I knew before Veron spoke who they were. “Evryn, I’d like you to meet my wife, Myrinne, and your sister, Talyn.”
“Half-sister, darling,” Myrinne said, stepping forward stiffly to shake my hand. Her lips held a perfunctory smile that didn’t reach her ice-chip eyes.
Talyn reached out to shake my hand as well, but didn’t bother with the fake smile.
“I should hope that very soon they just think of each other as sisters,” Veron said warmly as if this weren’t the most awkward meeting of all time.
Myrinne pasted another fabricated smile on her pretty pink lips and turned to attend to her horse, ignoring me completely. It was all I could do not to grab her shoulder, spin her around, and ask how it was my fault in any way that my parents had conceived me. I’d been born before my father got together with Myrinne, so it wasn’t as if she’d been cheated on. Sorry for being born, step-mother-dearest.
“Oh, and there’s one more person I’d like you to meet,” my father continued.
I cringed. Hadn’t there been enough awful introductions for one day?
Veron turned and strode away from the group to a man standing on the outskirts, someone I hadn’t noticed before. For a moment, I was surprised and disappointed that my senses hadn’t picked up on this lone figure, but as we approached I realized it was much to his design. There was something about him that blended in, as if he were part of the air and the grass and the ocean all at once.
“Evryn, this is Xavyr. He’ll be your escort in Solara.” When my eyes whipped up to Veron’s, he rushed on. “The capital can be a… complicated place, and once news spreads that I have another daughter it could get even more so. Not to mention all the other clans want....”
He didn’t need to finish. I knew the clans wanted me either dead or as a slave to do their bidding since I had such strong hunt skills. Due to my direct tie to Artemis, I felt the Call more strongly than anyone else, was able to jump between realms more accurately, and was even able to jump through time. Though that had backfired in a big way.
Xavyr and I regarded each other, and I found that I had to really lock gazes with him to pick up details. It was as if he used magic to deflect attention. He had cocoa skin and short black hair. His eyes glowed a deep amber color with a flash of purple here and there. Slim, but muscled as hell. I sensed he was someone that dumb people would underestimate, to their deep regret.
“It’s nice to meet you, Evryn,” Xavyr said, his voice soft as the wind over the waves. Everything about him was soft and quiet, and yet I could feel something coiled within that stillness I didn’t want to disturb.
“Are you an assassin?” I blurted.
Xavyr didn’t tense in the slightest at my rude outburst, but rather looked at me as if he hadn’t seen me the first time. “I do what my employer asks.”
Veron laughed. “Which is not to kill people!” Something in his levity held a tension, though, which made me look over at him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, blushing. I smoothed down my tunic with nervous fingers and fidgeted with the reins of Brynwyn’s bridle. “Good to meet you, Xavyr.”
I received a nod in return, though it didn’t feel like a snub. Xavyr struck me as a man of few words.
“I think we’re ready, then!” Veron called. “To the Ferryman!”
The Hunters raised their fists in the air and cheered, with the exception of Talyn and Myrinne. They looked about as excited as monks meditating. Maybe a jump through realms would loosen the sticks in their asses.
Everyone who was not already mounted got on their horses. A servant came and brought me a bag that I assumed held clothing and supplies, and helped fasten it to the back of my saddle. The woman handed me a small silver bow as well, and a shiver of arrows. I remembered the golden bow I’d had when I rode with the Stags. I’d lost all the weapons I’d received from the Sorenson Sisters except for one of my daggers, which was tucked into my boot. But material things could be replaced. People could not.
When everyone was ready, we jumped from our realm into the domain of the Ferryman, a space between spaces, a realm between realms. Many Hunters couldn’t jump directly from one realm to the other like I could; they needed the Ferryman to move in between. Or, they just didn’t want to take the risk of getting stuck, or jumping out somewhere dangerous. I’d learned that first hand when Kellan and I had nearly been flattened by a train.
