The more I tried to convince myself that nothing else was going to happen, the less I believed it. I knew Dahes set a monster loose in the woods with me, I just didn’t know which one yet. He told me during dinner that he’d have a beast hunt me, that it was what was going to get King Elion interested in me.
Would whatever was in here with me attack as soon as it found me, or would it wait until the drakin was flying by? Could it even take orders, or would it act on bloodlust?
Then another thought came to me.
Dahes wouldn’t try to kill me, would he?
A screech sounded behind me in answer. I didn’t turn around to look. I started running. Twigs scraped my arms, my legs, my cheeks as I stumbled over a tree trunk one too many times.
The monster screeched again, only this time it was louder, and it didn’t stop. Three consecutive ground-shattering, reverberating roars, and I knew what was hunting me. I’d heard it before—only once when Dahes made me watch the death of the first person I ever hunted. It was for punishment—all because he stole food from Dahes’ castle—and I was forced to watch and do nothing as the beast slowly ate him alive.
Food for food,he had said.
Dahes told me his name as I watched him die. I’d never forget it.Lincoln.It was the first death I was responsible for. I found out after I dragged him to Dahes that he was caught stealing meat to feed his wife and two kids.
That was his crime—survival. It felt too close to home, sacrificing yourself to save the ones you loved.
After that, every single hunt I made for Dahes felt like I was killingmyself along with the person I dragged back. I knew by the time I actually died, I’d barely have a soul left for him to claim.
There were some hunts I didn’t know the outcome to. I would drop off the body and get excused almost immediately. Others, I was required to stay and watch. And the worst ones, he’d force me to be the one to make the kill.
But for some reason, Lincoln’s death hit the hardest, even more than the ones who died from my own hands.
And now, hearing the three screeches, I knew exactly what was in the woods with me.
Dahes sent aTallikto hunt me.
Ithad an impeccable sense of smell. Once they honed in on their prey, they wouldn’t stop until it was in shreds. I was never the same after watching that. I had cried for days after that night, constantly seeing Lincoln’s body being reduced to ribbons of flesh and muscle by the time he stopped breathing.
In the beginning of my slavery, I cried so much that sometimes I felt like I had no tears left in me, that I could fill the entirety of the Examinis River four times over for how much I sobbed.
I was only fifteen when Dahes made me watch him die.
I was too young to see it, too young to hear Lincoln’s wails of agony, too young to watch the thing break every bone in his body, too young to realize it started at his feet so he was alive during most of it. Too young to realize the person dying was actually innocent, that I was just as much a monster for dragging him out of the corner alley while his family sobbed. I looked into the eyes of his two children holding the stolen piece of meat, not knowing at the time that I would be the reason they never saw their dad again.
And now it was huntingme.
It felt fitting, symbolic even. Lincoln’s death was the start of what slowly killed my soul.
It was when I learned to zone out my mind from Dahes, when I realized that he’d enter it to figure out what would hurt me the most and use it against me.
But the thing was, I didn’t want to die. I was too much of a coward to willingly accept my fate. A Tallik wasnotgoing to kill me today.
Its four rows of sharp teeth dripping in Lincoln’s blood wouldn’t stop replaying in my head. It was one of the most grotesque deaths I’d ever witnessed, and I’d seen a lot.
Would it still be able to eat me if I accessed my Token?Not that I was about to wait and find out.
The screeches sounded again, only this time it was closer, which meant it already tracked my scent. I couldn’t climb a tree, it would only corner me with nowhere to go. Talliks were tall, and despite their height, their long talons were so sharp it could embed into anything. They were one of the best climbers on the continent. They’d make scaling the Senith look like it was nothing.
They were also fast. Second only to dragons, they were the fastest creature I’d seen of Dahes’. My only saving grace right now was that I had a semblance of knowledge on the beast.
Dahes had whispered facts about Talliks in my ear while we watched Lincoln scramble—trying and failing to climb the walls of the chasm below the castle—and realization dawned on me that he couldn’t escape.
Dahes was so calm as we watched him die. He never raised his voice, even as the beast finally sank one of its talons into Lincoln’s calf right through the bone, and his screams pierced the air and echoed off the high walls.
Lincoln wasn’t given any access to the Tallik’s weaknesses, but I was. I knew what I had to do. Dahes told me the only two things Talliks were afraid of, and one was somewhere pounding ahead of me.
Talliks couldn’t swim. Their thick snake-like bodies were too dense, too heavy.
