Bounty Hunter (The Black Tulip Chronicles #1)

33. Vera

Chapter 33

Vera

I f I ever get out of this cursed forest, I will never return. My arm aches and throbs, but I make sure not to show it. My criminal has already been acting overly protective today, offering me a hand over even the smallest of obstacles, wordlessly watching for blood on the bandage, and glancing at my face for signs of illness or pain like a hawk. He acts as if I almost died, and while his concern is sort of adorable, we don’t have time to linger in these woods until he deems me ready to travel again. We lost half a day yesterday in our battle with the everwisps, and today we need to make up for it. Ikar and I are both fatigued and injured, and it’s showing. Even though we push ourselves, we are slower than we should be. The weather is mild today, but the last three days it’s been mild, and I expect a show of force from the atmosphere soon. I’m too tired to stress too much over it, Rupi always sticks close before a weather change, and she’s currently nowhere to be seen. I shrug. She’ll return by tonight, I’m sure.

Releasing my stress about the weather gives me space to think over what happened with the everwisps. I have a lot of questions now. And suspicions. That brown-haired vixen said she knew what he was . Pretty sure she wouldn’t say that about him being a mercenary. Mercenaries aren’t anything special unless a person is looking for a violent, honorless, weapon wielder to get a job done. When I think about it that way, though… yeah, maybe everwisps are attracted to mercenaries. But what if that’s not what she meant? What if he’s really not a mercenary… like he’s said over and over again? If he’s not, what is he? Assassin? Soldier? A famed hunter I’ve never heard of before? Women often love the hunter and soldier types. I’m ashamed of myself for falling into the stigma I’ve always mocked.

Ikar navigates a boulder-strewn portion of the trail before he reaches back with his hand extended to help me. While I usually wouldn’t need help to traverse a path like this, without both arms at full capacity, it makes it difficult to climb. I place my hand in his larger one without hesitation.

Whatever he is, I no longer fear him, and it worries me—a lot. That healthy dose of fear kept my heart hard and safe, and now that it’s gone, it’s worrisome. I have to keep my end of this bounty contract. Renna is depending on me, and so is my future. I have to complete this job. For a second, I imagine the impending moment where I drop him off with the officials in exchange for a large sack of money. But even imagining the weight of the money in my hand is nothing compared to the feeling I imagine I’ll have when I walk away from him. I swallow tightly, uncomfortable.

We begin our way up another rocky incline and finally emerge onto a wide path that appears to cater to wagons. Deep ruts eat into the earth on either side. I’m not sure what city comes next, but maybe we can find somewhere to clean up and possibly even hire a healer to fix my arm. With that thought, I quicken my pace, sufficiently motivated. Wagons mean civilization, right?

Apparently, Ikar doesn’t agree. He pulls me back toward the side of the road, his eyes alert and his shoulders tense. I know he prefers the off-the-path routes, but this one is much easier to walk with injuries. I don’t argue about it yet.

Instead, I decide this is the perfect moment for a distraction. “What did the everwisp mean when she said you are immune to her?”

Ikar hyperfocuses on a point ahead of us, rather than look at me. “That’s the first I’ve heard of such a thing.” His voice is terse.

“What about the part where she said she knows what you are?” I cock my head, waiting.

He finally looks at me, exasperation on his face. “Any other questions?”

I shrug with a guilty smile. “I’m bored.” And I want to know. Badly.

“You don’t believe me when I answer your questions anyway.”

I regret the way I treated him in the cave. I know that’s what he’s talking about, but I still don’t apologize. I can’t, or it shows how far I’ve softened toward him. I walk close enough that I can bump him with my shoulder. “Come on, tell me. If she gets to know your secret, I should, too.” I smile. How bad can it be? “You truly are a criminal and don’t want to admit it, is that it?”

“What? No. I told you I’m not a criminal.” His gaze scans the woods around us.

“But you are?—”

He puts his hand over my mouth and listens as I continue to speak through his hand. “Sh! ”

I stop and listen. The loud rumble of a wagon on this bumpy road is distant but growing closer. I almost bounce with joy and peel his hand from my face.

“Maybe we can hitch a ride,” I whisper with excitement. I already feel the steamy bath, warm soup, soft bed.

Ikar grabs my upper arm and hauls me into the woods to our right, but there’s not much space to hide before the trees drop away and we’re left beside a steep hill. Steep enough that if we fall, we won’t be able to stop. He shushes me with his blue eyes and keeps moving forward, completely silent. My own steps seem to magnify. No matter how I step, I find myself cringing with every crack and crunch of forest below my feet. How is a man his size so quiet?

But as the wagon grows closer, I hear sounds of crashing and movement through the forest behind us, it makes me want to forgo all my failing efforts at stealth and charge recklessly away. The only things that would be making sounds such as these are large, dangerous animals, and I don’t want to meet them. Ikar was right. Like he always is . I purse my lips.

