Prince Nera Mossveil's Arc

Chapter 1 of 23

Prince Nera Mossveil found the first snare at dawn, sprung and empty, with tufts of spotted hide caught in the wire. He was a short fairy, shorter than the wire post, and he had to kneel to lift the hide free. The tuft belonged to one of his sacred herd. The herd had scattered weeks ago, and every fawn still loose in the outer woods was a thread pulled from his crown. He left the crown at the hall whenever he tracked. He had left it there again this morning, on the stone bench in the throne room where the carved wings watched an empty seat. Without the herd, the crown was only metal. Without the crown seated on the living bloodline, the forest around the castle would begin to fail. Nera had until the herd was whole again, or he had nothing. He followed the snare line north and found three more traps. One held a small winged fawn, alive, its foreleg twisted in wire. Nera cut the wire with his belt knife. The fawn kicked, then went still under his hand. He carried it half a mile to a hollow and hid it in the brush. Poachers had done this. Poachers who knew what a sky fawn's hide was worth at market. If he chased them alone, they would move the traps and kill the rest. He went back to the hall and rode for the cottage at the edge of the royal grounds. Gareth Thornfield answered the door in shirtsleeves. The old huntsman was half-elf, half-ogre, green-skinned, gray-haired, and retired three winters. "Poachers in the outer woods," Nera said. "Snare wire. Sky fawn hide in the teeth." "How many traps." "Four found. More set." Gareth looked past him at the trees. "Gryphon's in the mews. I'll need an hour." He paused. "You'll need another set of eyes on the ground. Bristle Thornwick keeps a shack two ridges east. He hates poachers more than he hates me." They rode for Bristle by noon. The old tracker met them at his door with a crossbow already strung, cap pulled low over green eyes. He listened to Nera's count of the snares, spat once, and shouldered a pack. By dusk the three of them had cut every snare on the north line and driven the poachers off a ridge. Gareth's gryphon flushed two men from a blind and pinned a third against a creek bed. The man talked. He named a buyer in the southern market and a camp three days out where the rest of his crew held what they had already taken. Nera bound his hands and thought of the hollow where he had hidden the wounded fawn. He had cleared the north woods. He had lost three days of tracking the scattered herd, and now he knew the poachers already had some of them alive in a cage he had never seen.