Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
HUNTRESS LOST
The Timekeeper’s War
Book Two
A.A. Chamberlynn
Copyright © 2017 by A.A. Chamberlynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact A.A. Chamberlynn at www.alexiachamberlynn.com
Cover design by Novak Illustration.
The Timekeeper’s War Series
Huntress Found
Huntress Lost
Huntress at War
(Coming 2018)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter One
The stag came to me, in the mist and the darkness. He stood against the backdrop of a black sky, radiant as fresh fallen snow. Blindingly white and not quite solid, as if someone had cut his outline from the fabric of the universe. Golden antlers and golden eyes made of stars. He shook his head and fiery pinpricks of light danced around him.
Slowly, the stag turned and walked away.
I tried to follow, but it was as if he were a giant and I a mouse. For every step he took, he covered a great swath of space, and for every step I took, an inch. The distance between us grew greater. I cried out, but my voice was gone.
My mouth opened once more, but instead of my voice, what emitted from my throat was the blare of a horn, deep and sonorous. A horn of war.
Night transformed into day, stars into a battlefield. Horses galloped past me, arrows rained overhead. Red was the sky, red was the earth. Hunters fought Hunters, the last of Artemis’s line, the end of my kin. On a hill in the distance, the Timekeeper stood and watched it all, and he laughed.
A voice rang over the clash of weapons and the pounding of hooves.
Deep magic.
The words reverberated in my heart, shivering my collarbone, my spine.
Deep magic.
I sat up in bed, clawing at my chest. Beneath the silk of my nightgown, the star-shaped scar over my heart burned hot as a brand. It took me a moment to remember where I was: Grayfeather Castle, with the man I’d learned just hours before was my real father.
Life was strange.
I sat up in the massive oaken sleigh bed, pushing back the feather-filled blanket. A chill rode the air and it helped cool the sheen of sweat that covered my body. Through the open lead-glass window I could hear the ocean crash rhythmically against the cliffs far below, but it did little to calm my nerves. I looked around at my new bedroom cast in twilight hues, the moon illuminating odd shapes I wasn’t familiar with.
It wasn’t a shocker I was having nightmares—everything was a mess. My friends had been abducted, my mother was trapped on a flying city with a sociopath, and the man I maybe/kind of loved might not even be alive. Not to mention the Hunters were on the brink of another war, and the Timekeeper’s Artifex was now living inside me. And to top it all off, I was about to start the greatest hunt of my life and I had neither horse nor hound.
Given the disastrous state of things, my father, Veron, had called an emergency meeting of the Grayfeather Clan to decide what to do first. Save Kellan? Stop Soo Kai and the Dragon Clan? Rescue Jaffe and Sabin? In the end, it was decided that we must first travel to the capital of the realms, Solara, and seek aid from the Hunter’s Council. I’d argued at first—the idea of wasting one more moment felt like a blade in my heart—but I couldn’t deny that the Council’s help was needed given the multitude of problems we faced.
And to think a few weeks ago I’d been a simple hacker, before I’d found out I was Evryn Ashe, Artemis’s last descendent. Well, second to last, since I also found out my mother was still alive.
Judging by the clock on the wall, the hunt party departed for Solara in two hours. But I had an errand to run first, and since I couldn’t sleep, I might as well make use of my time. I couldn’t very well head out without my mount.
I’d last seen Brynwyn in the realm Kellan and I had visited before the Dragon Clan abducted me. If my guess was right, she’d been transported back to the Stag Clan’s compound in Olivaris. Of course, that meant I’d be jumping back into the realm of Titus, the man I’d thought was my father, an arrogant, cold-hearted bastard who probably wasn’t too happy with me right now. I was also debatably Brynwyn’s legal owner. But it wouldn’t be the first time I stole something, and I needed my equine companion right now. Everyone else here was a stranger.
I pulled on some breeches, a light green tunic, and my boots, then closed my eyes and pictured her. The hot, magnetic feel of the Call of the Hunt roiled in my belly. A sharp tug urged me forward, as if a divining rod lived in my ribcage. I reached my fingers out before me and a crack of light appeared. My hand disappeared into it with a tingle like heat lightning. I followed with the rest of my body.
A slight light-headedness overtook me as I stepped through the fissure of light into another realm. The sandstone castle of the Stag Clan loomed over me. High above, the gold and white flag of the clan whipped in the breeze. Dappled light from the moon and the surrounding trees danced back and forth across the ground. The air changed from ocean brine to clean and fresh and green.
