet,” she said on reflex. The half-cape of her Trial outfit had been floating through her mind upon the mere mention of a cloak. She had thought it was ridiculous at the time. A useless addition to the outfit. Now, away from the fear and nerves of the actual trial, Tempest realized she had liked it.

  Pyre chuckled. “I imagine wearing the same white and brown clothes for three weeks would make anyone long for a bit of color. Unfortunately, we don’t have the expensive dyes needed for something so vibrant. You may have to settle for muddy red or muddy orange or—”

  “Can Briggs make one the same color as yours?” When it was time to escape, the green would help her blend in with the forest.

  “I… I don’t see why not,” Pyre murmured, his gaze scrutinizing her.

  “What? Is there a problem with that?”

  “No,” he said, weaving around another tree. “Right, we’re here. Best behavior… or I shan’t be held accountable for my actions.”

  “If you’re asking me not to attack anyone, I won’t. I’m hardly in the best position to win a fight.” But if they attacked her, then all bets were off.

  “Even though you’re completely healed?” he said sarcastically.

  Tempest schooled her expression. “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t have expected me not to notice, Temp. Your acting’s good, but not that good. You were bound to slip up eventually.”

  She kept her gaze on her boots as she scuffed them against the earth, like a teenager caught past curfew. “If you knew, why say nothing?”

  “I wanted to see what you would do.”

  “So it was a test?”

  “If you want to see it that way.”

  Lovely. Lies upon more lies.

  “Pyre. Tempest. Good of you to finally join us.”

  Tempest turned toward Nyx’s voice. She was standing in front of a small crowd of shifters, most of whom Tempest vaguely recognized from the night Pyre had beaten some of his men.

  Wait. Nyx said good of you to join us. Wasn’t Pyre the leader? She frowned at the kitsune. “Why has the meeting begun without you?”

  “Not everything is about me, luv.” Tempest scowled at him. “Relax,” he said. “No need to be so on-edge. I never told you I was the leader. Nobody did. You just assumed.”

  Pyre inclined his head toward Nyx, and Tempest followed the movement with her eyes. It was like she was seeing the female shifter in a brand-new light. No wonder she liked her. She was a woman in charge.

  Nyx smiled at her. “Come and stand by me, Tempest. I’m sure this meeting will be illuminating.”

  If there was any dissent among the rebels at the idea of Tempest witnessing their meeting, nobody spoke out about it. Clearly Nyx had things well in hand.

  Cautiously, Tempest made her way to the front to stand by Nyx, closely followed by Pyre. Her hand crept to the stake tucked into her belt and some of her worry drained away as she noticed Briggs standing near the front. The giant healer nodded at her encouragingly.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Nyx said, throwing another pointed glare at Pyre, who shrugged, “it’s high time we discuss our biggest threat.”

  And here we go, Tempest thought, steeling herself for whatever it was that would come next. She jerked when Pyre’s hand brushed against hers and gave it the slightest squeeze. What the hell? She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. What game was he playing now?

  She pulled away slightly, flustered, and tried to listen to what was being said. Tonight could mean everything for her.

  “Another village a few hours from here has hit breaking point,” Nyx announced, pulling Tempest sharply out of her own head. “We don’t know the death toll so far. I want a few of us to head out and investigate tomorrow.”

  There was silence following Nyx’s words, though the entire crowd nodded their acceptance of this grim piece of news. Tempest was shocked by how easily they took the news. Just how many villages have been wiped out like this? She’d been given no official number back in Dotae. All she’d heard from the palace soldier Rane was that it was more than the Crown was admitting to…

  “Of course, mostly all of us know by now that the plague is, in fact, a drug problem—”

  Wait, what? A drug, not poison?

  “—and that the drug in question is the most addictive substance we’ve ever come into contact with—”

  Tempest’s mind scrambled with implications.

  “—and that King Destin is using his Hounds to spread the drug around to encourage addiction.”

  No. Tempest didn’t speak. Everything inside her screamed to refute the allegations, but that wasn’t her purpose. All she could do was numbly listen and learn as Nyx continued on.

  “It’s not clear if the Crown is aware that the drug eventually causes death. I wouldn’t be surprised if that had always been their intention. Either way, considering the death toll around the mountains the king now must be aware that the drug causes death, whether he knew before or not. Now, we were running on the assumption that the drug had originally been manufactured in one of the island kingdoms as a means to attack Heimserya. It’s one of the primary reasons Destin wishes to go to war with them. However, given what the king told Tempest—that the Talagan shifter Jester is responsible for the drug—we are now running on the theory that King Destin himself is responsible for the drug’s creation and it is being distributed by the Hounds. We believe it may well have been created in the capital.”

  Given what the king told Tempest?

  Tempest slowly turned and glowered at Briggs and Pyre. What sort of nonsense were they spreading? She’d never said it was a drug or that the Hounds were spreading it. She felt sick to her stomach at the implications of what they suggested. The Hounds weren’t solely assassins. They were a special force for the Crown, the kingdoms protection, enforcers and spies of the highest level. Her family would never do something so heinous as to kill their own people.

  She trembled but didn’t deny Nyx’s revelation. It would do no good. She was among the enemy and her purpose was to gather information and kill the Jester. Clearly, these people weren’t on the inside of his operation. Creation of such a drug would take a master distiller, a master of apothecary…

  A memory sprung to mind. Of Aleks, working with a strange herb when Tempest was small. She had asked if she could help, but he’d shouted at her to leave the room. Aleks had never shouted at her before—not even when he’d been working. He had apologized for shouting but had practically thrown her out of his clinic. The herb smelled horrible when he added it to the pot over the fire. It had smelled…

  It had smelled like the same concoction he’d been working on in the healer’s tent before Tempest’s Trial. A smell so sickeningly, cloyingly
sweet that Tempest had almost vomited.

  A smell like death.

  Tempest abruptly turned, feeling as if she’d gone so numb her legs might not support her. She had it all wrong. The shifters were messing with her head, and she was looking for connections and monsters where there were none.

  “Please excuse me,” she said, though it was so quiet nobody noticed.

  It fit Tempest’s mood; all she wanted to do was melt away. To disappear and avoid facing the possibility that the people who had welcomed her into their family with open arms could be murderers. The men who raised her could be monsters and Tempest had been well on her way to becoming one herself on their behalf.

  Dima and Maxim had been right when they said she wasn’t ready for an assignment.

  Tempest

  “Please excuse me,” Tempest repeated, louder this time to ensure she was heard. A wave of quiet washed over the entire clan.

  “What, the king’s lapdog can’t stand to hear what the mangy group of dogs has been up to?” someone in the crowd yelled at her. Tempest bristled at the viciousness in his tone.

  She felt a hand on her arm: Nyx.

  “Tempest?”

  She stared back at the woman, then glanced at Briggs and, then, at Pyre. All three of them were watching her with concerned expressions on their faces—a far cry from the lingering suspicion she could see on everybody else’s. They were genuinely worried about her. About the way she’d taken the supposed truth that her entire family were murderers.

  Tempest straightened out her shirt and smoothed non-existent creases from her skirt. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder, noticing in the process that the moonlight almost turned it silver. If there was even a sliver of truth to their suspicions, she wondered if she would dye it again, so as not to be marked as a Madrid.

  Traitor.

  She looked over the group again. She couldn’t do this right now. There was just too much confusion. “Sorry,” Tempest mumbled, and then she stalked away.