Hearts in High Places

Prologue: 6 Years Ago

Piper

You seem to care for your sister more than your duties. If you refuse to do as you're told, then you have no place here. My grandmother's cold words echoed in my mind as I crouched in the bushes. Those words were to be accepted without a fight but I fled to the woods under the guise of hunting. The one reason I could refuse my grandmother's commands was if they promised harm to my sister, Ameli. She was my anchor, my patience, and my peace. I can't stand watching her suffer, her tears like blades of ice in my heart. Grandmother would never sully her hands by forgiving us herself, instead she would have my mother or me do the dirty work. I had to have a purpose or I wouldn't have a place. The panic in my gut did not ease when I picked up the deer trail, nor when I found their herd. I drew the string to my chest as my father's words filled my head, Let it surprise you. I held that position, aiming carefully at a young doe grazing at the edge of the clearing. I held until my grip strength failed and the arrow was released. Hungry howls pierced the evening air sending the herd scattering into the deeper reaches of the forest. I cursed vividly as my arrow thunked into the trunk of a pine tree mere inches from the doe.

I retrieved my arrow from the tree and heard the howling again. I know that sound, they were hunting. It sounded like they were near the old fort. I was reassured that Ameli was at the cottage and not in her hideout right now. It was odd though, most game animals avoided the old fort and the wolves have learned to avoid our cottage entirely after we killed so many of them. Curiosity got the better of me and I made my way to the fort, maybe it was a game animal and I could snatch it from them. Unfortunately, when I arrived it was neither deer nor boar that was being circled but a boy around my age trapped in a crumbling spire of the abandoned fort. He did not scream or cry as I would expect normal children to do, as Ameli would, but rather stared on with a look of acceptance.

The boy snagged my attention as much as he did the hungry wolves below. I wasn't allowed to associate with other children when we went to the city, making me all the more curious about them. I knew that I should have left him to his fate and made sure he perished after the wolves were done, but something about him made me hesitate. My grandmother would be furious if I allowed a trespasser to survive but I had never killed anyone and he was currently blameless.

I crouched in the hedges at the edge of the clearing and prepared my knife and my bow. Four scaled wolves circled the crumbling structure. They were creatures with the front half of a four-eared wolf, the hind legs and tail of a drake, and were three times the size of a war horse. Their ribs were visible even with the summer abundance and their howls were hungry and agonized. The alpha was apparent, snapping at the foolish pups for attempting to climb the decaying stairs.

I readied an arrow. My bow aimed for the alpha, if I took him down the rest would be easy to pick off when they went wild. The scaled wolf rounded the corner into sight again and I loosed the arrow, my breath with it. Feathers sprouted from the alpha's eye as he dropped with a cloud of dust. The remaining three wolves stopped, staring at their dead leader, before erupting in howls of anger. Their ears flicked and rotated to detect my heartbeat and breathing, but what gave me away was the sound of me vaulting up the nearest tree to get a higher vantage point.

The pine creaked as I landed in a crouch on a high branch that extended over the fort. My father's death flashed in my vision for a moment but I shook the grief from my mind focusing instead on the wolves attacking the base of the pine. Two wolves were battering the tree's trunk taking huge chunks of wood and bark from its base. The third wolf jumped at me from below, its jaws snapping shut mere inches from my perch. I straddled the branch and aimed at the wolf, firing an arrow point blank into the awaiting wolf's maw. The two remaining wolves knocked out the final piece of the trunk sending the pine creaking towards the ground.