Traps, Tricks, and Beasts [Book 2 Complete][Fantasy, Adventure, Underdog]

“Missing? What do you mean she’s missing?”

The palpable rage in Prince Feldan’s voice caused his disguise to waver.

He’d had a plan. Escort his goddess to the festival, wow her with his brilliance, tell her his identity, and confess his affections. So long as she didn’t reject him, he had a chance, and gods he’d never tried so hard in his life.

Nor ever felt as unworthy as when she stood next to him.

The other hunters, who had entered the castle grounds as a group, found themselves drawn closer to the disguised prince. He had changed his hair and eye color but kept most of his own features and bone structure in his disguise, vainly hoping it would help win her heart. He was well aware that he was a handsome specimen.

The guards who had spread the news were almost as upset. One bared his teeth in a grimace and answered, “There was a lady scholar visiting from the capital. I don’t know if it’s related, but both her and the huntress are gone. We’re searching the grounds for them now.”

Another one bit out, “We were hoping the huntress was with you.”

It was Fenry who shifted suspiciously, asking in a voice just a tad too high, “The lady scholar was just looking for her friend. Maybe she went looking?”

Prince Feldan whirled on the shrinking coyote shifter. “What do you mean her friend?”

Fear and guilt warred on her face. She swallowed and said in a small voice, “She said her friend had gone missing. A greenling inventor. That she was supposed to protect her.”

The guards relaxed somewhat. “Maybe we’re overthinking it, then.”

The redcap Qzi decked the Guardsman who spoke across the face, bringing the tension back to the group. The shadowfell wrapped their tentacles around the furious redcap, who struggled and shouted, “When has she ever run from a fight? Or from a friend, huh?”

One of the guards held up his hands placatingly. “Relax, hunter, maybe they’re old lovers and have found a quiet place—”

It was Paloka who said, “She was scared.”

Prince Feldon’s eyes snapped to his niece in his sister’s arms. She was scenting the air.

Wiggling out of her mother’s arms, she trotted away. Stunned, the rest stared after her before following to the back of the keep, a shadowed spot in the walls.

Paloka took a deep breath in and nodded. “Yes. Scared and desperate and filled with grief.” She pointed up. “She climbed here.”

One of the guards scratched their head. “How do you know that, child? If she had, it would have been hours ago.”

Prince Feldan answered, “A dragon’s nose is better than any other when tracking a missing piece of their horde.” He trotted closer, noting the small hole in the wall that matched the tools she used to climb trees with ease, then turned to his niece. “Up for a hunt?”

Determination flared in her eyes while one of the guards called out, “You’re insane. It’s already nighttime. The beasts will ravage you.”

The redcap said with a dangerous edge to his tone, “Not if we ravage them, first.”

Prince Feldan’s sister-by-mating turned to the guards. “Go—tell his lordship that we’re on the hunt for both, and that she made it over the wall.” She turned to the shrinking coyote. “What else did you tell this toff?”

Her eyes distraught, Fenry bit her lip, slumping with guilt as she said in a small voice, “She… she wanted to know about the hunting routes and grounds. Was fascinated by the jewelbird clearings. Asked for a lock of my hair.”

The ground under their feet trembled with Feldan’s rage, but his sister-by-mating swiftly nodded and commanded, “Go tell his lordship. We’ll find her.”

Fenry bit her lip until it bled as she hurried off with the guard.

Then Vaanas grabbed her daughter, partially shifting to bring out her wings as she said, “You’ve got her scent, my little hound?”

Determination glinted in her daughter’s eyes as she nodded.

“Then over the wall we go. Come—grab those who cannot make it. We have a bitch to gut and a fairy to save.”

Flashbacks of that night as she crashed through the forest tightened Squirt’s throat. Just as that night, flashes of a white stag drew her forward, the path miraculously clear of beasts and bramble as she raced through the forest. East. East she went. She couldn’t swim, but surely, the Hunt would not guide her wrong.

No earth trees, no jewelbirds. If the bitch managed to recover herself enough to chase after Squirt, she likely knew enough to make it to the earth tree clearings.

