Rowan Greenbriar's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Rowan Greenbriar pressed a poultice to the fae prince's side and prayed the bleeding would stop. She had found him at dawn, slumped against her twisted cottage door, silver blood soaking the roots. Her mother had taught her every healing herb in these woods. None of them had prepared her for a dying prince. She ground crushed yarrow into his wound and worked the way she worked every sickness. Keep him alive. That was the whole goal now. The door banged open. A pixie darted in, wings beating fast, her small face white with fear. "It's coming," the pixie gasped. "The thing that struck him down. It smells his blood. It's following the trail here." Rowan's stomach dropped. She looked at the red smear across her floor, at the stained roots outside. The prince had left a path straight to her door. Whatever hunted him would walk it right to them both. She grabbed her mother's salt jar and a bundle of dried rowan branches. "Help me," she told the pixie. "We cover the blood. We break the trail." They scrubbed the doorstep while the woods went silent. No birds. No wind. Rowan's hands shook as she poured salt in a ring around the cottage. Salt could hide a scent. Her mother swore by it. But the prince had bled across half the forest, and she could not scrub the whole forest. Something heavy moved through the trees. Branches snapped. The pixie shot up to the rafters and hid. Then a dark shape burst from the brush, and Rowan raised the salt jar like a weapon. It was not the hunter. It was Theron Greenleaf, her oldest friend, an arrow already notched to his bow. He had watched over her since her mother passed, and he moved through these woods like he owned every leaf. His eyes found the blood trail, then found her. "You led it here," he said. Not angry. Afraid for her. "I tracked the same trail. So did it." He pointed his arrow back the way he came. "It's close." Rowan made her choice fast. "The blood is what it follows. We burn the trail." Theron understood at once. He struck flint, and Rowan laid the dried rowan branches along the bloody path. The branches caught. Flames raced down the trail, eating the scent, filling the air with bitter smoke. The heavy steps stopped. Something snarled past the smoke, confused, circling. Then it turned and crashed away into the dark. Rowan dropped to her knees, shaking. The hunter was gone. For now. But the fire had burned the only thing that hid her cottage. The salt ring was broken. The smoke would clear by morning. And inside, the prince still bled, still breathing but weaker, drawing that creature back the moment the air turned clean. "It will return," Theron said. "And next time it will know exactly where to look."