Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

By midmorning, Diaspor had turned the small clearing into a trap. He'd scraped lines in the dirt, bent the grass into false trails, and chosen the tree he'd put his back against when Nightshade came. The bushes hid him again, but this time as a hunter, not as prey. He crouched low, sword across his knees, and waited. The scouts had drifted off to fetch her. The air felt thin and ready. Then, from the wrong direction, footsteps — fast, stumbling, careless. Someone else was coming into his ground. A small fae burst through the brush and fell to her knees on the cracked crystal floor of the old stone ring. Her wings were torn. Leaves clung to her hair. She was seelie — light-born, harmless, and running from something he couldn't see yet. A silver coin slipped from her hand and rang against the stone. The sound carried. Diaspor's jaw locked. The coin's hum would reach the scouts the moment they circled back. She had stumbled into the exact center of his killing ground. He had seconds. Stay hidden, and Nightshade would arrive to find easy prey waiting on the stones — another body added to his ledger. Move, and he'd give away the trap he had spent the morning building. Diaspor rose from the bushes. He crossed the clearing in three strides, clamped a hand over the fae's mouth, and dragged her behind the tree he'd chosen for himself. He scooped up the humming coin and pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers shut. "Quiet," he whispered. "Don't move. Don't shine." The wings came back overhead a breath later — three of them, circling lower, drawn by the sound. Diaspor pressed the fae into the roots and stood up clean into the open, sword raised so the scouts could see him plainly. They locked on him and climbed away fast toward their master. He had given up his hiding place to save a stranger. The trap was still set, but now Nightshade would come knowing exactly where he stood, and there was a seelie at his back he would have to keep alive through it.