Mist surrounded us, cool and moist against my skin. The glittering ceiling of a network of caverns rose far overhead and the lapping of water sounded not far off. Mud squished around my boots, and I followed the others out onto a long dock made of driftwood and strung with seashells. A horn cut through the air, low and deep. Shrouded in fog, a figure appeared. The Ferryman, with his massive horned head and piercing blue eyes. With a long oar he steered his raft toward us in the dim light and pulled alongside the dock.
He stared at me with laser intensity as the hunt clan began to load onto the raft. “Lost One,” he intoned. “I feared you would not return from the Timekeeper’s realm.”
I hadn’t been called Lost One in a while; I’d been found, after all. Found and brought to the Stag Clan to find Skye and the Artifex. Sought by all the clans, a pawn in everyone’s game. But had I really been found? My stomach tightened. With everything that had happened, I felt more lost than ever.
“Have you seen Kellan?” I asked, my words tumbling out in a breathless rush, hoping beyond hope that somehow he’d escaped, too.
The Ferryman slowly shook his horned head back and forth. “I have not seen Seeker since I took you both to the realm of that dark-hearted creature.”
It stung, deep inside my chest, even though I’d known what he would say. I wanted to ask the Ferryman if he had any news from the clans, anything that would help us get out of this giant mess, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me. He was a neutral party, ferryman to all the hunt clans. It was not for him to take sides.
We loaded onto the raft, horses and riders. It was quite a tight fit, and I ended up shoved in the upper corner close to the Ferryman. Veron and my new step-bitches were somewhere on the other side; I could barely make them out. I patted Brynwyn’s shoulder and whispered soothingly to her as the Ferryman pushed off into the water.
The Hunters chatted in groups amongst themselves, and I was feeling rather left out when I noticed Xavyr to my right. He was turned in my direction, not watching me exactly, but watchful. He stood surprisingly close, only a couple of feet, but I hadn’t noticed him right away. His horse was white like Brynwyn, but with a dark gray mane and tail. I remembered one of the first times I’d ridden the ferry, when a serpent had leapt from the water to attack me. Somehow I had a feeling nothing would even try with Xavyr at my side. He exuded an extreme air of non-fuckery.
As if feeling my eyes on him, which he probably did, he turned his gaze slowly to meet mine. The low light of the Ferryman’s realm made his golden eyes glow even brighter. We watched each other for several moments, assessing. Finally, I looked away and went back to paying attention to Brynwyn. Something about my bodyguard’s demeanor was both calming and unsettling.
The journey through the Ferryman’s caverns took nearly an hour. At long last I saw lights in the distance, twinkling through the mist. A long dock stretched out into the water to greet us, golden in color. I thought at first it was paint, but as we got closer I realized that the wood itself shone a rich gold. Ornate pillars lined the dock, the wood carved into fanciful designs. Birds and flowers and stags and stars, with fine silken rope hung between them to form the railings.
There were two people at the end of the dock, dressed in suits of royal purple. My father stepped onto the dock first and they reached down to scan the Rai around his wrist, the bracelet all Hunters wore, with a handheld device. It flickered slightly when they did so and they nodded him onward. Apparently they didn’t let Hunters even disembark the ferry if they didn’t have a proper Rai? I wrinkled my nose. I wasn’t overly fond of the things anyway, since they w
ere basically tracking devices controlled by the Hunter’s Council.
Xavyr and I were the last to get off. I turned to say farewell to the Ferryman, but he raised a giant hand to pause me.
“Since you and Seeker went into the Timekeeper’s realm, I’ve no longer been able to sense it,” he said, brows furrowed.
“Sense what?” I asked, mirroring his furrow.
“The entire realm.”
I stiffened. “You can sense all the realms?”
He nodded. “I sense realms as you sense the Call of the hunt. And shortly after you entered I could no longer feel its presence.”
“But—but what does that mean?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“I do not know, Lost One. It has only happened once before, when—” he cut off and his lips pressed into a thin line.
It took me a moment to realize what he’d been about to say. “After the Hunter’s War. When the Artifex was used to destroy realms.”
