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“Kyre, Kyre…the one with hair like fire—” I froze as my name was called out from a distance, those same melodic words the male in my dream had taunted me with. “Kyre, Kyre—” it said again, louder this time. Closer.
I tried to pull away from the mirror. I wanted to sprint out of the room that was flickering in and out of darkness so rapidly that I was becoming disoriented. The moonlight seemed to be blinking, as if hundreds of birds were flying across its light. Still, he called out my name, as if coaxing me closer. The musical quality to his voice made my body want to comply. I knew I needed to run for my life but somehow my body wouldn’t listen.
Then everything stopped and fell still. The moonlight no longer flickered, the room didn’t shake. But the mirror still rippled, and from it, a strange, sweet-smelling wind blew my hair back over my shoulders. Despite every warning bell in my head I found myself leaning toward the mirror. My image was completely lost in the molten swirl of the glass. I leaned in until my nose was nearly touching it.
The sound of my name came through the mirror, louder now, as if someone was just on the other side of it. And then to my horror, a pair of gloved hands reached right through the rippling glass, grasping my upper arms tightly, their fingers sinking into my skin painfully. I screamed and tried to tear myself away, but the grip was too strong.
Then the hands pulled me so hard and so fast that my feet left the floor and I fell face-first into the mirror. Closing my eyes, I braced myself to hit my face painfully on the surface, but instead, I dipped right into it. A cool sensation enveloped me, like diving into a pond in the early spring.
Before the hands had the chance to pull me in entirely, I gave one final push, bracing the soles of my boots against the wall beneath the mirror and basin. I pushed as hard as I could, straining against the tight grip. I wouldn’t let them take me. Not like this. I still had one more thing to do before I went willingly and I refused to leave without making sure it was done.
So with one final lunge, I pushed off the wall, breaking the grip of the fingers digging into my arms and flew backwards. My back hit the ground hard, but I scrambled to my feet immediately, knowing I needed to run. They knew how to find me here. They knew where I lived now, so this place could no longer serve me.
The mirror rippled one last time, the sound of my name coming through it, this time less like a melodic song and more like an enraged curse. Then the hands disappeared, and with it, the magic that tried to pull me through.
For now, I was free. For now, I’d escaped. But how much longer could I last?
* * *
Rippingthe still sopping-wet hood off of my head, I shook out my hair, letting it drip onto the creaking floorboards. My ears were freezing, especially the very tips, where they gently pointed upwards. I eyed the crackling fire on the other side of the room, picturing curling up next to it and falling asleep until the sun rose.
I’d run from my apartment without looking back, armed with a dagger, a vial, and my hopes and dreams. Running as fast as I could, I ended up at the one place I knew I’d be safe, with the one person who knew exactly what I had to face.
“What were you thinking?” Neera hissed as she hurried toward me, rounding her wooden desk where she’d previously had her feet propped up while she read a book by the firelight. “Get in here, you’re already half frozen!”
She removed my cloak, letting it fall to the ground in a sopping-wet pile, then ran her warm hands up and down my frozen arms, attempting to coax some blood flow back into them. I hadn’t realized how cold it had gotten through the winter night. It didn’t help that the skies had chosen this hour to open up and rain harder than it had all winter.
The entire journey was a blur. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be eyes locked on me—glowing eyes in the darkness that watched and waited.
Neera’s deep-black hair hung in pretty waves around her face, highlighting the pearly paleness of her skin, unlike my lightly-browned skin, freckled across my nose from the sun. She was my closest friend, and the only other halfling I could trust in this city. Neera’s birth mother had been a pixie and her father a human, but you could hardly find the human in her at all. Especially her bright-blue eyes, which were three times too large in her small face to mark her as anything other than a halfling. The humans were suspicious of Neera, but the goods she provided them were too valuable for them to turn the other cheek.
Feeling began to creep back into my limbs when she left me on a footstool by the fire. The heat of its flames licked at my skin, making them tingle pleasantly for the first time since my cold bath. Neera’s home, which doubled as an apothecary and workshop, wasn’t anything particularly special, but it was warm and smelled like the herbs she had hanging from the ceiling, those she dried and used in the potions, salves, and medicines she sold in the markets, both legal and illegal.
“They’re here,” I said, barely more than a whisper. My voice was raspy and broken after swallowing frozen wind. Looking up, I met her eyes as she paused in front of me, holding a thick quilt.
Neera’s stunned expression turned to anger in a heartbeat. “I told you it was a bad idea, but you never listen to me. Kyre, you could have died tonight.” She was right—I could have died. I might still, but not before I got the last of the cure to Drystan. Once he was healed, I couldn’t care less what happened to me.
“I have the last petal to give him. They won't take me before I do,” I said, a smile stretched my lips slowly, cracking the chapped dryness, until I tasted blood. Reaching into my shirt pocket, I pulled out the small vial I’d been clutching there, hoping it wouldn’t shatter before I could get it to Drystan. “He’s going to live, Neer, even if I have to die trying.”
Her eyes went wide, and she lurched forward, cradling my hands in hers as we both cupped the vial. “Kyre,” she said in a whisper. “Don’t do this, please. Don’t let them take you.” Her eyes were rimmed with terrified tears. “Do you have any idea what faeries do to halflings?” I could only imagine. Halflings were no better than humans in their eyes.
“I never told you who answered my summons that night…” I trailed off, and Neera looked up sharply, narrowing her eyes. Swallowing thickly, I continued, “I didn't mean for it to be them. I just neededanyoneto answer. I didn’t know I would even get a year. I was prepared to hand myself over that night, so I should count myself lucky.”
One whole year. A lifetime, and yet over in a blink of an eye. I had one year of freedom before I had to pay for this favor, one year before Drystan would wake and take back the kingdom his mother thought she could steal from under him.
Squeezing my hand hard enough to hurt, Neera asked, “Who will come for you? You’ve kept me out of it for long enough. I need to know who’s coming to take you away.” She shook her head, eyes bouncing briefly to the dark window in the far wall, as if a faerie were about to crash through it and drag me into the darkness. “We can run. I can sell the shop and we’ll take a boat across the sea where they'll never find you. We’ll change our names—”
Ripping my hands from hers, I threw my arms around her neck, squeezing her tight. Tears welled in my eyes, and my whole body shook with fear, dread, and the love I had for my only friend. She truly would uproot her life for me without question, and I would do the same for her a thousand times over. Except there was no running from this.
After fighting to steady my erratic breathing, I squeezed her one more time before pulling back. Neera was a strong woman, but not as strong as the males who owned me now. “The Wild Hunt is here. There’s not a corner of the world I could ever hide in that will keep them from finding me.”
Her mouth dropped in disbelief. “The Wild Hunt?! Are you insane? Of all the faeries to summon, you had to pick the worst of them?”
“It wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter,” I said with a groan. “I followed the spell’s instructions to the letter, and they were the faeries who answered my call.”
She looked aside, tears beginning to spill. Neera never cried, so seeing her filled with so much terror made my stomach clench and my heart ache. Neera eyed the vial, plucking it from my hands with a narrowed gaze at me. Bringing it up to her face, she twisted it this way and that, letting the light bounce off of the last petal. “What flower did this supposedcurecome from? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t know, and I forgot to ask.” Not that they would have told me, nor would I have been able to acquire it on my own if it was native only to Faerie.