One lost earth tree was bad enough.

The tree would be lost. Without the jewelbird to protect it, Squirt gave it a day, maybe two, before the tree was torn apart by ravaging beasts, exacerbating the problem they’d only just got a handle on—

No. She couldn’t think like that. These weren’t her people anymore. This wasn’t her problem.

Her heart cracked at the thought, but she shoved it from her mind, chastising herself for ever getting caught up in this mess. It was fine. They’d forget about her, like all fey did. The power of her name had lost much of its potency since the only one who knew it was the Sia-bitch.

It hadn’t been enough, though. She had hoped once no one knew her name that Sia-bitch’s power over her would fade and the life debt along with it. It only counted so long as the name remained true, and Sia-bitch had always been so damn possessive over every bit of Squirt, she’d likely never told anyone else her name.

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Even if it weakened the power she had over Squirt, she didn’t care, too caught up in the fantasy she’d woven for herself of Squirt being her fated pet.

Fated pet.

She wanted to scream.

Fated mates were one thing, but the woman was delusional enough to think that Squirt was fated to be her pet. Her toy. Her secret.

Another flash of white had her direction shifting northeast. Gritting her teeth, she raced forward.

She had finally escaped by praying to every god there was out there until one of them answered. On a whim that day, she had unlocked the cages in Sia-bitch’s menagerie before her first ever attempt to escape. Her wings were ruined when she was caught, but before the work could finish to remove them, beasts had crashed into the dungeon she’d been held in. In the chaos, she’d managed to slip away, a gryphon grabbing her and dropping her in the forests outside the capital.

Then, like now, she had raced through the forest chasing a white stag.

That night, she’d ended up killing her first feybeast and accidentally presenting the bloodied stone to her first jewelbird. It had taken a week of travel before she finally showed up on Stalf’s doorstep, close to death herself from the rot that had entered the wounds in her wings.

Until the pest, Stalf had remained the only one who had ever seen them. Her shame. Her failures. Forty years she’d served as that woman’s personal plaything, and her wings were just the reminder of that hell.

Never again.

Never again.

She’d rather die.

She slowed to a stop, gasping in air as she stared in disbelief at where the stag had brought her, wondering if it was a mistake.

A warm breeze wrapped around her.

She gritted her teeth and followed the stag into the treebed.

“They were definitely here,” Vaanas said to her mates, holding her hand over her face and wrinkling her nose at the spicy scent of blood and some kind of red pepper. “Is the blood your fairy’s?” she asked her daughter bluntly.

Her daughter, that primal rage in her young, bright blue eyes, shook her head. “She was angry here. Angry, and scared.”

Samuan gestured, “This way. There’s clearly a trail into the forest this way.”

They followed along, her mates keeping their eyes out for beasts that had strangely not made themselves known. The forest was quiet in a way that seemed wrong. Perhaps sensing the superior hunters of herself and her mates.

Dragons had a way of doing that.

The redcap, who had been antsy all night and palming his knives, suddenly took off in a rush.

And that’s when she saw it—the white stag.

The symbol of the Hunt guiding her followers to fertile lands rich with game.

Needing no further prompt, they raced after the stag, barely noting that the trail split into two.

The stag waited for Squirt at the top of the treebed, pawing the ground next to the dungeon door.

Squirt swallowed. “… you… mean for me to wait here, or…?”

In answer, the stag nibbled on the handle of the door before turning and fading from view, its ghostly body disappearing from this plane.

This was suicide. Entering a dungeon, alone, was suicide on a good day.

The golden door was etched with reliefs related to the Hunt. Stepping closer, dizzy with exhaustion and fear, Squirt traced the images with her fingers. The stag. The bow. The hounds. And the Hunt herself, wearing the cloak of the moon and shooting the stars into the night sky to guide her hunters home.

The Hunt had answered. Had protected her this long.

Sucking in a breath, she opened the door.

