Fennrick Vex's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The hounds were gone, but the danger was not. Fennrick knelt on the slope with the trembling fairy in his hands. Beside him, Nyx sat pale and still on the rock. Then he saw Saraphillia's hair. Her hood had slipped. Red waves glowed against the dark grass. The Guild paid coin for that hair. Any villager who passed would sell her out. "Cover your head," Fennrick said. "They pay for that color." Saraphillia touched her hair. She did not look afraid. "A hood is not enough. Someone already saw me climb." She was right. He had seen it himself, hunting on this slope. A single glimpse of that glow could send a villager running to the Guild. Fennrick's stomach tightened. He had traded one hunt for two, and this one wore a face he could not shake. "Then we give them another glow to chase," he said. Nyx lifted her head. "I gave the fairy's light away already. I have nothing left." "Not you." Fennrick pointed downslope. A fox stood at the tree line. Its fur shimmered pale blue in the dark. He had seen it lead travelers off the path before. "That one lures. Give it red." Nyx frowned. "Costs me." "So does her cage," Fennrick said. Saraphillia knelt. She pulled a strand of her own hair and held it out. "Take this. Not her strength. Mine." Nyx stared at the strand. For once she did not deflect. "You would give a piece of yourself away." "It is only hair," Saraphillia said. "It grows back. Names do not." Nyx took the strand. She pressed it to the fox's fur. The blue glow warmed and deepened. Red bled through the shimmer until the whole fox burned like a lantern of Saraphillia's own hair. The creature turned and trotted downslope, bright and slow, easy to spot. Fennrick watched a distant window light up in the village below. A door opened. A figure hurried out toward the glowing fox, coin-hungry, following the wrong red. "They will chase it to the gully," Saraphillia said. "Same as the hounds." Nyx swayed. The trick had cost her again. She caught herself on the rock and said nothing. Fennrick pulled off his own cloak and dropped it over Saraphillia's head. The red glow vanished under rough wool. "Now walk down like a farmer," he said. "Slow. Bored." She rose. Under the cloak she looked like anyone. The bounty on the slope was gone, carried off by a burning fox toward a decoy. But Fennrick's cloak was Guild-issue, marked with the tracker's badge. He had just wrapped a hunted woman in the one thing that named him a hunter. If anyone stopped her now, they would find the Guild's own cloth on the Guild's own prey. And they would ask which hunter had lost it.