Sometime past midnight, just as the last of the fireworks were melting out of sight, the queen and her consort noticed their only child was missing. It was the tenth night of midwinter celebrations, and the manor was abuzz with guests. The girl—Aster was her name—had slipped past the manor guards and into the forest in search of solitary adventures more to her tastes, which were those of a ten-year-old with too little discipline and too much imagination.

She was found an hour later at the edge of the forest that bordered the city, unmoving. She’d been gored by a boar. The beast itself was long gone. The royal physicians did all they could to no avail. By dawn, she was laid in the sacred chamber to await funeral rites in three days’ time. Yet her funeral never came to pass.

The next night, the prince consort Sebastian, in rage as much as mourning, left Queen Petra to her fitful grief-sleep, saddled his favorite horse, and set into the trees at a gallop with his daughter’s linen-wrapped body clutched to his chest. A gale swept up, cold even for the dead of winter, and tore his cloak backward. His steed’s mane whipped at his knuckles.

Many would have called it a sign. The worst had happened, his daughter was dead, and he would do well to accept it and turn back.

Instead he pressed onward to a moss-covered valley in the forest’s hidden depths. A woman lived there, respected and feared, known as Grandmother Gauden. Though she was reputed in the border towns as an eccentric healer with moods as changeable as the weather, there were other rumors too: she was a witch who dabbled in more esoteric magic. She could even restore a life not long fled the body—for a price.

If that were true, the kingdom’s coffers were at his disposal, his daughter’s life worth all of it and more.

When he arrived at the door of Gauden’s hovel, the woman who answered his frantic knocking was not what he expected. She wasn’t old, though he also couldn’t discern what her age might be, or really anything about her. A stubborn vagueness hung about her person, as if his impression of her faded the moment it was made. Unnerving, but he couldn’t be bothered to investigate it. The heated air that wafted out smelled strongly of unknown herbs, metallic and sharp, and their pungency dispelled his momentary hesitance.

“Grandmother,” he began, “I have come seeking counsel. My daughter was cruelly robbed of her life. She was— She is only ten years old.”

Gauden blinked at him. “What counsel could you require? You seem to have no confusion about the situation.”

Despite her words, her voice was not cruel; she sounded merely as if she found his entreaties childishly charming and wondered what other amusing things he might say. This rankled him. Didn’t she know who he was? The respect he paid her was a courtesy, and he demanded his due in return.

Yet she was strange, the house was strange, and he felt strange in it. The room was dim, and smelly, and made him want to sneeze. A pair of rangy dogs he had not noticed before lounged in a corner, watching with unearthly and expectant eyes. He recalled that he had told no one of his plan to come here.

Perhaps Sebastian had relinquished his power the moment he’d crossed her threshold; perhaps he did not wish to sour this woman to his request, or at all.

“Not counsel then. Favor,” he amended. “If it’s true you can raise the dead, I ask that you do so.”

Gauden cast a probing look over the prince, for she knew who he was yet had never known him to travel so far or mingle outside the court. He and his wife were rulers more in title than practice, disinterested in business that did not directly influence their family’s comforts. On another night, she might have turned him away. On this night, she did not.

Her attention fell on the girl. Little enough time had passed since her death. Her spirit was still close, lingering at the fringes of the Otherworld as if in a dream.

“It’s a lucky thing the funeral rites have not been said,” Gauden observed, “or this would not be possible.”

“Then you can do it?”

“I can. But you seem to have no care for the consequence.”

Sebastian drew back with a scoff that belied his tears. “If you speak of payment, whatever you want, it’s yours.”

“I speak of consequence, for her and your kingdom. Nothing comes without cost. A spirit called back from the Otherworld is noted and missed. Such theft will be a great offense to those who dwell there.”

“The Otherworld and its denizens are none of my concern.” The prince, in fact, had very few concerns, and the greatest of them lay dead before him. “Will she live?”

“Yes.”

“Then damn the kingdom, and damn your consequences.”

“As you say.” Gauden covered the girl up. “There’s a stone circle not far from here, to the east. You know it?”

Images of tall, upright stones, dilapidated gates, and overgrown weeds sprang to his mind. “The old necropole.”

“Take her there. I will meet you.”

She turned back to her shelves and ignored him as he returned to his horse with his daughter clutched to his chest. The stone circle was not far. Still, Sebastian was surprised to find Gauden waiting for him there with no sign of how she had made the journey more swiftly than his horse.

He shivered. The necropole had been unused for ages, the ancient dead buried there no longer remembered. It was a relic, but it unnerved him to his core. Part of him wanted to flee, but another part held fast, sat upon his horse, hand curled tightly in the reins. Gauden was utterly unbothered. She accepted Aster’s body in her arms with little effort and laid it carefully on a flat, mossy rock in the middle of the field as if putting her to bed amongst the frost.

