Amaris had made a ritual over the last several nights of walking into the forest and quieting herself. She searched for the inexplicable intuition she had felt the night she’d been led to the pond. The instinct had been something silent but potent within her, and she clawed for it, begging it to reactivate. Many uneventful hours, camps, and slumbers had passed between the night she had met the demon general, but no matter how long into the night she lay awake or how hard she strained her ears for alertness, she felt nothing.

Ash had teased her over the last few days for being a lousy huntress when she had repeatedly returned to the camp empty-handed, but her attention remained elsewhere. She’d rather the boys believe she was terrible at collecting game than know the truth. She wasn’t ready to hear their disapproval if she explained she was searching for the fae. What had happened that night at the pond? How could she learn to understand it?

The winged men certainly hadn’t seemed like demons. Zaccai’s wings had been feathered, not like the membranous, batlike wings of the twisted beasts in her tomes. He was not the monstrosity of the ag’imni. Even though Ash insisted an ag’imni was what they’d seen in the clearing, she couldn’t understand how; where he had seen a twisted gargoyle, she had seen a winged man. Ash had asserted that her eyes had been playing tricks on her in the moonlight. He’d maintained that her weak eyes had no gift for sight in the dark. She’d been annoyed at his dismissal, but she knew arguing was useless. She ignored him, focusing instead on the desperate need for relief that plagued her following the incident. The unrelenting sensation akin to the kernel in her tooth gnawed at her whenever she thought of the exchange.

She gave up, frustration and disappointment filling her for the second, then third, now fourth night in a row. The evening passed as it did, cooking, eating, cleaning their weapons, and never bothering with the sentimentalities of good-nights. Amaris continued to lie awake long after the men at her sides had fallen asleep.

As she stared into the woods, she felt for the first time in days that something was staring back.

She swallowed, listening to the instinct that told her she was not alone.

Amaris sat up, straining her eyes against the darkness. She didn’t make any move toward the woods but watched intently, waiting for a sign or the telltale absence of noise. She looked for the flicker of wings or the reflective flash of swords that the fae might have holstered. Without moving, she scoured the blackened shadows of the forest around her, searching for any hint of movement.

Then she saw it. It was the flick of a shadow. It was the slight, unnatural extension of darkness from one of the trees.