I had stepped through realms right outside the stables, which lay behind the castle. It was a huge stone and wood structure, a sleeping giant in the darkness. No one could be seen down the long aisle in between the stalls, but then, it was the middle of the night. Was poor Waylan here in the castle all alone? The old Hunter hadn’t been able to join us on our hunt for the city of Skye, and none of us had come hom
e. Kellan was trapped with the Timekeeper, Jaffe and Sabin were captives of the Raven Clan, and Etienne… Etienne had died in my arms when we were attacked in the pagoda realm. Rorie was also possibly dead, and if not, he wouldn’t be coming back here. He’d proven himself a traitor when he tried to murder me. The thought of it still made my insides go icy, and another part of me, a small sliver of my soul, just ached. Betrayal was a bitch.
With a firm shake of my head to clear my thoughts, I strode forward into the stable, my boots clicking on the stone floor. Brynwyn’s stall was down on the right. As I approached, my heart hammered in my chest. I’d missed her dearly, as well as my spirit hound, who took the shape of a fox. Things in this place were odd. Thinking of it made me realize how new I was still to all of it. But so much depended on me now. I didn’t have the luxury of being a novice.
As I approached Brynwyn’s stall, I heard a whinny and then there she was, sticking her neck over the stall door, reaching for me. I ran the last couple of steps, throwing my arms around her. She was soft as velvet, her moon-white coat stark against the shadows. Large purple eyes regarded me seriously. I felt like a piece of myself had come back. And there, curled in the corner of Brynwyn’s stall, lay my fox. She stretched and trotted over to join Brynwyn.
I threw open the latch on the stall door and stepped inside. At which point a snap of magic washed over the stall and I was frozen in place.
Chapter Two
The spell had me locked in place. I couldn’t move except to breathe. Brynwyn snorted and backed away from me and my fox growled low in her throat. An electric edge buzzed through the air, and the magic tasted like a storm on my tongue.
Hunters didn’t use this sort of magic, or at least not that I was aware of. Which meant that they’d gone out of their way to obtain it and set this trap for me. I watched the dust motes sparkle in a beam of moonlight coming in from the window at the back of Brynwyn’s stall. Even my throat was so tight I could barely swallow.
Footsteps sounded somewhere out in the stable. Was it Waylan? Titus even? I’d told him to fuck off the last time we’d spoken, so my former daddy-dearest probably didn’t have the fondest of feelings toward me at the moment. But as far as I knew he still believed himself to be my father, so there was that.
The footsteps paused outside of Brynwyn’s stall, and the sound of a deep inhale and exhale sounded behind me. “Evryn, I’m going to release the spell now. Don’t try to escape.”
Waylan. Relief shivered in my stomach. A moment later I regained control of my limbs, and I turned around to face the mentor of the Stag Clan Hunters. He looked as if he’d aged substantially since last I’d seen him, though it had only been a few days. Otherwise, he appeared the same: skin that crinkled around kind eyes, black hair streaked generously with silver tied in a braid down his back, a long-sleeved shirt and vest. He wore loose-fitting pants instead of the breeches I wore.
“Are you going to try to take me to Titus?”
Waylan arched a brow at the ‘try’. “That’s what he wants.”
We locked eyes, green and black. “That’s not really an answer to my question.”
Waylan crossed his arms over his chest. “Titus wants you so he can continue to hunt Skye and your mother. But if I turn you over to him, you can’t find Kellan and the others. And you’re our best chance of getting them all back alive.”
Surprise pulsed through me. “You know about that?”
“The Ferryman told me that he escorted you and Kellan to the Timekeeper’s realm, and what had befallen the others that brought you to do such a foolish thing.” Waylan’s eyes met mine and they burned with such pain and intensity that tears pricked in my own eyes. “Etienne. Rorie. And the stag.”
I fell silent a moment. Every time I dwelled on it, it felt as if someone had ripped out my insides. My new family, the only one I’d ever known, had been torn in two.
“And I can only assume—since Kellan is not with you now…”
And there it was, a dagger to the heart. If Kellan was dead… but he couldn’t be dead. I could still feel a tiny tug toward him, the Call burning in my veins.
I slowly raised my eyes to Waylan’s again. “He’s trapped with the Timekeeper. But I’m going to get him back,” I said. As long as there was breath in my lungs, I would get them all back.
“Hounds and hellfire,” Waylan cursed.
I told him the rest of the story, what had befallen me and Kellan in the Timekeeper’s realm, how the Timekeeper had stabbed me with the stag’s horn, sending me to the realm of Death where Skye was trapped. Once I’d landed in the city I’d finally been reunited with my mother, an incredibly short-lived reunion since Soo Kai and the Dragons had shown up shortly thereafter. And then, as if things couldn’t get crazier, I’d been reunited with my father. The real one this time.
