I stood at the center of Daft Moor staring into the endless night, made darker by the thick tree line of the Enchanted Forest. It grew so tall, it blocked out the moon and stars. The ground beneath my feet was soggy and cold as ice, the frosty air smelled rich and sweet, and blood stained my hands. It felt thick and seeped between my fingers to the ground, splashing my bare toes like raindrops. I refused to look at the pool of crimson gathering at my feet. I did not want to face what I had done. Knowing was enough.
The blood was not my own.
It belonged to a fae I had once almost loved but had betrayed on this very moor.
My heart ruptured with guilt, carving a painful path from my chest to my throat.
The ache woke me, and when I opened my eyes to the dark, a fresh wave of grief roared to life. I was used to the feeling. I had dreamed the same dream for the last seven years, coaxed into slumber by a haunting voice whispering my name.
Samara, it sang. Samara, my love, come to me. Flee with me. I can set you free.
But those words were nothing more than a broken promise, and each morning when I woke to the same heavy darkness, I was left alone to face my punishment for the wrong I had committed before the Enchanted Forest.
I sat up slowly, my lower back aching as I threw my legs over the side of my bed, though calling the pallet I had built up in the corner of the kitchen “a bed” was quite an exaggeration. Still, it was better than sleeping on the floor where the rats could reach me.
I shivered at the thought and looked down at my hands, which were also sore. I spent yesterday bent at the waist for hours, cutting into packed layers of peat. I had been working little by little each day, hoping to harvest enough for the coming winter, though it promised to be long and harsh. I might have harvested more had my three burly brothers helped, but it was not a task that fell to them. No task fell to them.
That thought brought a wave of guilt. I knew I was being unfair. My brothers—Jackal, Michal, and Hans—might not help with the house or the animals or harvest peat, but they did hunt, and they were the greatest hunters in all of Gnat. Only they managed to enter the Enchanted Forest and return with spoils—spoils that kept the entire village fed.
They were heroes, and I was nothing more than what they made me, because I could be nothing else with the blood of the fae on my hands.
“Your fingers look as if they have been dipped in blood,” my brothers had said upon first seeing my hand. “You will be marked for shame by the villagers and death by the fae, but if you will listen to us always, we will keep you safe.”