Page 4

A pitiful shriek rips from its gullet as it throws back its naked head, face twisted in agony. I scramble away, clutching its cap in one hand. My prize. The trophy I never wanted, but the one I came here to take all the same.

The warmth of the fire licks at my back, and I shift to hold the hood over the flames.

“No!” The redcap lets out a feral hiss as it realises what I mean to do. Putrid brown blood oozes from the hole my rapier made in its shoulder, but the creature doesn’t notice. Its frenzied gaze is fixed upon my fingers, and for the first time tonight, I smell its fear.

Perhaps there was a time I might have pitied it, fiend or no. But my heart is too cold for such mercies now.

“Have you seen it?” The question leaves my lips softly. “The source of the darkness that has fallen over this place. The shadow that has brought you scurrying from hundreds of miles away.”

“Seen…nothing.” The redcap draws a thin breath, reaching for its hood with its talons. “Nothing…to see. If the hunter’s not careful, she’ll—”

I don’t wait for the rest of its warning. My fingers spring apart, and the flames engulf the redcap’s bloodied hood.

The scream that leaves the creature’s lungs will ring in my ears for days to come. Tortured, desperate, then silent. Swallowed by the air as if it never existed. It’s a reminder of how swift death can be, how little of a trace it leaves—except, of course, on those who witness it. Those marks are impossible to wash clean.

The redcap falls at my feet, arms still stretching towards the hood that’s now blackening in the flames. As I watch, its body desiccates, its blood dried and crusted. What remains is what I’ve made of it: a rotten, shrivelled husk.

Beside me, the fire crackles. The last scraps of the redcap’s charred hood curl and crisp, leaving nothing but ash behind.

My mouth is dry, and I force myself to swallow. One less monster in the world. That’s what I’ll tell myself tonight when I’m scrubbing the blood from under my fingernails.

Yet when my head touches the pillow, the nightmares will surely come, like they always do.

3

A dull ache drums through my temples when I open my eyes the next morning. I haven’t drawn the curtains tightly enough, and a crack of light has stolen through to assault my weary eyelids. My tongue rolls in my mouth, rough and stale, carrying the lingering aftertaste of last night’s wine. One glass, I remember telling myself. Just to take the edge off. Just to help me sleep.

The throbbing at the base of my skull tells me I’ve failed on more than one account.

I kick off the goose-down quilt and roll out of bed, wincing at the shooting pain across my chest. As I expected, a patchwork of nasty purple bruising has darkened my skin, its vague outline bearing the echo of the redcap’s iron boots. My arm is faring little better, but when I peel back the poultice to check on the bite marks, at least I smell no trace of infection.

If I still believed in God, I might have sent a prayer in thanks. But the truth of the world is much colder: I got lucky. Not everyone does.

My mind turns to the young village boy lying on the undertaker’s table, his skull bashed to splinters. He didn’t know what he was getting into when he snuck off to the ruins. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I pull a loose linen dress over my head and retrieve my coin pouch from the dresser. It weighs no heavier than it did yesterday; the undertaker refused to pay me without proof I’d completed the contract. Another hunter might have shot him for the insult, but I just left with empty pockets. I have no desire to pick fights with the villagers, even those who cheat me. There are targets more deserving of my anger.

Just before I push through the heavy oak door, something stops me. It’s the same as before: a perennial shiver, a sense of something I can’t explain. My eyes are drawn to my wool-lined hunting coat folded over the chair. In its breast pocket lies the letter from yesterday, the missive scrawled in blood, signed by the enigmatic Lord Iestyn.

Something in me recoils at the thought of touching it again, but I don’t want to leave it behind either. For a moment, I stand in the middle of the room, frozen with indecision. Then I snatch the letter from my coat and stuff it into the side pocket of my dress, not caring that I’ve crumpled the envelope in the tension of my grip.

The weight of it pulls on me as I make my way downstairs, but I do my best to ignore it. Instead, I focus on the bustle and chatter filling my ears, the salty smell of pork and eggs wafting from the kitchen. It may be morning, but the Goshawk Inn is as busy as the night before. Its patrons are less red in the cheeks, but they exude the same sense of cheer and familiarity. These folk are a township, a family that I have no claim to.

I take a seat in a quiet corner and mutter thanks to one of the serving girls as she brings me tea. The milk and sugar help wash away the remnants of wine on my tongue, and I gulp the liquid down faster than is wise given how hot it is.

“The usual, Miss Alderose?”

The serving girl is gone, and instead Lottie beams down at me, arms laden with a plate of steaming food. Even before she sets it on the table, I’m hit with the tang of bacon and the earthy aroma of fried mushrooms. My stomach growls before I can thank her, and she chuckles as she palms the coins I’ve already placed on the table.

“Hungry work, I’ll bet,” she says. “This monster-hunting business of yours.”

She doesn’t say it the way the others do. There’s no wariness or suspicion in her bright blue eyes, just a joviality that never seems to cease, no matter the hour. Lottie is the proprietor of the Goshawk Inn, but she also tends the bar and cooks the food, forever grinning and whistling through the crooked gap between her front teeth. At forty, she’s got the best part of a decade on me, but nobody would guess it from her rosy cheeks and waifish beauty. Sometimes, I catch myself feeling envious of her easy charm and good nature, though it’s senseless to crave something I’ll never have.

You used to have it, a familiar voice reminds me. That’s why it stings so sharply.

I set the cup of tea down with more force than I intend, then reach into my dress pocket to pluck out the letter sitting in it like a stone. When I place it on the table, my own name stares back at me from the envelope, whispering in long, elegant strokes of blood.

Alderose Mortimer.