Which leaves me with one option.
The cold kiss of iron, straight through the heart.
It’s my first bane hunt.
Preferably not my last.
“Let’s make this nice and easy,” I mutter as I slip through the forest with murder—or mercy—on my mind.
Thorns encircle the ruins, some of them bearing spikes as long as my forearm. Poison drips from their tips; they call this particular bramble Sorrow’s Tears. It sprang from the ground the night the King of the Sorrows was slaughtered by his new Unseelie queen. Where his people wept, the brambles grew. It’s deadly to the Unseelie and excruciating to my kind, though it won’t kill us.
How, in Maia’s name, am I going to get inside the ruins?
The snuffling of the bane echoes in the distance. No doubt it made its lair deep inside where it will be safe from predators.
Skirting the brambles, I hold my sword low. Demi-fey peer at me from the shadows, their golden eyes vicious and unblinking. Sweat drips down my spine. I’m practically jumping at shadows, my skin prickling at the faint whisper of claws on stone.
“You can do this,” I tell myself quietly.
I have to do this. I have to slay the beast at my mother’s behest or suffer her consequences.
After all, if it tears my head from my shoulders, then at least I won’t have to hear about it for the next ten years.
Or worse.
Girding myself, I follow the bane’s blood trail to an overgrown arch. Shadows loom beneath it.
This was once the ancient stronghold of my kingdom, many years before my mother took power. The king who ruled wore a gauntlet coated with pure iron. A literal iron fist. Though the main tower’s half-shattered, with stones strewn about it like rumpled skirts, it wouldn’t surprise me if the tower once bore a certain phallic resemblance.
My mother overthrew him nearly a thousand years ago.
Nobody even remembers his name—she had it wiped from public record, and no one dared speak it upon pain of death. The years passed, and he faded from memory, crushed to dust just like this keep. Now only the forest remembers him, slowly swallowing what remains of his grandeur.
I wonder what he did to her to earn such a fate, such enmity. My mother is petty and vicious, but to ensure even history forgot him speaks of an enemy she saved her most vengeful acts for.
“This way, Princess!” a voice cries through the ruins. “I can see its tracks!”
I freeze.
Hooves echo on half-buried cobblestones, and then a glint of gold shines through the brambles as a young woman canters into view. Her blonde hair knots into tight braids that circle her head like a coronet. A trio of Seelie hunters clad in hard leathers are at her heels.
Curse it.
The Crown Princess Andraste. Strong. Dangerous. Powerful.
She looks like the epitome of a warrior princess, with a battle-hardened leather corset protecting her slim waist and boots that cling to her calves. A lush dark green cloak wraps around her shoulders, but it’s the bow at her back and the knives tucked into her boots that make her dangerous.
Andraste doesn’t miss. She doesn’t fail.
I might have once called her sister, though it’s been so long since we’ve been close enough for such a word. It’s not encouraged anymore.
After all, in my mother’s kingdom, there is only one ruler, only one heir.
And I’m not the favored child.
I have to kill the bane first.
Darting up the spiral staircase of the tower, I slip my knife from its sheath so I’m well armed. I can’t afford to rush this and make a mistake, but I cannot afford to lose the chance.
Thighs burning, I make it to the highest level, my steps slowing.
Wounded grunts echo from within the chamber at the top. I slip toward the door, pressing my back to the stone wall beside it and softening my breath. A glance shows the turret room inside, dust and dead leaves covering the floor. In the middle of the room is an enormous, twisted mass of fur and sinew.
It looks like a wolf and a lion had a baby.
Or no, not quite.
There are enormous teeth that don’t belong to either animal, and claws over two inches long. It moves like a man, though its spine is curved like a cat’s, and it loped along on all fours when we were hunting it.
Blood drips from the wound on its flank where my arrow sank between its ribs, and it licks the ravaged wound, wincing a little.
The movement’s so familiar my fingers curl around the knife. The sound it made when my arrow sank into soft gray fur lingers in my memory. A cry. It sounded like a man’s pained cry.
No mercy for the monsters, sneers my mother’s voice.
But is it a monster?
It was fae once, whispers my conscience.
Aye, and now it’s terrorizing local villages.
Year by year, it will lose itself to the curse, until all it craves is blood. All it will hunger for is flesh. There’s no turning back. If the curse hasn’t been broken yet, then I doubt it ever will be.
This is mercy.
Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.
My fingers flex around the knife as I creep closer, picking my way between dead leaves.
The creature freezes.
So do I.
“Schmell you,” it whispers. “Coming to finish job.” The word comes from an inhuman mouth, but it freezes me right to the core.
There’s no reasoning with a bane. All you can do is put them out of their misery and stop them before they slaughter entire villages.
But this one is fae enough still to speak.
The slight hesitation almost costs me.
The bane lunges toward me, muscle rippling beneath its fur. I drive to the side, blade swinging up. Its claws lash out, smashing my sword to the side. The weight of it slams into me, and then I’m going down. Only pure luck—or years and years of practice with my mother’s swordmaster—mean that my knife drives
