Crown of Faeries

30 | Reviving Ashes

Mar Reeve drew his bow and arrow back farther when Scar took a step closer to him. My eyes were still watery as I looked around Weston's broad back to see the boy glaring down Scar.

"Don't make me." Mar Reeve warned and Scar snickered.

But raising her hands up in the air in surrender, Scar twisted her head towards the rest of her stunned people. Each remaining man and woman were staring at Max's body. "Come on!" Scar shouted and all faces turned towards her. "We'll get her next time."

I pulled away from Weston then, shock vibrating through me as I side stepped away from his opened arms. "So you're just going to give up?" I asked Scar and the woman looked my way and shrugged. "Even after all of this," I waved to the carnage around us all. "Even after all the struggles you put yourself through."

"Oh princess, please." Scar rolled her eyes. "You weren't nearly hard enough to find. You really think the Crown or any other faerie court could keep you from our eyes?" She snorted and Weston grabbed my elbow from behind me.

I yanked away from him and stormed up to Scar. "Well I'm free now." I growled as I came to a stop just inches away from her. "Why not just take me now?"

Scar seemed to ponder the question but then took a step back from me and ran her eyes down my body. "I see what you mean princess. But this hunt has lost its flare and I've lost interest in the moment."

"What?" I was stunned and completely dumbfounded. What did she mean by that? Was she mocking me? Taunting me?

But Scar never answered my questions.

With a single flick of her wrist and a subtle point of her index finger, the rest of the Hunter's started to slowly come together as a group behind Scar. Intimidating and gruesome looking, each man and woman alike bore wounds like no other. Burn marks up and down exposed arms and cheeks, sword slashes that tore the fabric of their leather protective suits, and some of the men limped as they held their used guns at their side. It looked like a defeat on the outside, but taking one look into their eyes and I knew they were still wanting to see me hang. And even on some faces, they looked at Scar as if her decision to save me had been a betrayal to their leader. But who exactly was the leader to the Hunter's? Who mandated their every move and drove them to be these killing machines?

Scar's pink tongue ran across her bottom lip as the last man came to stumble into the small formation built behind her. "You'll have about four days to find someplace clever before they send me back out with someone else who's sure to finish the job."

Shock bursted in my heart and filled up my chest. She was warning me! Warning me about what was to come. And by the looks of her other fellow Hunter's, they were just as equally shocked.

"Let's move." Scar said before I could say anything back to her. And just as quickly as they had appeared before, they were gone in a rush of silent footfalls and leaping movements.

_____________

"How much longer do we give her?" Evan asked me as Mar Reeve stood behind the older man to rub his shoulders.

"As much time as she needs." Weston growled from where he sat, against a tree just before the river bank's opening. His fingers danced among the vivid green blades of grass and plucked at the small jungle like leaves that sprouted from the trees roots. His hair was knotted from an hours nap and his Crown attire was torn and unraveling in all places. But I smiled as I viewed his strong brow knot in frustration when even the faerie prince couldn't tie together two strands of grass together perfectly.

We'd been standing here since morning broke across the lands. Freya had refused to go much further until she could give up Max's body to her people. She'd said the nymphs always did beautiful ceremonies for the dead and that Max deserved that more than being left to rot on the forest bottom.