What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(27)

The sky was still dark, and I had no sense of time or whether it was truly night now. I could have slept for minutes or hours, but all I knew was, it hadn’t been enough. I waited, tempted to ask him why he’d scared the life out of me as the silence spread and nothing happened. I was about to do just that when I heard it finally.

The thudding of hooves striking against the earth, muffled by the foliage covering the ground and the lack of a hard surface for the horses’ shoes to tap against as they moved. Whoever rode kept their pace slow and steady, and I spun to look up through the tree roots above our heads.

There was only darkness, only the stillness of the night in front of my face. I watched, pressing my hand tighter against my mouth as I squinted, pressing my body into the dirt in front of me, making myself smaller and for once being grateful for my stained, lackluster dress as it blended in with the rotting woods.

For once, being poor and not able to afford a new dress seemed to work to my advantage.

I stopped breathing the moment the first hoof stepped into view, gleaming silver as if it created its own light and sparkled in the pitch black. Where there would have been hair on any normal horse, the smooth surface of bone was glossy and polished as it lifted and fell in its next step. The entire body was made of bones, a skeleton of an animal that was no longer alive.

And yet it moved through the night, step by step, and more followed in its wake once it had passed. I lifted my gaze to the spectral form of the man who rode it. He seemed to glow, a twisting mass of white and black shadows. Dark hair fell just past his shoulders, floating off them as if it could defy gravity. It faded into the inky, dark air, bleeding outward and becoming part of the shadows themselves.

His eyes shone with a shock of white, all traces of color missing from them as a magical haze enveloped him. His shoulders were broad, encased in a fur cloak that would have made the wealthiest of men in Mistfell jealous. Feathers were braided into the dark locks of his hair, shaking with every one of the skeletal horse’s heavy footfalls.

The only color in the swirling tendrils of shadows, which seemed to compose his entire being, was the shock of icy blue tattoo on his face. It stretched down the center of his forehead, severing his face in half and arching over the bridge of his nose before the glowing ink separated and curved across each of his cheekbones.

Even though there was nothing solid to his appearance, he was devastating. A translucent being that felt Other in a way I’d never dreamed of seeing.

He moved past us, a line of other horsemen following at his back on their own skeletal steeds. They each varied in appearance—different hairstyles, a different blend of shadows and light that very nearly resembled a person—but each bore that glowing blue mark on their face.

I knew without a doubt who they were: the force that our legends told would be the first to hunt down those marked by the Fae.

The Wild Hunt.

I turned to look forward, watching in horror as the man at the front of the line pulled on the reins and halted his steed. He spun quickly, his head and shoulders twisting, to stare at the back of the line. That shock of white eyes aimed toward me, feeling for just a moment as if he not only saw me, but saw straight through me to the core of everything I’d become. The burning on my neck intensified, throbbing with the cold heat of a warning.

Spinning to lean my back into the earth once more, I pulled my cloak tightly around my head and neck and hoped to suppress the feeling that lit me aflame from the inside.

The thump of a man dismounting carried through the woods, the sound echoing off the trees around us. I pressed my hand tighter against my mouth and fought back the panicked breaths that filled my lungs, while my heart felt like it drummed against my chest.

I was so certain he could hear it, positive that the creature who trudged through the underbrush at his feet sensed the pounding blood in my veins.

I waited, counting the breaths between each footstep. There were too many, too long a pause between each scuff of his foot against the ground. Either he meant to torment his prey, or he genuinely wasn’t certain where we might be hiding. I didn’t dare to hope for the latter.

Already prepared to offer my cooperation for Brann’s life, I reached over to grasp his hand in mine. Desperate to feel the warmth of my brother’s hand against mine for one more moment before all else was lost, I hated the chill that had swept over his skin.

Another step came, bringing the spectral being closer, until I wasn’t certain he wasn’t a ghost sent from the underworld to punish me for attempting to flee.

The last step came directly above our heads, and the ground shifted with his weight. Clumps of dirt rained down, falling between the tree roots that concealed us until my cloak and hair filled with them.

We held perfectly still, waiting with bated breath for the moment he reached through the roots and tore us free from our hiding place.

I sucked in a breath of air, panic seizing my lungs as the image filled my head. Brann spun to stare at me, a silent reprimand for the too-loud noise, but the howl of a hound in the distance had covered the gasp I’d stolen at the worst possible moment.

The wind carried the sound of the hounds who’d found their prey, and guilt immediately claimed my body in a trembling embrace.

As the leader of the Wild Hunt mounted his horse and the entire group of them rode off into the distance, all I could feel was gratitude that it hadn’t been me the hounds scented out. That I would live to hide another day, even when it meant that someone else hadn’t been so fortunate.