The Great Hunt (Eurona Duology, #1)(16)
She swallowed hard.
“Thank you for what you said in there, Vixie. You don’t know what it means to me.”
“I know you’re trying to be strong, and all of that queenly nonsense, but I am angry enough for both of us. I refuse to speak to him.”
Aerity choked back a laugh and took her passionate sister in her arms again. “Please don’t hold on to your anger too long.”
Vixie sniffed and looked up. “You really will do it, won’t you? You’ll marry a complete stranger.”
Aerity’s stomach turned like a rough gale. She shut her eyes. “I don’t want to,” she admitted. “But, aye. I will. I want this beast dead. I have to hope for the best, Vix.”
When Aerity opened her eyes she found Vixie studying her.
“You will make a good queen someday,” the girl said softly.
This was the thing that finally brought Aerity’s emotions to the surface, causing her to fight for breath. She didn’t feel like a future queen, and definitely not a future wife. She felt like a girl who had just lost something important. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“Aye. Anything for you.”
Chapter
7
Most males in Lochlanach focused on fishing, crabbing, and harvesting shellfish. Brothers Paxton and Tiern Seabolt were two of the few who focused on land animals. Hunting. The lands of Lochlanach were best for growing crops, not raising livestock, so meat such as poultry, pork, and beef were in low supply at any given time. Only the wealthiest merchants could afford to raise animals for personal consumption.
In winter months when meat was scarce, the village turned to the Seabolt brothers. They kept a lean-to in the nearby forest with freshly salted venison and sold it as cheaply as they could, barely making a profit, not wanting anyone to go hungry.
Even though they themselves were nearly always hungry.
It didn’t used to be that way. Before their father’s knees went out two years ago, he’d been a successful deep sea fisherman. They’d lived comfortably on an acre with a stream, eating fish as thick and meaty as beefsteaks. Now they were crammed within one of the row houses of the village, lucky to salvage bits of leftover venison jerky.
Seventeen-year-old Tiern took their family’s fall in stride, as good-natured as ever. But Paxton, two years his senior, had turned even angrier and more withdrawn than usual. Tiern suspected there was more to Paxton’s issues, secrets that Tiern had been sheltered from and reasons his older brother seemed to carry the weight of the world. But Pax was a private person, even among the ones he loved.
The fall morning was crisp as Tiern and Paxton made their way through the wooded brush with stealth, bows at the ready. For tall boys wading through fallen leaves, they scarcely made a sound. Paxton could go hours without talking. Hours of listening to sounds of the forest, staring through leaves and branches for signs of movement.
Tiern could do it as well, but he didn’t relish it the way Paxton seemed to. Inside, Tiern was bored and restless. He wished a bloody deer would show itself already so they could skin it, drain it, hang it, and have their feet up in front of the fire before the curfew. He hated the cold evenings. Why couldn’t it be summer year-round?
They found a ridge of decaying logs and nestled themselves side by side, one brother facing each direction. And they waited.
After a while with no sign of anything but songbirds flying south, Tiern glanced at Paxton from the corner of his eye. Pax was eyeing the forest in earnest.
Paxton’s brown hair was wild with waves, and almost long enough to tie back with a strip of leather. Tiern didn’t know how he could stand to have it in his face like that. His own hair was the same dark brown shade, but straight. He kept it pulled back neatly at the nape of his neck. More rugged. More muscular. More mysterious. That was Pax.
Tiern could make girls laugh, and flattered them with compliments. They felt comfortable in his presence. Ironically, they flocked to Paxton for just the opposite reason. His abrasiveness was a challenge that kept girls on edge. Paxton never took the time to notice anything, but a single moment of eye contact with a girl could make her cheeks flush. No words necessary. Tiern wanted to laugh at the backwardness, at how blushing lasses gravitated toward his older brother who couldn’t be arsed to give them a lick of his attention.
Tiern saw movement and tore his gaze from his brother. His eyes met the trees just in time. A brown blur moved twenty yards away. All of Tiern’s fidgeting and boredom dissolved. For one shade of a second he wondered if it might be the great beast, but he knew it never came out during daylight hours. No, the animal’s form materialized into a gentle beast, nothing to fear.
Never taking his eyes from the deer, he gently nudged Paxton before ever so slowly nocking his arrow to his bow and lifting it. Aiming. Waiting for the perfect shot.
He could feel his brother’s silent anticipation next to him.
They were different in so many ways, but in these moments they were the same—joined by the thrill of the hunt.
Tiern’s heart pumped hard and the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh through his ears became a soothing mantra. This feeling. This rush made the boredom of waiting worthwhile.
Just as the doe stepped into the clearing, making for a perfect shot, Paxton’s fingers tightened on Tiern’s shoulder and his eyes flicked to the side.