He nodded again, slowly and mournfully.
I didn’t speak for several moments. “He’s just hiding it somehow. To keep me from coming after Kellan.”
“You could be right,” the Ferryman said, though his voice held more than a little doubt.
“Thank you for giving me a heads up,” I said. “May we meet again under golden boughs.”
“May the Call be true and your mount be swift,” he responded.
I turned quickly before tears could prick at my eyes and strode from the raft. One of the capital staff swiped my Rai beneath their device. The small purple crystal on the silver band flashed momentarily. The man nodded me on. The rest of the clan was far down the dock. I walked briskly to catch up, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Xavyr staying behind and to my left. If he had questions about what the Ferryman and I had discussed, his expression didn’t betray it.
Veron waited for us at the end of the dock beneath a grand arch of the golden wood. Solara sparkled beyond and my mouth parted slightly in awe as I beheld it. It was at once whimsical and technological. I quickly determined the origin of the strange golden wood, as the whole city was built amidst a forest of gargantuan golden trees. They stretched hundreds of feet into the sky, which hovered at the edge of twilight. In the fading light, they glowed so that they almost appeared to be made of metal. Some of the trees had been hollowed out and filled with dwellings, as evidenced by the bright windows and openings cut into them. Bridges and towers of glass and titanium spanned between and among the trees, and hovercrafts zipped about like dragonflies.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” my father said.
I nodded. My eyes couldn’t get enough of it.
One glass tower rose in the middle of the city, taller than all the rest. Veron followed my gaze. “Yes, that’s the seat of government and the Hunter’s Council. But we are going to our own tower.”
“Our tower?” I echoed.
“Yes, each clan has their own permanent residence in Solara.”
“Ah,” was all I could muster in response.
“I have a stop to make on the way, however,” Veron said. “Xavyr will show you the way.”
I nodded and watched as he disappeared into the crowd. The rest of the clan had already headed on without us. I felt a deep pang of longing for my old clan. My mother was of the Stag Clan, so I rightfully was part of both. Neither felt like mine, though. I had no one.
“It’s this way,” Xavyr said softly. Something in the way he spoke made me think he could sense my anguish.
I nodded and followed in silence. We wove through the teeming city, beneath the shadows of the massive trees. I was going to get a crick in my neck from staring up so much. Even Brynwyn seemed perky and interested in our surroundings. I lowered my eyes occasionally to make sure I hadn’t lost Xavyr. Not that he was likely to let me.
We traveled for nearly a quarter hour, until I felt my senses were on overdrive from everything there was to take in. So, I was quite shaken when someone suddenly called my name, loudly.
“Evryn!”
I froze, my eyes immediately falling on the source.
Titus. Standing not ten feet in front of me.
Chapter Four
My body went rigid, as if caught in a tractor beam. His presence shouldn’t have bothered me— after all, Titus wasn’t my father. I owed him no allegiance. But he was an imposing figure nonetheless, standing there in a long white fur robe trimmed in gold, a crown of branches around his head, flanked by an entourage of servants.
“Titus.” I forced myself to meet his gaze nonchalantly. “I would say it’s a pleasure, but I’m not a very good liar.” I felt, rather than saw, Xavyr come to stand at my right shoulder.
Titus’s lips tightened and his cold blue eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here in the capital?”
I stared right back at him, refusing to shrink beneath his gaze. “That’s a whole zero percent your business.”
“Most of my Hunters are missing, and you seem to be the cause,” Titus said. His voice was a warning, black against the gold of the city. “Etienne, Jaffe, Rorie, Sabin, Kellan. Tell me, Evryn, where are they? What did you do?”
“I did nothing to harm them, nor would I ever.” My words came out choked. He was right. Intentional or not, what had happened was my fault.
Titus turned his head to the side. “And now here you are in Solara. You’ve abandoned them as you abandoned me.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid as I battled the impulse to slap him silly. “I’m trying my best to put things right.”
