Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
The fucker who just pushed me away collapses, spraying blood all over the snow as he rolls after me.
One of the hunters must be close. I need to run. I need to hide. Find a cave, or an abandoned mine, and survive this day… somehow.
If only I don’t freeze, I’ll have a chance none of the other hunted will. Because unless Corvus lied to me, I won’t die from poisoning. If any of the others escape or hide, they’ll perish anyway. What’s a few fingers lost to frostbite if I get to live?
“I got him!” The hunter on the hill yells to someone about his victory. “Come and see!”
While he’s distracted, I get moving. I’m leaving obvious tracks, but it’s snowing, so there’s a chance they’ll be hidden in a while. I stay low, crawling between the bushes despite the cold.
Why did I have to gamble away all that money? My shitty life choices come back to haunt me any time I’m not busy looking around. Why did I think that this one time I’d be lucky? Hasn’t life proven to me that’s never the case? I should have been content with my lot.
I still, heart in throat when I hear a voice.
“I think I saw movement,” says what sounds like a younger man.
“Where?”
“In the bushes?”
My bushes?
I bite my tongue when I hear a swish, and a crossbow bolt passes right next to my ear, planting itself by my hand.
A deer jumps out from between the trees nearby and almost tramples me in its escape.
“See? It’s just a deer,” the older guy says.
A groan. “Well, it was worth checking.”
“You’re not the one hunting, Aspen!”
But they’re riding away. My heart beats in a frenzy, and I dash from my hideout as soon as they’re not visible anymore, because for all I know, they might descend the hill to mark the body somehow.
A few paces later, I’m on a path carrying traces of use—it’s an empty space cutting across the forest, and the snow on it is uneven, as if fresh layers covered those already disturbed. I lift my feet as high as I can, attempting to traverse a large swath of snow-covered land, and soon enough, I hear nothing but the thud of my own heart. Maybe that’s why I hear the thumping of hooves that late.
I turn around, and there he is. Another hunter. His outfit is as black as the coat of his horse. It’s as if they’re one creature, and whether it chooses to send a crossbow bolt straight in my throat or trample me, my life is over.
In the pristine white woodland, the huge animal is an aberration, even darker than the naked branches reaching out for me from under caps of snow. When it rises to its hind legs, I fall onto my ass, ready for a painful death.
But then I meet the blue eyes visible through the slit in the rider’s balaclava and I’m frozen in ways the snow and ice couldn’t make me.
“Seriously?” I choke out.
I didn’t expect Corvus to take part in the hunt. But I guess he wants to make sure I take his secret to my grave.
I roll to my hands and knees, ready to fight for my life when he reaches his gloved hand toward me and slides his foot out of the stirrup.
“Get on!”
My brain jams, as if one of the few cogs inside has finally gotten rusty. “What?”
“On. The. Horse. Before they spot us,” Corvus hisses.
The only horse I’ve ever been on was on a merry-go-round, but I don’t hesitate. I get to my feet, grab his hand, and let him help me climb onto the massive beast. If the devil rode a horse, it would be this one.
I wrap my arms around Corvus, my mind unable to comprehend what’s going on, so I focus on his warmth and the elegant smell of him I loved so much last night. Unlike me, he’s dressed appropriately for the weather, in a thick yet somehow slick black jacket, and riding boots. He reminds me to hold on tightly, but I only understand why when the stallion moves, and I have to slide down the uncomfortable slope at the back of the saddle, pressing closer to the other man.
Just like that, the landscape I’ve trudged through with such great difficulty is left behind, replaced by more snow and trees. I close my eyes when the constant motion starts making me sick, because this is not the time to complain about minor issues like that.
Corvus rides as if he’s one with the horse, and several times I worry I’ll fall off and break my neck, so I try to distract myself with memories of last night, of how beautifully he yielded under me. In the quiet of his office, I was a rider taming a wild mount.