Chapter 62

Chapter 62
Abigail's POV

Before the sky went light, I had already decided which words to say and which ones I had to crush between my teeth and swallow back down.

The oily film on the inner side of my vambrace, the faint, on-and-off tracks that had shadowed us for days, the beast packs that kept being drawn toward us again and again — every clue slowly linked in my mind into one complete chain, and the far end of that chain pointed, clear and undeniable, at Olivia.

But I could not say it.

Four hunters worn down to their last edge, if they suddenly learned they were being herded on purpose toward the beasts, could never stay calm. Panic burns faster than fire, and it is harder to put out.

I needed them steady, so when Elodie woke rubbing her eyes and Dara and Finn sat up one after another, I gave them only a reason that was true enough, and pressing enough, to make them break camp at once.

"The marked beasts stirred too hard last night," I said, packing my gear as I spoke. "I heard them calling from every side on my watch. It isn't natural. The problem is probably the blood on us — on our gear, in our hair, in the seams of our leather. We've carried the smell of dead beasts for four days. If we don't wash it out for good, the whole forest will come down on us."

Dara looked down at the crusted gore on her forearm and scratched at it, frowning.

"True enough." She clicked her tongue in disgust. "I'm about ready to gag on it myself."

"Then sooner is better." Finn wiped her broken-nailed hand on her trouser leg and shouldered her pack in silence, sparing of words as always.

Only Elodie gave me a second look.

She opened her mouth as though to ask something, then swallowed it back and only said quietly, "Lead the way."

I knew she still remembered that promise — that if I meant to walk into danger, I had to tell her first.

I led them west, toward a mountain stream I had marked on the second day. There the water dropped between black stones, fast and cold, and no smell settled easily in it. While Dara and Finn scrubbed their gear in the current, cursing the cold, and Elodie bent to clean the blood from her hair, I did the thing that truly mattered.

I sealed the vambrace with its oily film, and the scrap of oiled cloth holding the scraped residue, apart from everything else, deep in the driest fold of my pack.

That was evidence. Something no one could wash away with a single word like "misunderstanding."

But even as I wound the cloth tight, I understood clearly: it was not enough.

The scent left in the water — any elder could call it a natural musk, or the old settled residue of a territory mark. What I wanted was not suspicion, not a guess that could be blurred over in an argument, but someone pinned in the act, the filth still clutched in their hands.

That afternoon I settled the group on a high shelf a mile to the east. It had cliffs on three sides and only one narrow path up, at least safer than the open woods. I told Elodie and Finn to stay and guard Dara, and made ready to double back.

Elodie stepped in front of me at once, her voice pressed low.

"What are you going back alone for?"

"Just to look at the water source. I won't fight anything." I met her eyes. "I promised you I'd tell you before I walked into danger. This time it really is only to look."

Half true, half a lie.

She stared at me for two seconds, as if searching my face for the flaw. In the end, she stepped aside.

I retraced the path to the stretch of upper stream where we had washed, and on the two narrow approaches to the water I strung a fine thread of gut across each. I pressed the gut low, nearly flush with the damp ground, invisible unless you looked hard. Then I dusted the stone and the mud-cracks below the line with crushed root powder.

If anyone came again to pour something into the water, they would surely break the thread I had set, and surely press their footprints clean into that powder. And beside the powder, I had left the date, marked in my own hand. When that time came, let her figure out how to explain it.

I had thought I'd planned it thoroughly enough.

But past noon on the day, as we reached the edge of a dense stand of pine, the whole forest went wrong all at once.

The first thing to vanish was the birdsong.

That endless back-and-forth of calls was cut off as if by a single hand, and in an instant everything fell dead still. Then, ahead of us, the ground itself seemed to roar — dozens of beast-cries burst open together, low and frenzied, carrying a rage that seemed ready to tear the air apart.

The undergrowth shook violently. In the next breath, the beasts came out from three directions.

They ran low to the ground, fast as a rolling black tide, and at a rough count there were at least fifteen. Their eyes were wrong too — not the cold, dull amber of a beast on the hunt, but a scalding, wet red, the color of something guarding its den, guarding its young, willing to fight an intruder to the death.

Territorial rage.

And far more dangerous than anything we had met in these past days.

Something went off in my head like a thunderclap, and all at once I understood — it was the Ghost-trail.

We had washed, yes. But that thing had already worked into the deep of my hair, seeped into the seams of the leather, like a hook buried in the bone, and no matter how hard the water ran, it would not scrub clean. It had lain in wait on us the whole way, drifting thread by thread into the wind, like some signal that could not be erased, drawing every beast in the forest toward us.

I had underestimated how it clung, and I had underestimated how ruthless that person was.

But now there was no time to regret it.

In a single breath I counted the beasts, and in that same breath I counted our end.

Four of us. Fifteen maddened beasts.

This fight could not be won.

I tore the bone whistle from where it hung at my throat, clenched it, and blew twice with nearly all the strength in my body.

That was the distress signal the security team had handed to everyone before the hunt began. By the rule, once you met a mortal danger you could not escape, you had only to sound the whistle, and the patrolling guards nearby would come at once.

The sharp whistle pierced the air like a thin blade, cutting clean through the rising and falling roar of the beasts.

But the next moment, my heart sank.

I did not know how far the sound could carry, nor whether the guards were even close by. Still less did I know whether, in this place swallowed by pine and beast-cries, those two cries for help could cross the wind and reach the ears that ought to hear them.

The next instant, there was no room left for thought.