The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

“This looks interesting,” Lugh comments, and nudges Liath forward.

The men glance at each other, then at me. I don’t have to understand Lugh’s methods to recognize when he’s caught some scent, when he’s so fiercely attuned to the hunt it’s as though the gods came down and led him themselves. I just have to follow.

He works his way slowly through the dense growth, which gives us time to catch up and keep close. We fall into a familiar wedge as we move through the forest, with me at Lugh’s right hand, Cybel following us on the left, with Armel and Drest fanning out to the farthest edges. Every now and then Lugh will sit up in the stirrups, glancing around until he fixes on some unknowable point. Once he’s spotted it, he gathers his bearings, adjusts Liath’s course, and continues on. We weave this way until the forest begins to open up. Armel swears when he surprises a doe, who bounds away. Her movements scare the rest of the small herd into motion and, for a moment, we’re distracted from Lugh’s focused search.

“Should have taken one,” Drest grumbles as he lowers his bow. “Would have made a nice dinner.”

“Here,” Lugh says. His voice is low and distracted. He’s dismounted from Liath and wanders the space created by the surrounding trees. He doesn’t react when I join him, hand on my axe handle, ready to defend him if necessary.

“What are we doing here, seidhr?” Cybel asks from his horse’s back. He leans forward in the saddle, watching Lugh’s movements with curiosity, and allowing Armel and Drest to keep an eye on the surrounding wilderness.

“They were here,” Lugh murmurs. He kneels down and presses his fingers to the dirt. He frowns and looks up.

“Who was?” I ask.

“The first group,” he says. He rises and stalks into the brush.

Cybel points at me and I nod back. There’s no need for all of us to wander from the horses.

Lugh keeps his hands stretched out in front to knock away branches so he can keep his eyes trained on the ground. I can’t see anything except the usual detritus of a forest. There’s no sign of disturbed leaves, of broken stalks, nothing I’d normally find when pursuing prey. He’s never explained how he can read the world around us, whether his magick enhances little details, or whether the gods steer him in their own silent ways. It’s a secret part of him, one I’ve learned to trust after witnessing centuries’ worth of inexplicable wonders. Whatever Lugh’s noticed this time, it’s nothing I can aid him with.

Instead, I begin piecing together the phrases of a new story as I trail after him. The shadowed trunks soaring... The seidhr crossed with light, the eye drawn by his confident stride... Wait, why’s he stopped?

The forest here is old, undisturbed, and the ferns curling through the fallen leaves around us lend an air of peace to this secluded spot. Ahead, a moss-covered log lies in gentle repose. Lugh stares at it, frozen in place.

“Lugh?” I call softly. “What is it?”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he hurries to the log and kneels beside it. He draws in a short, vicious breath and reaches into the shadows beneath. I start to call for him to stop, but it’s too late. His grim expression warns he found something, and not something I’ll like. He draws his hand out and I flinch when a skeletal arm comes into the light.

The pale bones seem to stretch out to us in supplication and a cold breeze makes me shiver at the thought of them skating over my skin. “Damn,” I mumble.

Lugh’s brows pinch and his mouth sets in a hard line. “Bring me a blanket? He deserves a proper burial.”

“I’ll get one. Any idea who he is?”

“No. But I’ll find out.”

“You have your knife?” I ask him as I start to make my way back to the men.

“Of course.” He waves me off, already returning to the macabre task of collecting the remains. “I’m in no danger now.”

Now. My mind returns to last night’s terrifying interlude. To Lugh’s nightmare and the muddled half confessions he made. Surely they can’t be related to this. And yet...

My doubts lend me speed in returning to the Hunt. Once I explain our find, Armel hands over a blanket without a word. Cybel sighs and heads back to the road; he’ll ride ahead to warn the villagers. Drest comes with me to rejoin Lugh. He’s placed what’s left of the body into a neat pile by the time we get back and sits beside it, cross-legged and thoughtful.

“He’s a farmer,” Lugh announces to us. He gestures to a smaller pile of fabric beside the bones. “Found a belt and some bits and pieces of the clothes. Maybe someone will recognize them.” He watches us unfold the blanket and waits for it to be laid down before rousing himself and transferring the bones onto the fabric. “Are any of the missing from the local farms?”

“More than you’d like,” Drest answers.

“Whoever it was,” Lugh says, “he was about Keiran’s height.”

I eye the bones. If not for Lugh’s interference in my village, I would look like that by now. Centuries spent in Faerie have given me near immortality, but if my life’s path had remained undisturbed, this would have been my end as well, whether as a child or as a man on the battlefield. I suppose when this war comes, I may still end up a pile of bones. I just hope Lugh isn’t the one left to gather them when that time comes. “How do you think he died?”

“Cuts on the jawline. My guess is his throat was slit with quite the flourish,” Lugh muses. “No way of telling for sure though.”

“And to die like that out here... There would have been so much blood.”

“Yes, there was,” Lugh agrees.