“Then tell me what you’re doing here. I am your father.” His voice came out low and commanding. “I brought you from that pathetic planet you grew up on after searching for you for over ten years. It’s very much my business what you do, from the first breath you take in the morning until the last you ever draw.”
“I very much doubt you’ll still be alive when I draw my last breath. Oh, and I found out that you’re not actually my dad. What a relief, eh?” I grinned and put every ounce of sass I had into it. I’d been planning on keeping that news as a bargaining chip, but who was I kidding? It made no difference to Titus whether I was his flesh and blood or not.
Titus’s face went from pink to red to purple in a matter of seconds. His fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides, every line of his body taut and trembling.
“Don’t bother me again,” I said and strode past him.
“Watch yourself here in Solara, Evryn,” Titus called after me, hatred laced into his words. “It’s a very dangerous place, especially for someone such as yourself.”
I lifted one hand into the air and gave him the finger, not bothering to turn around, even as my insides frosted over at his threat. Brynwyn snorted and swished her tail, which I imagined was the equine version of go screw yourself.
I walked for several minutes, emotions flashing through me like a strobe light. Anger at Titus’s accusations. Guilt at everything that had befallen my comrades. Grief over Etienne, and Kellan, and even Rorie. Relief (relief, relief!) that Titus wasn’t really my father.
Xavyr came silently to my side again and pointed at one of the massive trees to our left. Grayfeather Tower, I assumed. We headed for it and soon reached the base. I stopped and stared up the length of the trunk, up and up and up to where golden leaves touched the plum tones of the night sky. The tree emanated a slight glow so that the whole length of it could be clearly seen even as the sky darkened. It was also aglow with lights from within, windows and doorways that pocked the surface.
The stables, unsurprisingly, were on the ground floor. A huge arched entrance was carved into the trunk of the tree, and within that a wide aisle lined with stalls on each side and rooms for tack and hay and other things. A servant greeted us in the doorway and offered to take Brynwyn, a young man wearing a light gray tunic and pants who looked perfectly human except for his bright pink skin.
“That’s okay, I’ll take care of her,” I said. The servant looked distressed by my answer, so I added,
“Perhaps you can show me where the tack room is?”
This seemed to cheer the young man up, so I followed him first to Brynwyn’s stall and then to the tack room, where he insisted on helping me take off her saddle and bridle. He gave me some brushes so I could clean her, though it wasn’t as if we’d had a strenuous voyage. It was more to settle my own nerves than anything.
I almost forgot Xavyr was there until we got back to Brynwyn’s stall and I stepped inside. He stood on the exterior of the stall with his back to me, facing outward. His hands were clasped loosely at his back. It occurred to me that I had yet to see a weapon on him, though he did have a thin cylinder of metal about twelve inches long hanging from a belt at his waist.
“Oh, sorry. You don’t have to wait, Xavyr.”
“It’s why I’m here,” he said simply.
I began to brush Brynwyn as she ate some chopped apples and carrots the servant had given us. She sighed contentedly, and I followed a moment later. My eyes kept darting up to Xavyr, still and quiet outside the stall.
“I feel bad. It must be terribly boring, following me around,” I said.
Xavyr didn’t speak for several moments, and I thought that perhaps he wasn’t going to answer. “It is boring, following some people around.” A pause, then, “But I do not get the impression that will be the case with you.”
It was true. I’d already had an intense conversation with the Ferryman and a confrontation in the streets with the leader of the Stag Clan, all in the first couple of hours of us knowing each other. Not to mention my abrupt arrival as the love child of Veron. I snorted. “Nothing has been boring since I found out I was a Hunter, that’s for sure.”
“You handled yourself well. With Titus.”
A flush of pleasure at his unexpected compliment washed over me. I was glad I was inside the stall so he couldn’t see my cheeks go pink. “Thanks. He’s a dick. But I grew up with plenty of his kind, nothing new there.”
“It must have been difficult, growing up without knowing what you were. Feeling the Call, and yet not knowing why.”
Huntress Lost Page 2