In short, they had been like kings and queens traveling the land, not respected, perhaps, but feared, and sometimes it was not so easy to tell the difference between the two. But if that were true, then why did she follow him now? She wanted to believe it was because of the boy, this confused, frightened youth who had no idea what was happening, why he was being hunted, for Cutter had obviously neglected to tell him. Not that such a thing was surprising, for Cutter had always preferred bellowing war cries to having quiet conversation, and even at the best of times it was difficult to get more than a few words out of the big man unless those words were threats or gloating over one corpse or another—there had been many over the years.
She looked at the boy now. He was alive—that much Cutter had managed, but she could say no more than that. He walked with his shoulders slumped, his head down, on his face an expression of quiet panic and, behind that, of some great loss. She did not know the exact details of that loss but knowing Cutter—and his brother Feledias—as well as she did, it did not take much to imagine it.
She slowed her pace until she came to the back of the line where the boy walked. “I’m Maeve,” she said, offering her hand.
The boy started, looking up at her and gave her a sickly smile. “I-I’m Matt,” he said, taking the offered hand and giving it a weak shake.
She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I know.”
He frowned. “How do you know, though?”
She opened her mouth to answer then glanced up to see that Cutter had turned back and was watching her, his cold blue-gray gaze seeming to see into her thoughts, then he turned and started on again, saying nothing. Maeve turned to the boy, giving her head a shake. “Best if I let him tell you that.”
The boy rasped a laugh without humor. “He’s not much for telling people things, I think.”
She smiled again, this time the expression feeling more natural on her face. “No. No, he is not.”
They walked on in silence for a few minutes then, the boy clearly having questions, but she not wanting to press him, to let him ask them in his own time, in his own way. Then, “You knew him, then? A long time ago?”
Maeve considered the question. “I knew him as well as anyone did, I expect,” she said finally.
The boy nodded. “What was he like?”
She turned to regard the big man, once the greatest warrior of their people, their prince upon whom all of their hopes had relied until he had become bloodthirsty, a danger greater even than their enemies, and she frowned. “Much the same, I expect,” she said slowly. “But…angrier, perhaps.”
The boy blinked at that. “Angrier? I don’t want to argue, but I have a hard time imagining that. He pretty much always seems angry now. Angry at me, in particular,” he finished in a mumble.
Oh, you poor boy, Maeve thought. “Yes,” she agreed, “but it was a different kind of anger. A different…there was a time, Matt, when Cutter’s fury was a terrible sight to behold, when he burned like a great flame, one that threatened to sweep over the entire world.”
“Oh,” he said softly. “And…now?”
She shook her head slowly. “He is different. Still angry, yes, but it seems a cold anger, one that waits instead of rushing in…and to be honest, I do not know if that is better or not.”
The boy was looking at Cutter now, and she saw something in his gaze that worried her. It was not adoration, not exactly, but it was not far from it either. She saw the need in his gaze, a need she understood all too well for she had felt it too, once upon a time. That, too, had been one of the reasons why she had followed the man. And that need, that desire to find his approval for reasons she could not understand, even now, had brought her no end of grief.
She wanted to tell the boy that, to try to reassure him that there were other places out there, better places, better people in which he might find that approval, but now was not the time, so she only walked on. Walked. And worried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Fey are not people and to think them such would be a great mistake.
They are beings from another world, another place.
Yet, there are some things that they share with mortals.
Joy, for instance. Friendship too.
And of course, anger. That, perhaps, most of all.
—Excerpt from “The Workings of the Fey” by Scholar Kelden Marrimore
Eventually, they reached the edge of the Black Wood, and Maeve breathed a heavy sigh of relief to be out from underneath the boughs of those great trees that seemed to mark each step they took, to tally them as transgressions that would one day be paid. It was a short lived relief, however, as she was confronted with the undeniable fact that, once again, she had fallen into the role of following what was perhaps the most dangerous man in the world—to his enemies and, if the past was any indication, his friends as well.
Chall, too, showed obvious signs of relief, grinning widely and staring up at the sky as if he’d thought to never see it again. Even Priest wore a small, contented smile on his face, though the truth was that, in Maeve’s experience,
