Chapter 12

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Merritt snapped the moment the carriage door slammed shut.

Remis responded only by banging his hand against the carriage wall. “Go, go, go!” There was a crack of the reins and they lurched into motion. No matter that they moved at a steady trot it didn’t feel fast enough. It didn’t soothe the fire that licked through his veins.

His entire body had broken out in a sweat and he knew his cheeks were flushed if the heat that scorched his face was any indication. The windowpane was cool against his skin as he pressed himself to it and watched as the warlord’s home grew farther and farther away. Yet the terrible need to run didn’t settle.

“What is happening?” Percy asked.

Remis held up a hand to silence their questions, not able to turn himself away from watching for any sign that they were being followed. He couldn’t talk. He could hardly breathe. Mostly, he couldn’t think. The huntress mark was ablaze upon his skin. Every part of him shook with adrenaline and it took everything within him to stay seated.

A shape moved at the end of the road. He pressed himself harder against the window as if that might help him see clearer. His breath fogged up the glass. Fuck. With one frantic swipe, he cleared it away and held his next exhale tight in his lungs.

It was undeniable now, as the moonlight poured down over Olden, there was the shape of a woman standing in the middle of the road. The wind kicked her cloak behind her and dark strands cut across her face. From here, he couldn’t make out any of her features, but he felt her stare and knew that she was watching him.

What would it take for her to reach them now? A flick of her wrist? There was no telling what sort of witch she might be and he was no doubt lacking in his knowledge on the subject. The emperor had all but cleared the shelves of any sort of literature regarding the witches. Anything he did know was lore passed on in fragmented bits of stories and gossip or from the crumbling pages of his late mother’s century-old books. How much of that was to be believed? It was painfully clear that what he’d heard about being marked by a witch was true. Even if he wanted to deny it or hope it wasn’t real, he certainly couldn’t now.

Remis stared down the road until the witch’s dark form eventually turned back toward the warlord’s manor. What was she doing there? Was Warlord Vigor in possession of witches? The physician certainly appeared to be one, though it would be incredibly stupid of her to admit to it.

Exhaling, he eased back into his seat. His eyes closed as he counted his breaths until they became even, and the terrible heat of the mark receded once more. When he blinked his eyes open both his friends stared at him. Though Percy had opened his book in his lap, his finger pointed to whatever line he’d begun to read, and Merritt’s hands were lifted as though he’d been examining them moments before.

“I should explain,” Remis said.

Merritt scoffed.

He resented the way his hands trembled as he began pulling at the wrap that covered his hand. Both Merritt and Percy leaned forward, eyes following his movements. Remis held his hand palm down, exhaling a shaky breath when he could see the pale color of his skin. Slowly, he turned his hand over.

The eye stared back at him. Raised like a scar, the skin was redder than he remembered it. As though it was irritated from his close encounter with the witch. Looking down at the mark was nearly as unnerving as looking the witch herself in the face. Whatever the magic was, one that was far older than that of the elemental magic he leached from the world, it thrummed in time with his pulse. Where the elemental magic of mages could be molded and shaped without consequence, this power felt as though it was clawing its way deeper and deeper inside him, ready and wanting to take from him in the same way it gave to him.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at.” Merritt leaned closer. “Did you lose a bet? Someone carved your hand up?”

Remis shook his head. He dared to look up. Where Merritt was confused and blissfully unaware, Percy had paled.

Percy slammed his book shut and one hand covered his mouth as he spoke behind it. “Please tell me that is not what I think it is.”

“What do you think it is?” Merritt looked between his friends and frowned.

He closed his hand into a fist, hiding the mark, then picked up the fabric to re-wrap it. He couldn’t look at it any longer. “I certainly don’t know why or how, and if it wasn’t for the supernatural way it feels and seemingly communicates with me, I would find a reason to call it something else, but it’s a witch”s branding, a warning that I’m being hunted.”

“As in the brand the Emperor Grandith once wore?” Merritt blinked slowly, thoughts churning behind those bright blue eyes.

Remis chewed the back of his bottom lip and nodded. “It’s only speculated that he was hunted before he became the hunter.”

“I think we can all agree it’s better to be the predator than the prey,” Percy whispered, still wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

”But it communicates with you? How? It’s just a scar.” Merritt tilted his frame away. As far as Remis knew, it wasn’t contagious, but his friend shied away as though he might be hunted next.