The sounds grow closer, but even though Ikar could probably run and maybe get ahead, I can’t. Dratted everwisp and her nasty vines . When my instinct says to hide, to imagine myself as the smallest fern amidst this forest of towering trees, I fight it. Ikar doesn’t stop, and there’s no way I’m choosing to pretend to be a fern over following my criminal. He’s proven over and over that he’s my safest bet. He starts running, and I force myself to keep up. Leaves and branches slap my arms and face, bushes clawing at my clothing like they’re trying to hold me back.

The mixture of growls that surround us, ahead and behind, tells me we’ve been caught, but we keep running. A great, hulking beast of an animal sends some sort of yipping signal to his friends, and within moments, we’re surrounded by a group of shifters, some in animal form, some in human form. Either way, it’s intimidating.

They don’t wait long to demand our weapons. And when we refuse, an arm wraps around my neck and squeezes.

“Drop them,” the voice says behind me.

“We mean no harm,” Ikar says placatingly. “Just trying to cross the forest.” He carefully lays down his sword and two other knives, along with his bow and several arrows. The enchanted sword lies among the assortment innocently. I can only hope these shifters won’t know what it is, and we can somehow get it all back.

“Trespasser is what you are.” The weapons are snatched up, and my neck is released. Someone roughly jerks my arms behind my back and forces me toward the road. I don’t try to fight, even when my forearm burns with pain. The shifters in animal form have their teeth bared threateningly, and growls come from deep in their throats as they surround us. It feels like they wait for an excuse to rip our throats out. Ikar must sense it too, because he is surprisingly compliant.

Everyone kept warning about mate bond this and mate bond that. So far, the mate bond has been the least of our worries. The group of shifters tosses us in the back of some sort of low-level prison wagon, stripped of all our weapons. Our packs, everything except the clothes on our backs, have been stolen.

The wagon is like a large, rectangular, filthy coffin. Low and flat, I doubt the sides are more than two feet tall. I cringe as a heavy board is lifted up and slammed over the top, effectively cutting off all sunlight, and possibly even oxygen. My nose is inches from the top. It smells dusty, and I sneeze twice, my forehead almost hitting the board above us with the motion. A unique way to make sure prisoners can’t escape since I can’t even bend my legs enough to use any strength to push against it. I hear what sounds like someone latching the sides and then the creaking weight of someone taking a seat on top. The cracks that had been showing, letting in the tiniest bit of light and air, are gone. Never mind about the sunlight and oxygen. My chest grows tight, claustrophobia settling in.

“Now would be an excellent time to remove the cuff,” Ikar suggests simply in the darkness. His voice low and smooth.

“Don’t take advantage of the situation.” I gasp between quick breaths. I’m on the verge of hyperventilation.

“I’m definitely going to take advantage of the situation.”

I don’t know if he’s joking or not, but likely not, with the present circumstances. I don’t know what to say. I finally decide on a simple, but wise, response. “No.”

“Fine. We’ll probably suffocate within the hour, but it’s up to you,” he says, like it’ll be all my fault. I think I feel his shoulder shrug carelessly.

“It’s up to me ?” My voice is a rising whisper.

“I can get us out of here in five minutes, tops, with my magic freed.”

Ikar is naturally confident, but this is over-the-top cocky.

Now I’m just getting mad. “You tell me you’re not a criminal, but you sure lie like one.”

This is not the time to play these games.

“Why won’t you trust me?” He sounds angry now, but he keeps his voice low.

“Because you’re a criminal.”

He growls in frustration, and I turn my head in his direction, ready to scold him into silence. “Why can’t you just beha?—

My words are cut off when he looks at me at the same time, and we find our faces mere inches apart. The frustrated pull of his brow softens in the dim light, and I forget what I was trying to say. The claustrophobic feeling fades, the dirty prison wagon fades, and Ikar and I both move to close the small gap.

Then we hear a muffled yell with a snap of reins, and the wagon lurches forward. I yank my gaze back to the board above us as awkwardness fills every dirty crevice of the wagon. Is it shrinking in here, or is it just me?

I just almost kissed my criminal . Again. Hold up, my criminal? How long have I been calling him that? I start panicking. He’s not mine. He’s a bounty. I’ve never kissed any bounties. That’s definitely on the never do list. Tatania would be so disappointed. And I almost just kissed him a second time. If anyone ever finds out about this arrest, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The wheels turning over dirt, roots, and rocks are noisy and awfully jostling, and we must have gone over some sort of slanted hill because I slide into Ikar, and my head hits the front of the wagon simultaneously. I do my best to wiggle back to my side. Once I’m situated again, I let out a long sigh, probably using up precious, limited oxygen by doing so.

