❝ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐌𝐄,
𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄. ❞
Saskia Vrana knows what to do when the Nights of Smoke come: Close the windows and doors. Don't look out into the darkness. Sacrifice and pray. And never dare to leave the co...
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HOW THE SHADOWS FEASTS vii. of black dogs and pale horses
the fourth night
❅ ❅ ❅
THE HORSE APPROACHING THE CONVENT WAS PALE AS DEATH.
It seemed to melt with the night and the glistening snow flying beneath its hooves. From its nostrils streamed the mist that covered the woods in its eerie shroud, and at its feet, a hundred eyes like embers shone from the faces of sable hounds. Their howling muzzles were blazing, spitting saliva like liquid fire while they followed the wrathful call of a hunting horn.
The one that clearly had to belong to their blue-eyed master holding his deadly weapon high that could rip apart body and soul alike.
With the sound mingled the chime of bells, promising a legion of beasts lurking in the dark behind: The elegy of the Wild Hunt.
Saskia froze.
They are coming for me. The inevitable death waiting since she heard that prophecy finally caught up with her.
"Perhta, keep me—" but the arrow prayer died away unfinished.
Their mistress would not care to keep in her sheltering light what belonged to the darkness. Like the beasts of the Wolf Nights, Saskia was only fit to crawl in Perhta's shadows.
She knew she should've run back inside as fast as she could. But neither her feet nor her mind obeyed her screaming instincts.
Eyes wide and heart jumping, Saskia waited for this dead rider to reach her and pierce her heart and soul finally.
However, the instant the flames circling the convent illuminated him, the cruel imagery disappeared. Shadows burned away by a sacred light. Or a hallucination slain by truth?
There, from the misty night, emerged Prince Anyan von Jakona. The stranger, almost as pale as his horse himself, presented a slightly unsettling sight, but there was no horn or weapon in his hand, his mount breathed warm air, and the black dogs following did so calmly.
They looked all too similar to the demonic hounds that were there before and the one that broke into the convent. However, they were clearly no infernal creatures now.
Where a wild hunter had been a lonely pilgrim stood.
"Isn't it late to seek Perhta's advice now, lord?" Saskia called out to him, swallowing tears and the dull feeling of dread while all she wanted to do was scream into the night to bring Katinka back.
How she managed to hold together the shattered pieces of herself, she did not know—but they pierced her hands nevertheless.
Anyan slid off the back of his horse but stayed where he was not crossing the circle. "You know that's not what brought me here, Sister."