“And what of the Artifex?” Waylan asked. “Did the tool to destroy it work?”
I paused. “No. The Timekeeper lied.”
My scar twinged, the scar the Timekeeper gave me when he stabbed me with the stag’s antler. The scar which lay over the Artifex, a weapon with the power to create and destroy realms, which was now living inside of me due to the Timekeeper’s trickery. It was a secret too deadly to share, even with Waylan.
His eyes flickered. “So the Artifex is still on Skye? With the Dragon Clan?”
I looked Waylan in the eye and lied. “Yes. I’ll have to figure that out and save my mother as well.”
He nodded. He’d bought the lie. I felt bad about it, but Waylan’s ultimate loyalty lay with Titus, and Titus was obsessed with the Artifex. If he ever found out I was now the Artifex, he would hunt me through all the realms so I never knew another moment’s peace. Waylan was also on the Hunter’s Council, and I didn’t particularly want them to know, either.
“Don’t tell Titus he’s not my father,” I asked. “I may need to use my relationship as leverage, not that he ever cared much about me to begin with.”
“I won’t,” Waylan said. He didn’t try to correct my impression of the man. We both knew he was a heartless asshole. “I wish I could go with you to get them back,” he said with a sigh.
I placed my hand over his on top of the stall door. “I know.” I couldn’t imagine being unable to Hunt anymore like Waylan. I had only known of the possibility of jumping realms for a tiny blip of time, but there was no going back. It was part of my soul now. “We’re leaving for Solara soon, and hopefully the Hunter’s Council can lend us a hand.”
He nodded. “I received the summons from Veron and will also depart shortly. Be careful, Evryn. The capital is unlike any place you’ve been before.” Waylan’s jaw tightened. “That place is a nest of the worst kind of serpents. The ones who smile as they sink their teeth into you.”
I repressed a shiver. “Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of lowlifes. I can handle a few bureaucrats.”
“Don’t be arrogant.” A moment after the words left his mouth, he sighed at the hopelessness of the statement.
“I’ll try not to be,” I said with a smile. “Now, if you’ll allow me to finish stealing this horse, I’ll be on my way.”
Waylan stepped out of the way as I led Brynwyn out of the stall. “There is one thing I can do,” he said, and disappeared down the barn aisle. A couple of minutes later he returned with Brynwyn’s saddle and bridle. “If you’re going to steal a horse, you might as well take her tack as well.”
I put on Brynwyn’s bridle as Waylan put her saddle in place with a pad and girth. My fox began to run in excited circles around our legs. When we were done, I led Brynwyn out beneath the trees and Waylan hoisted me onto her back.
“May the Call be true and your mount be swift,” Waylan said somberly.
“And may we meet again under golden boughs.”
I urged Brynwyn forward and we leapt through realms, my fox on our heels.
Chapter Three
The hunt party was assembling in the ashen hues of earliest dawn when I
got back to the cliffs beneath Grayfeather Castle. Thunder clouds rolled in across the sky almost in sync with the charcoal-colored waves below. Wind whipped at my hair and snapped the flags the riders carried, a gray hawk on a sea of navy blue. I tasted salt at the back of my throat.
“That’s a fine steed,” my father said as I approached atop Brynwyn. He stood beside his horse in the tall grass. “Should I ask where you obtained her?”
“Let’s just say you’re not the only one to steal something from Titus,” I responded.
He tipped his head to the side in concession. “You have the fiery tongue of your mother, and a habit or two of mine, I see.” Veron looked up at his own chestnut gelding and patted the horse’s muscular neck. “I still can’t believe you’re really here. It’s as if I’m in a strange dream.” He flicked his eyes to mine, jade against jade. “I look forward to getting to know the woman you’ve become. To catch up on lost time.”
I looked up at the sky, not able to meet the emotion in his gaze. “Me, too,” I said after a moment, once I was sure I could trust my voice.
“I believe you met most of the hunt party last night,” Veron said. “But there are a couple you haven’t met yet.”
Over a dozen people were gathered on the cliffs, and I did indeed recognize most of them from the meeting the night before. The Grayfeathers dressed somewhat similar to the Stags, wearing breeches and boots, though they tended more toward loose tunics rather than vests. The boots were also uniformly black, and the colors mostly gray and blue and white, as opposed to the more vivid hunter green or brown or red of the Stags.
Veron made a gesture to follow him as he made his way through the group. I followed on Brynwyn. At the back of the gathering stood two women, one older and one a bit younger than me, eighteen maybe. Both had hair of honeyed gold curled up into neat coils at the back of their heads. With pale skin and bright blue eyes, they were almost twins except for the age difference.
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