Nate glanced at Gabriel, then at Scarlet. “I don’t know. Just…just give her a minute.”
Silence.
No ragged breathing.
No shuffling.
No pacing.
Just silence.
Then, from the far corner of the kitchen, came a guttural sound. The kind of noise that signified defeat and unbearable pain.
Gabriel and Nate turned their attention to Tristan in the corner. Dressed in all black, with Scarlet’s blood all over his hands, Tristan’s face contorted in pain.
“She’s gone.” Tristan choked on the words as he leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. “I just lost her…I can’t feel her anymore.” His eyes looked hollow.
Gabriel’s soul fell to the ground, followed by his heart, and his every breath. If Tristan no longer felt Scarlet, that meant….
Numb all over, Gabriel looked at the lifeless hand of the girl he loved, wrapped in his palm for safe-keeping.
Scarlet was dead.
4
A spooked flock of birds darted into the sky causing Tristan to pause on his horse. He didn’t normally travel to the earl’s eastern woods, but when he did, he kept a careful guard up.
The earl’s region was vast and consisted of two great forests.
The western forest was lush and beautiful, known for its sparkling rivers and constant village traffic.
But the eastern forest was dark, thick, and known for thieves and bloodshed. Tristan didn’t enjoy traveling to the eastern lands, but it was the only place he could hunt without interference from his father—the earl.
Tristan did not need the food, but the villagers did. And, contrary to his father’s beliefs, Tristan felt everyone deserved to eat. Even the poor.
Large game was hard to come by in either forest and since the earl had declared both woodlands noble land, the villagers were no longer able to hunt for themselves. They were forced to purchase meat from the earl directly, which made the earl more wealthy and the villagers more poor.
Here in the dark woods, Tristan could hunt and deliver his kill to the villagers without being discovered. If his father found out he was feeding villagers with game from his own land, well. It would not be pleasant.
The earl was not known for his generosity.
The flapping birds above him had Tristan on alert.
He gently pulled on the reigns of his steed and searched the area around him when he heard a gasp. Small and faint, it had come from the trees to his right. He scanned the trees and watched three figures emerge in the distance, closing in on something.
Tristan maneuvered his horse into the shadows so as to spy on whatever was playing out before him. Something about the gasp he’d heard kept his eyes trained on the three men.
“Here, here lovely. Come out, come out….” The voice of one of the men rang through the trees. Tristan watched as they crept toward the area on his right.
“There is nowhere to run, lovely. Come out and we shall be nice,” a second man said.
Lovely? Tristan’s brow furrowed in confusion. What could possibly be lovely in the eastern woods? What were these men hunting?
Tristan looked about the area, searching for their prey, and his eyes found a swath of clothing peeking out from behind a large tree trunk.
Someone was hiding. Someone wearing a long cloak. Someone “lovely”….
Tristan’s heart began to pound.
The girl thief. The one who had tried to steal his deer over six months ago. It hadto be her. What other lovely creature had ever roamed these woods?
He watched in horror as the three men inched closer to her hiding spot, now only yards away.
Were the men planning to steal from her?
Possibly.
But their body language, and the venom that dripped from the mouth of the speakers, told Tristan otherwise. These were not just hungry thieves in the forest. These were true villains.
Tristan silently dismounted his horse, withdrew an arrow from his pack, and lined it up against his bow.
As he contemplated which villain to take out first, he heard a rustling from the girl’s hiding spot and watched as she came out from behind the tree with an arrow drawn. She pointed directly at the man closest to her.
“I doubt you have any intention of being nice,” she said with a steady voice, “so why don’t we skip the lies and go straight to the part where I pierce your heart with my arrow?”
The men stopped moving, but seemed unafraid.
“Lovely,” the closest man said, his jagged yellow teeth showing through an evil smile, “you cannot kill us all. You have one arrow drawn and retrieving a second would take more time than we would need to capture you.”
“Then I suggest you decide which one of you wants to die first.” She lifted her bow, drawing her arrow back farther. “I might not have time to draw another arrow, but the knife in my belt is easy to retrieve and your throat looks like it needs a good slashing.”
Tristan was stunned. The girl knew she was outnumbered and had little chance of winning, but she still planned to fight. Which was brave.
And stupid.
The jagged-toothed man took a step forward, holding up a deadly knife of his own. “I’m afraid I must call your bluff, lovely.”
“So be it.” The girl thief let her arrow fly and chaos erupted.
Her arrow flew straight, but her target jumped away. The arrow missed his heart and sliced his upper shoulder instead.
The girl gave no pause as she pulled the knife from her belt and met her second attacker head-on, slicing into his gut with the sharp blade.
Readjusting his bow, Tristan tried to get a clean shot, but the girl thief was too swift with her movements. She fought fearlessly, stabbing her opponents without hesitation and evading their attacks with swift, careful movements.
She was a skilled fighter, no doubt. But she was also in the way.
Tristan watched the fight with his arrow ready, but the girl kept jumping into his line of sight.
She fought, she jabbed, she darted out of reach, but one of her attackers twisted her elbow back and quickly disarmed her.
It was now or never.
Tristan moved from behind the cluster of trees, his bow drawn on the thug who held her arm at an unnatural angle behind her back. “Let her go.”
The girl glanced at him, eyes filling with recognition, then returned her attention to the thug who had entrapped her. Taking advantage of the distraction Tristan had provided, she elbowed her thug in the gut with her free arm and wriggled out of his grasp. Wasting no time, she drew her own arrow and pointed at the second thug.