Page 23 of Consumed
We were still lying there, trembling with the sin and the rightness of it, when I heard a faint call on the horizon. Voices. Many of them.
“The Wild Hunt,” I breathed.
Eoin sat up beside me, losing a shaky breath. His wide eyes scanned the treeline that led down the rolling slope toward the village.
“What have I done?” he whispered.
I looked at his face in the moonlight, unable to tell if our sacred act was the abomination, or calling hunters to my home to spill my blood.
The possibility of the former couldn’t sting me now.
In a minute more, neither would matter.
Not bothering to fix the straps of my gown, I stood up. The freshly blossomed grass was waxy and cool beneath my bare feet.
“Come.” I extended a hand to Eoin, hauling him up.
As the glaze of lust in his eyes began to sober with fear, I squeezed his hand, pressing myself against his front.
“The only way out is forward,” I said, my voice calm and quiet, as though the pricks of torchlight appearing between the trees were worlds away. A tear snaked down my cheek. I caught the droplet in my free hand, curling my fist around it. I pressed the sparkling gemstone into Eoin’s calloused palm and closed his fingers around it.
“What more have you to lose?” I kissed his knuckles, peering up at him with a smile that offered everything.
There was something broken and vulnerable that latched onto my offer—rewarding my long, suffering patience. Eoin did not shy away from my unblinking gaze. He gazed down at the tear, eyes flickering toward the approaching hunters.
He knew as well as I what they would do to someone who had shared suchan act with a creature like me.
He closed his hand around the gem firmly, his rough palm locked against mine with the other. I squeezed his hand, rising on my tiptoes to brush my lips against his.
“You won’t leave me?” His question was a soft breath against my skin.
“Never,” I whispered.
His steps followed in stride with mine, scarcely audible on the forest floor, allowing me to lead him deeper into the forest, where we could at last make an everlasting home together—walking right past the brambles stripped of their deep purple berries, only a few left dangling.
My heart swelled as the trees latticed above us, slowly blotting out the silvery moon overhead. I had always known Eoin was different. He would be far better than the other men before him, wouldn’t be afraid the way they’d been when my gift made him new and incorruptible.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Andfinally, he would be home with me.
Epilogue
THE WILD HUNT
Torchlight flickered in the biting chill of the winter air. Desmond’s arm strained as he held his torch aloft, desperate to shed illumination on the snow-dusted branches. As a youth, Desmond had spent many summers in the Limerick woods, taking turns hiding between the trees and mocking battles with wooden swords, pretending himself a mighty warrior. He’d always considered himself at home in these sacred places where nature outnumbered man.
But these woods loomed around their riding party with a quiet that seemed too encompassing.
“You hear that?” he asked, glancing at the riders on his left.
The others had hunted under Druid Chereth for many years more than he, their faces flinty and marred by scars. Desmond already bore a weak left shoulder from the banshee they’d eliminated from Donegal Castle grounds last month. He knew his days were numbered toward a warrior’s death—all of them were.
“I hear nothing,” one replied gruffly.
Desmond nodded, his brow furrowing as he shifted in his saddle. “Exactly. It’swrong, somehow. Like the forest is—”
He bit off the words as though he might summon his very suspicion.