Feldan felt certain the Hunt was testing them. Several times, the white stag seemed to backtrack, taking them in crisscrossing zigzag patterns over the forest. Even quickstepping, he was never fast enough to catch the thing, never fast enough to catch more than a glimpse. His command over the earth and trees didn’t help as they should have, resisting his calls to trap the creature for him.

As the hours wore on, he slowed, an instinct nagging in his heart until he came to a full stop. The others raced past him after the stag, determined to catch it.

The very thing his magic was cautioning him against.

The group of hunters, his sister-by-mating, and her mates all disappeared into the depths of the forest. He kept track of them with his magic, stopping to instead listen. Breathing in deeply. Breathing out.

Closing his eyes.

“Your plans to return home cannot include her.”

“No, I will use my boon if I must. We need her here.”

Was he… going about this wrong?

His hand fisted the cloth over his aching heart. If he found her? What then? He could take her with him to his gilded cage, but…

But…

He would protect her, naturally. Whatever he needed to do to make sure… make sure… she was safe.

The epiphany hit him like a lightning bolt. He’d been attempting to capture the white stag. To capture it. To keep it. To keep her.

The way she had brokenly whispered, “I used to,” the longing in her voice driving him half mad, her destroyed wings, the way she lit up at the discovery of new feybeasts, the way she had scrambled through the treebed, navigating the twisting maze with ease—

The way his heart ached when he’d let her go on that perilous journey without him by her side.

The way she refused his name.

Refused his debts.

She… she didn’t belong to him. To any of them. Like the white stag leading their party further and further into the depths of the Wylds on a wild goose chase while the hunters tried to catch it.

Catch her.

Possess her.

He… he couldn’t have her, could he? The first fey he’d ever met that he had a connection to, the one he wanted to shower in gifts and affection until she never knew pain or fear ever again. He could do it. He could keep her absolutely safe no matter who came after her—

And she’d be miserable, wouldn’t she?

No more discovering new beasts. No more gleaming eyes as she sketched out the creatures in her notebook of scrapped leathers.

Every time she was most alive was when working on a problem. And if he took her away to that tower, that gilded cage he’d been forced into, there would be no problems to solve.

The Hunt had claimed her. And as the party began to move off into the distance, rapidly approaching the edge of what he could easily sense, he realized that she was, just as Bartos had named her, Athereon. The white stag. The Hunt’s bow. Her divine will.

To lock her in a cage, gilded or otherwise, would be to deny what she was. The stag lived in the forests. No fey had ever captured it, not in recorded memory.

He swallowed. “I… want to find her. Not to keep her. To protect her while she rests, and…” he choked on the next words. “… and let her go when she is ready.”

At first, nothing happened. Tears filled his eyes as he came to terms with what he was giving up. His chance at the same love his brother had had with his mates, the daydreams he’d had fantasizing about her in the palace, treated like the goddess she was. But that would never be. That wasn’t who she was, even if she wasn’t chosen by the Hunt. To be led about by courtiers and fawned over by servants, she who had refused his debts and refused his name, who refused all ties, anything that could get between her and freedom.

Her freedom.

“I… want to guarantee her freedom,” he said with a little more conviction. “I will guarantee it. I owe her that much.”

He did. He owed her so much more than he could say.

She really was too good for a fool like him. To have fallen for the one fey who needed the freedom he’d always longed for as much as she needed her next breath, the one who wouldn’t tie him down to his people like he’d hoped, to draw him back home. No. She wasn’t that. She never had been. She never would be.

Nothing was as he thought it would be. Instead of drawing him like a fly into a trap to banish thoughts of his freedom, he was forced to let her go, to grant her the freedom he’d always longed for, in order to secure her happiness first.

Always.

He cast his despondent eyes over the darkness of the forest when the stag stepped out from behind the tree, towering over him. The edges of it were wispy, ghostlike. He pawed at the ground, tossing his antlers and letting out a ghostly, baying cry.

Feldan dropped his eyes and bowed. The stag was never meant to be caught or captured.

The creature turned, letting out another ghostly cry that echoed in the silent forest, pawing the ground impatiently until Feldan straightened and started to follow.

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