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Hunter’s feet slam into the mud of the Isle as he runs and runs and runs . He tears through the woods, branches scraping his face as he shoves his way between trees. His breath is too short and too sharp and too ragged and he can’t breathe . There’s a snap of a branch somewhere and he jerks, feet slipping out from under him. He skids and crashes to the ground, dirt tangling in his hair and mud quickly soaking his front. He scrambles back to his feet with a lurch and whips his head back and forth, searching for whatever made that sound. Desperation and icy fear clutch at his chest as a sharp pain stabs his heart, so acute he gasps. Panic floods his system, roaring and screaming and raw. There’s too much, everything is too loud his own head is too loud —
He takes off again, running and stumbling faster and faster. If he can just run fast enough, he can escape. Because he needs to get away from the way his skin feels so wrong on his body. Away from the strangling panic that claws at his throat and his blood, making him feel as though a thousand needles are digging into him with every stride. As if he can outrun the thousands of golden masks he’d seen strewn in that forest. The red power that surged from outstretched hands and forced him down, down, down. The look in his uncle’s eyes as he’d run—
The ground disappears out from under him and suddenly he’s falling down a hill with a startled shout. His chin collides with the muddy ground as he rolls and rolls, rocks and sticks scraping at his flesh the whole way down. He gasps when he rams into something solid and hard, driving the breath from his lungs in a violent shove as he’s forced to a halt. Coughs rip from his throat, pain lancing up his ribs as he pushes himself up off the ground. His arms tremble from supporting his weight but he can’t bring himself to get up. Despite every instinct roaring through his blood and telling him to get up and keep running. The fear lodged deep in his chest makes his breath come out ragged and uneven as a wretched noise claws its way out of his mouth.
There’s a rusting of leaves from behind him. He freezes. “Who’s there?” His voice is cracking and broken and wrong wrong wrong —“Who are you? Show yourself!” He pushes himself to his feet and the world tips sideways, forcing a low sound past clenched teeth. Darkness smothers his senses and the trees disappear, he swipes at his eyes but it does nothing to lift the veil. “ Show yourself !” The words rip terrified and shrill with fear from his throat as he takes a single, trembling step forward. He falls to the ground again, his legs weak and shaking. Everything is wrong, too weak but bursting with panicked energy that makes his hands spasm and clench but he still can’t see —
There are footsteps, next to him. They’re coming closer, each one louder than the last. He flinches so violently he falls backwards, scrambling to his hands and knees and clawing himself across the ground and away from the footsteps. But they follow him, easily, picking up speed. And there’s more, there’s more than one of them chasing him.
“Stop!” He still can’t see, he’s looking everywhere he can but he can’t see . There’s static in his head, buzzing and high-pitched and drowning out his screams. “Stop it! Stop, stop stop!” He can feel the vibration of voices in his blood, in the ground, he bumps his back into something hard. He can’t move, he’s trapped. Bellos .
Abruptly, the voices go quiet and there’s the sound of footsteps retreating and a hand on his shoulder. He jerks away as though burned, a scream rising from his throat. The hand returns along with the low sound of a voice and he shrieks.
“Stop, stop!” The static buzzes louder in his head, drowning out his pleas and he clamps his hands over his ears with a strangled whine to quiet the noise because it’s too loud . Everything is too much and not enough and he feels wrong wrong wrong and he needs to get out, get out before —
Something warm and heavy is draped over his shoulders, covering his body and quieting the noise in his head. He stills, hands dropping from his ears to grab the material. It’s soft, like a blanket.
“...my voice, focus on my voice, kid.”
He twitches, almost instinctively, to the sound with a distressed noise. There’s something familiar about it, a rich tone that smooths over his frayed edges.
“Okay, at least you can hear me now. Breathe, you need to breathe or you’re going to pass out.”
He gasps, air flooding his lungs as they ache with a need he didn’t know he’d had. He gulps lungful after lungful, the darkness slowly disappearing. He glances down, the scene around him flickering in and out of focus. He sees the red-brown mud of the forest floor and his golden uniform now tarnished with the dark earth. The comfortable weight on his shoulders is a brown cloak, the edges clenched tightly in his fists. He’s painfully aware of how tight his chest is, the rasping of his breath all too apparent as he clenches the cloak tighter around himself. There’s a pair of boots in front of him, a darker colour that almost blends in with the shadows surrounding them. He follows them upwards to a purple tunic and piercing green eyes.
“Darius?” The name is little more than a whisper as confusion and lingering terror swim together.
Darius’ face twitches in something that could almost be a relieved smile. “Hello, young Prince.”
Hunter’s eyes fly wide open and he wrenches his shoulder away from Darius. “He set you up to this, didn’t he?” As Darius’ face clouds in confusion Hunter laughs, a desperate half-manic sound, and runs a hand through his hair. “He…Bellos sent you here, he sent you after me!” He grabs for his staff and his fingers close on empty air. No, no his staff—he’d left it somewhere in the Night Market. He can’t fight back like this, not against a Head Witch. Tears of shame and fear sting his eyes as he forces his attention back on Darius even as his vision dims and the forest begins to disappear again. His breath hitches and his panic rises like a wave, threatening to send him spiralling down again.
“Kid? Kid! Hunter ! Oh, for the love of—” There are arms around his back and he’s being pulled forward against Darius. He strangles a cry of terror and writhes in the hold, frantic and wild as he claws at the arms that restrain him. But Darius doesn’t let go, instead, he only holds on tighter. “Calm down!” He hisses in Hunter’s ear, the sound strained and nothing like Hunter’s ever heard from the Coven Head before. “I’m not taking you back to Bellos, the Emperor doesn’t know I’m out here. Just—calm down and trust me on this.” Hunter stiffens, his panicked gasps muffled by Darius’ body and the cloak still fastened firmly around his shoulders.
“Promise?” The sound is wretched and pathetic and so weak that Hunter’s cheeks burn scarlet even as tears trickle from his wide eyes.
“I—” Darius hesitates, taken aback by the vulnerability. Then: “I promise, I promise on my position as Coven Head.”
Relief and renewed terror crash down on Hunter so quickly and so violently that all he can do is let out a miserable wail and bury his head in Darius’ shoulder. Darius stiffens before sighing and loosening his hold to something less restraining and more comforting. Hunter sobs, heaving cries that make his body shake and leave him gasping for breath. “I-I can’t go back!”
“I know kid, I know.” Darius’ hand begins to run through his hair, awkwardly at first, then evolving into something more soothing and rhythmic.
“Please don’t make me go back!”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“He said—he knows I was there!”
“I know, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“He—he was going to kill me!”
A pause. The hand in his hair stills. “What?”
“Why would he want to kill me?” The question is small and muffled as it leaves his mouth. “Why?”
A breath. The hand resumes carding through his hair with a gentleness Hunter can’t ever remember receiving. “I don’t know, kid. I’m sorry.”
Hunter lets out a choked whimper and hides his face in the crook of Darius’ neck. If the Head Witch notices the tear stains on his shoulder cape, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he holds Hunter as the boy shudders and cries. He holds on until Hunter’s eyes begin to flutter and the head resting on his shoulder goes limp. And as Hunter surrenders himself to the dark embrace of sleep, a vengeful promise echoes in his ears:
“
I won’t let him hurt you
.”