Page 89 of What Fools These Immortals Be
“To protect humanity from the wiles of the fae.”
“And where in that does your duty extend to delivering a pair of fae to a wolf pack?”
I gape at him, shock giving way to a sharp slap of anger. “Are you joking?”
His head jerks up and for a split second, he looks just as astonished as I feel at my outburst. He recovers faster, though. “I am not. You should not have helped them.”
“Why not?”
“They do not require it. It is not your duty.”
“I wasn’t doing it out ofduty,” I all but spit, fairly vibrating with anger now, and not at all heeding the warning signs evident in the Huntsman’s posture. “And it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t on a job tonight. I wasn’t helping them as part of the Hunt.”
He stands then, movements too fluid, too fast, and my mouth goes dry in terror as his power expands to fill the room around us. I have forgotten exactly what he is, and this might be the moment I pay for it.
“While ever you carry my blessing, you act on behalf of the Hunt,” he says, prowling closer. “If the fae believe we are here to help them, then they will try to trick us. They will want more and more and more.”
I stand my ground. Fuck this. I don’t want to die—and there’s every chance he will kill me because I’ve never seen him as angry as this—but I’m not going out cowering. Not even before him.
“And what if they do? What, like we can’t say no?” I shake my head. “I helped connect two fae—one of whom has beenhelpingour efforts for years—with a pack that was specifically created to help people like them. And why shouldn’t I? It’sourfault the high fae got through. It’s our fault he hasn’t been caught and kicked back through the veil.”
The Huntsman narrows his eyes, and his glamour flows away all at once, leaving him blinking strange black eyes at me. “Is that what you think?”
“How is it not the truth?”
He stares at me for altogether too long, and everything in me is screaming, telling me to run, but I will face this. I know I am right—or on the path to being right. What he built wasn’t wrong when he built it. There was no cohesion to any of the supernatural creatures back then, not on a grand scale, at least.
Now? Now they’ve organised. Now they’re re-evaluating and fixing the things they put into place hundreds of years after the Huntsman began bringing us together.
And there’s a thought tickling at the back of my mind, one I don’t like at all. What if this was what he truly wanted? What if he wanted to be the only high fae able to freely pass from our world to the Otherworld and back again? What kind of power does that givehim?
He watches me like he is reading each thought laid bare on my face, and there is every chance that is the case. Maybe he needs to see it.
“I told you that there would be consequences for disobedience, Maurice,” he says, and his voice is soft in the same way it was at the beginning of our conversation: somewhere I cannot see, a blade is poised, ready to strike.
“You did.” My voice remains steady.
He doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t apologise, doesn’t attempt to explain himself. Why would he? He gave me the gift; it is his right to take it from me.
Still, I can’t help the scream that escapes me when his magic reaches inside and tears my blessing away. It did not hurt like this when he gave me my magic back, and I do not think itneedsto hurt like this now.
I think he is angry.
I think he is disappointed.
He pulls and pulls, draining all the fae magic from me—and with it, my own. I am on my knees, and I hear someone banging at the living room door, and sweat is pouring down my spine, but I am shivering, somehow feverish.
“You will survive this, Maurice,” the Huntsman says. There is nocarein him. No empathy. He stands over me and I do not look up. I have been effectively and sufficiently cowed. “You may rest here today. I do not mean to kill you. Tomorrow night, you leave. I care not for where you go, but you may not interact with the Hunt again.”
That invokes a different kind of pain, one that I am not expecting at all. I spent years without seeing the others before my return to London, of course.
And yet… The thought of not beingallowedto see them chafes, but we both know I will obey because even though I am not bound to the Hunt any longer, there is an implicit threat behind the Huntsman’s words.
He can still kill me, but more importantly, he can still tear his blessing away from someone else.
The Huntsman walks past me without another word, and I hear the door open behind me, hear the cry Grant lets out. I flinch when he lays a hand on my back, and he quickly removes it, murmuring to me, but I’m not listening.
I’m listening to the low vibration of Vlad’s voice from the hall. I can’t focus on the words. Everything hurts too much.
