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“Or all those times you promised to call him but never did when you were away at university. The summer you chose, at the last minute, to stay with friends instead of going home to see him and your step-mother for the few weeks you could. They had so been looking forward to it, Acherone.”
I swallowed again, the back of my throat aching. Why did you do that? Why didn’t you spend every single second with them that you could? Why were you so stupid and selfish?
“I—I didn’t know they’d be gone so soon,” I managed to say unsteadily. “I thought I had more time with them. That’s—Everyone does stuff like that. Everyone—”
“Then let’s move on to things that not everyone does.” Gadleg’s huge eyes were fixed on me, unwavering. “When you threw that poor guard in your dungeon just for helping her friend.”
“I apologised,” I blurted. “I let her out. I wasn’t thinking clearly—”
“When you killed your birth mother.”
I stiffened, a burst of anger replacing the sorrow and guilt. “She was a terrible person. She—”
“When you killed her King of Boars.”
“He couldn’t be trusted,” I rushed out defensively. “He was obsessed with her. He… he tried to kill me—”
“When you killed all those unseelie guards because you wanted to prove something to the Carlin. They had families. Friends. Lives. Lives you relished taking from them. You even bragged about it. You were proud when you managed to kill six in one day, remember? Like it was a game you were winning.”
I flinched, the urge to defend myself rising, but guilt crept back in as I remembered those months I’d spent in the forest, hunting the Carlin’s guards like it was a sport. My festering anger had let me justify what I was doing. It had let me see them as nothing but extensions of her—victories that I could take against her after she’d taken everything from me.
“When you shot that poor, defenceless broon in the head just to save your own skin from the Brid.”
My breath left me in a shaky rush as the guilt froze me in place. I couldn’t defend myself over that even if I wanted to. It still haunted me.
“When you hunted Balor in the forest and cut off his head to keep as a trophy.”
“No,” I burst out, hands clenching into fists. “He was evil. He deserved to—”
“Ah, so you think yourself a god? You think you have the right to decide whether another is still worthy of living?”
“No,” I blurted again. “No I don’t. I don’t think that. But he—”
A terrible, ground-trembling roar from far away ripped through the air, cutting off my words and making me jump out of my skin. I stumbled back in fear, convinced that Gadleg was about to swallow me whole despite the terms of our deal, before I realised she hadn’t moved. It wasn’t her who’d made that sound.
Another roar made my breath catch. It sounded like the earth was splitting open and crying out in gut-wrenching pain. For some reason, it made my eyes water.
“What is that?” I whispered.
“Your king is looking for you.”
“Wh-what?” I cringed when I heard the sound again, looking around frantically. “Lonan? That’s Lonan?”
Before Gadleg could say anything else, I ran for the nearest tree and hoisted myself up onto a thick branch, wobbling only a little as I stood to see over the canopy. When the mainland became visible far in the distance, I choked out a stunned breath.
A dragon. A fucking dragon, looking huge and terrifying even from here. Its black scales shimmered with purple and gold, iridescent in the sun as it swooped low over the forest, then flapped its enormous wings to lift higher into the air. I could see its head turning constantly, scouring the trees beneath it.
It—he—roared again like he was in agony. It was raw with fury and pain, but the next terrible sound he let out was lower. Mournful. It echoed over the forest, filling the sky.
“He’s been searching the forest for days,” Gadleg told me. “Desperately calling out for you. He is starting to lose hope.”
No. My mouth trembled, hot tears blurring my vision. I tried to shout his name, even though I knew he’d never be able to hear me from here, but I couldn’t get the word out. It got stuck in my throat.
“We’re not done, Hunter King,” Gadleg rasped from her tower.
The compulsion to see our bargain through to the end overwhelmed me, forcing me back down the tree even as I desperately tried to get one last look at him.
I’m sorry, I thought, my legs shaking as I returned to my place in front of Gadleg so my fate could be decided.
