Page 315 of These Tears

Instead of explaining that my plans for the ceremonial portion are becoming increasingly unceremonious the longer he keeps me here, I simply give a nod.

I know she chose it.

The other night, she came to me with that vicious brightness in her eyes, and the red strip already looped around her wrist.

‘We are doing the Hunt the right way,’ she said.

Telling her no only made her taunt me with my ‘deteriorating hunting skills’.

‘Manipulation is unattractive,’ I reminded her, and she reminded me right back that lying was a sin in any religion known to man.

Then she climbed onto my lap, wrapped the red wool around my wrist and whispered that she wanted to see my face when I caught her.

I. Did. Not. Sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, she was moving through the trees ahead of me. Breathless, flushed, looking over her shoulder with fear she chose to feel.

That distinction should make me feel less corrupt.

Does it?

‘She chose this,’ Anders repeats.

‘I heard you,’ I snarl, but check myself before I make it worse.

He grins at me. He was never in my shoes. He can’t know what this is doing to me.

‘Make sure you continue hearing it,’ he adds. He wants assurance that I know when the pursuit is supposed to end.

My jaw locks. The silver-haired man across from me holds my gaze without fear.

‘Time to get your woman,’ he says, flipping the stopwatch closed.

I give him a solemn nod.

And I enter the trees.

The clearing disappears within twenty rapid steps.

Sound changes first. The low voices of my kin fade behind spruce and damp earth. Branches interlock overhead, cutting the fading light into grey fragments.

Water ticks from green needles. Somewhere to my left, a stream moves over stone with a subtle murmur. Like nature gossiping about what dirty things I might have planned for my woman.

Leah’s trail begins badly, but it’s a deliberate choice.

A fern is bent beside a root, mud holding the clear edge of her boot where she stepped too heavily. Three metres ahead, something in lilac catches against rough bark.

Lilac, not red.

I pinch it free. Wind it once around my finger before sense catches up with what I am doing.

‘Childish,’ I murmur. She has left her hairband. To rattle me.

She ties her hair back before entering the woods because she has spent enough mornings cursing branches to develop basic survival instincts.

The band is bait.

I bring it to my nose and close my eyes like a man on death row.