Another gust of wind sweeps over me, and this time ash and feathers scatter. A single tattered feather drifts to the ground at my feet.
I pick it up. Warmth pulses from it, sizzling against my palm.
How strange…
The bottom of the feather is razor sharp and it nicks me. I shake my hand. It’s just a graze.
I tuck the feather into my belt and step carefully among the fractured pillars. The air is colder here, heavier. Moonlight washes over the crumbling marble, highlighting the jagged edges like the ribs of some ancient beast.
The wind stirs again.
Instinct fires before thought. I nock another arrow, spin toward the sound, lift the point to the trees, and release.
This time the shot hits.
A strangled breath breaks through the dark. He crashes from the treetops, branches snapping under his weight, wings flaring uselessly as he falls. He hits the stone floor of the temple ruins with a brutal thud.
Silence swallows the forest.
My heart slams against my ribs. He lies sprawled among the broken dais. The pale light washes over his bare skin, over the faint glow of the arrow shaft embedded in the center of his chest.
I swallow.
With eyes closed and body still, he appears to be dead.
And the part of me that should feel victory feels something unsteady instead. Something tight and wrong and unwanted.
Sliding the dagger out of my belt, I step closer.
Even his wings are unmoving, but there seems to be no blood. Not a drop. The wound appears clean. Dry.
Do cursed beings bleed? I’m not sure. The monsters I’ve always hunted bled.
I edge in until I’m standing over him.
Dagger raised, I lean in, needing to check. Needing to be sure the Cursed One is truly gone. That this kill, which feels too easy, isn’t simply a trick, so I reach out my hand?—
His eyes shoot open.
My fingers touch his chest.
“No…” he hisses.
A sharp pain spears through the center of my breasts. A blinding white light erupts between us, stealing away the darkness and swallowing both of us, the forest,everything,whole.
Chapter Three
The whiteness lingers, like a curtain drawn over the world, and then it begins to fade. Slowly, agonizingly, I open my eyes and face the tree’s canopy. I’ve somehow ended on my back, on top of the cold, fractured stone. My chest throbs, the pain sharp and intense, as ifIhad been the one shot. My hand flies to the spot, and heat sears beneath my fingers.
Sitting up, I see him, the Cursed One, who is also shaking himself awake.
My breath catches in my throat. The arrow that pierced him and should have killed him lies harmlessly a few inches away. He should be dead, or at least badly wounded. But there is no gash. Still no blood. Nothing.
Except for gold.
Veins of golden light radiate outward from the exact center of his chest, right where the arrow had struck. They pulse faintly, rhythmically, alive with a warmth that seems to beat in time with my own heart.
My fingers tug at my tunic, and when I peek down, I see the same glowing pattern imprinted between my breasts.