“It’s my own voice, my own thoughts, but louder…more demanding. It burns through my body.” He was stumbling over his words like a nervous child. “I-I don’t know. One minute I’m getting my shoulder fixed up, the next my mind is screaming at me to run. It’s an overwhelming instinct.”

“We are running from a witch.” Percy’s eyes glazed over as he murmured to himself and seemingly fell into his own thoughts.

Remis worked in the silence that followed, tying up the fabric again. His friends were taking this remarkably well. They weren’t throwing themselves out of the carriage to get away from him or shrieking uncontrollably, so that must be a good sign. Perhaps he had overreacted, and this wasn’t as bad as he originally thought it would be.

“She’s going to kill you,” Percy looked at Remis as though he was a ghost. “Fuck your father for sending you through the Deadwoods, but this…this is what kills you. I’m so sorry, friend.”

Perhaps it was as bad as he originally thought. Percy assumed he already had one foot in the grave so the level of panic he’d lived in for the past day appeared to be quite appropriate for the situation.

“Stop. Stop talking like this.” Merritt held up a blistered hand. “Why?”

Remis shrugged but immediately regretted the action as pain flared in his shoulder. He watched out the window, rubbing a palm over his chest where the fear had nestled against his heart. The houses they passed were getting smaller and less fanciful. The occasional storefront came and went.

“I have no dealings with witches to my knowledge. I haven’t a clue as to why one would want to hunt me or would even care about me at all.” He thought briefly of the women he took to bed and more often than not abandoned. “A lover scorned?”

Merritt’s answering laugh was almost a wheeze. Even Percy’s lips quirked up at the corners as they shared a clear look of amusement.

“A lover scorned?” Merritt barked. “Really, Remis? You think your cock is so magical a woman cursed you for leaving her without more? No, those women aren’t dense. They know your reputation and they use you accordingly. The faster you forget them the better they’re off for their own sake.”

He stiffened at the insult. Clearly his cock wasn’t some sort of love drug that women took hits off of, even if he was quite competent in his skills in the bedroom. But didn’t women get attached? Didn’t sex mean more to them than it did him? Warmth tinted his cheeks. Apparently, he didn’t give the women he took to bed enough credit, and instantly he felt stupid for voicing his initial thought. He knew plenty of brilliant capable women; it was a shame that the words his father spoke were often the first to come to mind, leading him in a spinning circle of talking himself out of a taught mindset.

Merritt sobered with a long sigh. “No, I want to know why you didn’t tell us immediately?”

Remis opened his mouth to respond then promptly closed it again. Why hadn’t he? They’d risked their lives to travel to Croughton with him. Proved themselves as his devoted friends time and time again yet he hadn’t told him this one very terrible secret. Guilt replaced his fear as the carriage turned one last corner and began to slow.

“I’m not sure I even want to admit it to myself,” he whispered, “Telling you both makes it more real.”

“More real than being chased out of the physician”s care by a witch?” Percy asked.

He chuckled, though it was a dry sound. “Does it change anything? Will you two leave me to go home now that you know?”

The part of him that loved his friends like brothers screamed for them to say yes. Should his friends stay here and leave him to finish the journey on his own they had the best chance at survival. Every other part of him selfishly wanted them to stay. He desperately didn’t want to be alone in this. He needed Merritt and Percy now more than ever.

“I swear, every time you talk you just become more idiotic.” Merritt rolled his eyes. “We’re with you until the end, whatever it may be. Witch or no. Right, Percy?”

Percy looked at Merritt from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know that we have a choice here. I’m sure he’ll get himself killed without us. At least if we’re here he stands a chance.”

Relief, joy, and a splattering of guilt washed through Remis. Yet another reminder that perhaps Remis was everything his father thought him to be: a coward incapable of handling any of this on his own.

The driver opened the carriage door and pointed a hand toward the inn. It was a much more slender building than the warlord’s home but rose a few stories higher. Remis cocked his head as he stared at the weather-worn building, swearing that it leaned a little bit to the right.Together they shuffled out of the carriage and toward the inn.

Remis shook his head as the carriage left them behind and looked to his friends. “I fear we may each be a fraction of an entire idiot.”