What if he was being honest? What if he could get us out in five minutes? It’s hot in here, I’m sweating, and it seems like it’s harder to breathe by the minute, but I acknowledge that that could just be my anxiety. I bite my lower lip indecisively. I’m not sure where these people are taking us. Maybe they’re going to deliver us to the nearest law office, and it’ll all be sorted out without violence, but I doubt it.

“Ask me anything, and I’ll answer truthfully, and in return, you remove the cuff.”

Ikar and his bargains. I roll my eyes. “I don’t need to know anything more about you.” Doesn’t mean I don’t want to, but I force myself to stay professional .

“You asked me what type of magic I have. I’ll tell you.”

“I already know. You’re a Hunter.” Did he forget I’ve spent most of my last several years with Hunters? I guessed from the start.

“You’ve noticed the scar through my eyebrow, I’ll tell you how I got it,” he continues. “I’ll get you out of here. Isn’t that what you want?”

I give a sharp laugh. I have wondered about that scar. I wonder more about the large one on his thigh, but there’s no way in blazes I’m asking about that one.

“The scar, right. Let me guess. You were fighting a deathstalker, and right before you delivered the killing blow it took one last swipe with one of its venomous claws and forever marked the handsome face of Ikar the criminal?”

“That’s the second time you’ve said I’m handsome.”

There’s no way to come back from twice admitting my attraction. “Don’t overthink it.” My cheeks heat, and I find I’m actually grateful for the darkness provided by the prison coffin. I can practically feel his satisfied smirk. He’s insufferable. An arrest has never gone so wrong as this.

“You don’t want to know more about me. Fine. But my initial offer still stands.”

But he doesn’t know how wrong he is. I care much more than I should about him, and I want to know everything he will tell me. And I know exactly what offer he’s talking about. The one where I remove a cuff from a Class A criminal, then start working for him instead of the law. It’s never seemed as enticing as it does now. I feel my firm grip on the rule book weaken, an obvious sign I shouldn’t make any sort of deal with him. Maybe I shouldn’t blame it on the situation, but the heat in this wagon is unbearable. My clothing is plastered to my body, my hair a damp mess. I’m dirty, and maybe I’m overthinking it, but it seems like it’s getting even harder to breathe.

“Promise me you won’t take off,” I say, a flash of guilt is followed by hope that maybe he really can break us out. Even if it takes him thirty minutes, I’ll be happy. I can have reasonable expectations.

His voice is deep and low and completely serious. “I promise.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I could never kill you.” I hear a smile in his voice, as if he thinks it’s ridiculous that I would ask. Is there deeper meaning here? My heart patters giddily before I shush it. I must be pretty desperate if I think someone saying they won’t kill me is flirting.

Then, he adds, “Besides, I need your help.”

I can almost tangibly feel his urgency to move, but as I reach for his wrist, the cart stops, the lid to our coffin is wrenched off, and the men step away from the wagon and into the shadows, leaving us alone. Maybe they left. We seem to be in a dark cave, but I have full confidence we can find our way out.

“Well, that was just too easy,” I say, sitting up with relief and wiping sweaty strands of hair from my face.

Then a voice echoes from behind us. “Welcome to my kingdom, trespassers. I am Silas, king of the shifters.”

Ikar scoffs beside me, and I slap his arm and frown. We don’t need more trouble.

But he ignores my warning and then he speaks in that commanding voice he sometimes uses, the one that’s deep and solid and confident and practically forces you to obey. “There is no shift king. This land falls under the rule of the High King and is free for all to cross. ”

A wicked-looking knife appears suddenly beneath Ikar’s chin, pressed to his throat. A drop of blood gathers and leaves a deep red trail to the collar of his shirt, but he doesn’t flinch. Apparently, that commanding voice doesn’t work here. A man with sun-bronzed skin speaks close to his ear.

“The High King?” he whispers with a deadly, deep, and decidedly cat-like tone to his voice. And by the looks of the hair on his head that can only be described as a very large, knot-infested mane, he’s a big cat. I gulp. His shifter eyes glow eerily in the darkness of the cave.

“The High Kings who, one after the other, have failed to protect this kingdom? I have claimed this land, this forest, and it is mine. If ever I hear of a king here, high or low, I will hunt him down, and after a slow, torturous death, I will add his molars to my necklace.” He lifts something, and I hear bits of bone clacking together. My face scrunches in disgust.

“And if you even so much as mention the High King once more, I’ll add one of yours.”

Ikar’s jaw ticks, but I let out a breath of relief when he stays silent. Silas removes his knife and stands tall.

Another shifter closes in, swinging a sword artfully around as if he can’t wait to strike us. Ikar growls, and I realize that swinging weapon is, in fact, his enchanted sword. The shift king turns and makes his way out of the cave, calling over his shoulder.

“Don’t kill them now. I’ve been waiting for another competitor. This one appears worthy.” And then he growls in a way that somehow sounds very much like laughter.