Page 158 of Promise of Darkness
“You made a reckless decision today, and I don’t know how to even explain how dangerous it was. And here you are with those two marks upon your hand, and all I can see are the consequences. All I can see is myself losing you.”
“We had no other choice—”
“There are always other choices,” he snarls. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“No, I don’t!” I shoot back. “All you’ve done is yell at me. I know the Old Ones were locked away, but the Erlking is the Master of the Wild Hunt. He’s dangerous, but he’s not—”
“You were not born into a world where the Old Ones walk the nights. You’ve never had to bar your windows or blow out all the candles in your home because the Wild Hunt is howling through the trees and it’s hungry. You think he’s benevolent? He takes what he wants, Vi, and you’re cursed lucky he didn’t decide he wanted you. Yet.”
I rub at the marks on my hand. “He owesmetwo boons.”
“Does that make you feel safer?” Thiago sinks into the water with malevolent grace. “If you use those marks, you risk capturing his attention. I’m sure he was distracted by the sight of Blaedwyn, but you’re beautiful, powerful, and stubborn. All things that rouse his predatory instincts. I can only pray he’ll be distracted long enough to forget you.”
It makes me swallow.
I know what the stories say about the Erlking.
He lives in his own realm—side by side with the mortal realm—and he sends forth his hunt every full moon. Nothing is safe. Sometimes you’re prey, designed for his bow and his sword. Or sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’re a distraction. Offer him mead, offer him a dance, or offer him your virtue. It’s all the same to him. A night of bedsport and laughter, and you might wake and consider yourself lucky. Male, female, it doesn’t matter. He left behind a trail of broken hearts and no doubt dozens of bastard offspring.
It was only the very rare few that he stole.
And they were never seen again.
Some say time moves differently in their realm, and so mere hours have passed in relation to dozens of years here. Some say, if you drank his mead or his wine, you were bound to stay in his world forever. Or some simply say that he never let them go.
Nobody really knows the answer to that.
Thiago continues, “The Old Ones were locked away for good reason, Vi. You’ve never looked across a battlefield and seen your own people taken to be slaves to the Horned One. Or worse, food. You’ve never kissed the floor at the Mother of Night’s feet and hoped she couldn’t sense your dissent. You’ve never risked the seas, wondering if the Father of Storms and his saltkissed will drag your ship under.
“They were creatures who tapped into the raw, elemental power of the ley lines. With all that power, they were well-nigh invincible. They were cruel, and rapacious, and inhuman. They don’t think like we do. They have no empathy, no ability to see us as anything beyond livestock. They played with us like pawns, and when the Horned One sent the Unseelie south to conquer our peoples, the only option we had was war. Why do you think we locked them away? The entire Seelie Alliance rode as one, and we couldn’t kill evenoneof them. The only option we had was to trick them into the circles and lock them away. It took years of planning to simultaneously lure them into that trap, and you just blithely released the Erlking!”
“Would you have rather died?” I snap. “Because that was our only other option.”
“Yes!”
The word echoes around the chamber, ricocheting like a slap to the face. My mouth drops open.
“What?”
He tips his chin up proudly. “You weren’t there, Iskvien. You don’t know what it was like.”
Not Princess. Not Vi. But my full name.
It’s the first time I think he’s ever called me that, and though I would have preferred it several months ago, now it feel like a rejection.
“I risked everything I had to trap them all those years ago. So the cost of my life would have been a small blessing to keep them contained.”
“But…. It’s only one of them,” I whisper, rubbing at the marks. “We can trap him again. Or—”
“Kill him? Blaedwyn drove the Sword of Mourning—a weapon forged with all the power of the Alliance—directly into his chest, and it merely stunned him.” Thiago forges through the water. “I’m the most dangerous male in the south, and I don’t think I can stop him, Vi. If he comes for you, then I will do what I can. But our best hope is distraction. I don’t want to lose you.”
And he’s afraid he might.
It finally sinks in.
All I’ve ever heard are stories. He’s right. I don’t know what it was like. They’re merely legends to me. But if Thiago—with all his power, all his might—doubts he can keep me safe, then perhaps he’s right.
Perhaps they are best left alone.
