Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

The scouts were gone, but the clearing felt smaller now. Diaspor knelt beside the fae and checked her wings. She was shaking. Her lips moved, and he leaned close to catch the words. She had run from Nightshade's camp, she whispered. She knew where the hunter would sleep tonight. Diaspor's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. The trap he had built that morning suddenly looked like the wrong plan. He carried her to the edge of the stones and laid her against a pale, dead tree. Glowing lavender sap pooled at its roots, lighting her face from below. She traced a map in the wet sap with one shaking finger — a bend in a river, a ridge, a hollow where Nightshade would sleep without her swarm. Diaspor memorized every line. Then her hand fell still in the glow. He pressed two fingers to her throat and found nothing. He stood up slowly. The ambush was finished before it began. Tonight he would not wait for Nightshade to come to him. He would walk into her camp and end it while she slept. He gathered stones and built a low cairn over the fae beneath the glowing tree. The sap held her map a moment longer, then sank into the dirt. He spoke no words over her. He had no right to them. Instead he checked the edge of his sword and turned north, following the lines she had drawn from memory — river bend, ridge, hollow. By dusk he found the place. A charred alcove curved from the rock, its inner walls smooth and ringed with soft lavender moss. A bedroll lay inside. No swarm hung above it. No fire burned. Diaspor crouched in the brush and watched the empty mouth of the shelter. The trap was gone. The hunt was his now. He would be inside that alcove before she returned, and his sword would be waiting in the dark.