Page 14 of Hellbound

A wild stag barreled toward her, a broadhead arrow jutting out from its shoulder.

It was formidable at fifteen hands. Its glossy coat quivered; antlers boasting a dozen or more points, the horn darkly stained.

Ksenia’s pulse thundered in her ears, every nerve electrified. With one wrong move, the beast could eviscerate her along his path. She tucked into the underbrush, her body moving faster than she could think.

The stag’s hoofbeats exploded in her ears, and she could hear the sound of a hunt nearby: creaking leather, baying hounds, and arrows rattling in their quivers.

Ksenia instinctively clenched Caromir’s hilt. Her focus crescendoed into a painfully sharp warning.

She stilled her breath, muscles tensed and coiled as if she could feel every inch of terrain between her and the hunters. Even the stag had paused its rampage a few paces away, locking its pupils onto hers in…recognition?

A branch cracked underfoot, and the stag bolted.

The forest responded in kind. Ravens shrieked and soared from the trees. Hooves pounded the dirt. Arrows loosed in haste.

Without thinking, Ksenia leaped before the beast, grabbing hold of the massive antlers mid-run and twisting.

The stag careened off the trail as an arrow whizzed by, sinking instead into the sodden tree trunk.

She let go, and the stag sprang away with ease as the hunters cursed their spoiled shot.

Ksenia ducked against the hollow of a tree, waiting out the minutes until the forest began to fall back to silence.

Her mind was anything but quiet, however. She had never moved that fast in her life. In the forge, there were specific situations that required speed, but precision came first. There was little room for error, and moving brashly had always cost her.

This was different.

She was lean but strong, newly shaped for endurance. She looked behind her at the trampled underbrush, the trees cast to the side by the stag’s rampage. It was inhuman how she’d diverted it from its path.

Her thoughts whirred and she blinked, clearing the haze from her vision. She hadn’t had strength or speed on her side before, but now she could combine brain and brawn. She only needed a way in. Some way into Hearth—she didn’t care what. She’d be a servant girl for all it mattered if she could infiltrate the castle’s defenses.

She took rest by a running creek, the day half gone and a few more hours of travel to go.

The streaming water cooled her sore feet. She hadn’t adequately prepared for her journey, and she winced at the tender blisters.

The air dropped a few degrees.

The eddies ceased to swirl, pooling leaves in the inlets.

The chirp of insects and birdsong quieted, until all Ksenia could hear was her rising pulse.

In the distance, barely audible, the sound of flexing metal, cooling after being tempered in oil.

Ksenia drew Caromir from her hip, but couldn’t pinpoint the noise. It was everywhere, yet not from the woods at all.

The sound pricked at the edge of her bondsense. Faint, but insistent. Growing louder and sharper until it reached a crystalline chime.

It came from Caromir itself, like the perfect strike of a hammer upon the anvil. In her panic, she threw it into the bank before her.

Instantly, white-hot pain erupted in her skull, and she doubled over, hands and knees in the mud. She found it impossible to breathe through the pain. She crawled into the water, seeking relief against the raging fever. Steam wafted from her body.

She began to cool as she neared where Caromir lay against gray river rock.

She waded into the shallow stream and retrieved the blade from the current, a soothing balm instantly coating her heated skin, seeping through her limbs and into her core.

“This pact will be the death of me.” Ksenia kicked a pebble irritably as she slogged out of the water.

And you need to be tempered to survive. Ksenia jolted backward. The voice hummed inside her skull, just behind her ear. She spun, eyes wild, searching for Vornaya to no avail.