The prince dismounted as she tipped a dark liquid onto her thumb—thick and dark as sap or (he shivered again) half-congealed blood—and smeared it over Aster’s forehead. She muttered some words he could not make out, and then, to his bafflement, pulled a jar from her skirt pocket and opened it. A bee flew out and disappeared into the mist.

“What did you do?”

Gauden rose and stowed the empty jar. “As you asked.”

“She is still dead.”

“Stay with her until dawn.” She drew her cloak around her with a shrug.

He brushed past and knelt by his daughter to push her dark hair back from her face, careful not to disturb the already fading mark on her skin. The sight of it made him nervous, recalling stories from his boyhood. The necropole was cursed, haunted by very old magic and restless spirits. These were mere stories, of course. Yet the only thing he wanted more than his daughter’s life was to never see the place again.

“And your payment?” he called over his shoulder, turning to catch Gauden before she had gone too far.

There was no sign of her. He and his daughter were alone. His breath fogged as he ignored the persistent, uneasy chill that beset him and did as he was instructed. Sleepless and sick, he stayed with Aster, and when the sun broke the horizon, the bee returned, crawled once across her cheek, and alighted with a begrudging buzz.

Aster stirred.

“Papa?”

Her voice was thin and creaky as ice on a pond, but it was her voice, and she was alive. When he cried out with relief and embraced her, wrapping her in the fur that had kept him from freezing all night, she squirmed and made a sound of protest.

“Where is the man with the horse? And the dogs?” She clutched his arm and craned her neck to look behind him, her eyes sharp as they’d ever been. “They were very loud and fast, and the man! He had antlers!”

Sebastian cast a dark look at the woods but saw nothing amiss.

“A dream,” he lied.

He told her the same on their ride home, again and again, as she rambled on about an antlered huntsman and his hounds, and galloping through the woods atop a massive pale horse whose hooves never touched the ground, and running down an enormous, slavering boar. A dream, a dream, all of it a dream, for she had run into the woods when she should have been at home and fallen prey to the cold. It was a lucky thing he had found her before worse had befallen her.

By the time they were passing through the palace gates, he had convinced himself she believed him.

 

~*~

 

When Petra woke to the shocking news of her husband’s success, she was torn between elation at her daughter’s return and dismay at the means. Sebastian’s insistence that Gauden had accepted no payment did little to allay her worries. Yet the fact was, Aster had been dead, and now she was alive, and however it had happened, it was done.

So the queen and her consort decided to keep the whole unpleasantness a secret. By midmorning, official word was that Aster had not died at all. The physicians were forbidden from speaking of it, as were the guards on duty the night it had happened. Still, the midwinter guests knew of some grave mishap, and staff who frequented the towns saw little reason not to drop crumbs of the story. Rumors spread, and soon they were close enough to the truth that most of the kingdom suspected the princess was changed.

Worse still, they were right, and Aster herself soon knew it. Not that she ever believed it had been a dream. She did dream, often, of finding her way out to the forest again, impervious to weather, scaring rabbits and listening for the baying of hounds or hoofbeats over moss and root. A dream would not have left the jagged weal of a scar just below the right side of her ribcage. And if it had all been a dream, why did she begin to see ghosts everywhere?

The palace was full of them. Servants and staff, scholars and holy acolytes, prisoners and soldiers, people she supposed must be very distant relatives or who spoke in unknown, intriguing tongues. They looked and sounded quite ordinary but for a slight wispiness of form, like their edges weren’t quite set, and the air around them clung like a cold mist. Speaking to them only seemed polite. While rumors without proof could be ignored, even the most practiced skeptics could not overlook a princess who talked to walls and yammered on about spectral hunting parties at the forest’s edge.

Whispers gathered in pockets and spread like mold. The princess heard voices. The princess saw apparitions. The princess was mad. Driven by desire that she should never be in peril again and distaste for the ugly chatter about her new habits, her parents forbade her from leaving the palace grounds. No more town visits, and certainly no treks in the woods. There was nothing she needed that the palace could not provide. It was for her own good.

Two years passed, and Aster adapted to the limited scope of her domain, just as she learned to ignore the inexplicable call to the woods at midwinter that made her stare out the window for hours after nightfall. She trained herself not to jump every time some new specter appeared out the corner of her eye, and soon enough she began to befriend them. She’d had friends before—children of other nobles, convenient acquaintances who sufficed to make stuffy official functions less boring. Yet after that night in the woods and the changes it wrought, they began to shun her. She wasn’t sure which was worse: the tacit agreement that she was no longer welcome, or the snatches of conversation she would catch in passing.

“Did you see? The princess is lurking around the garden talking to trellises again.”

“She told me there’s ghosts there. She said they like to admire the rose bushes.”

“Pshaw—if Dead Aster’s more interested in spending time with invisible friends, let her. It’s creepy anyway, isn’t it?”

If that was what they thought, so be it. Aster made it her mission to unsettle as many of them as possible. The ghosts, it turned out, made for excellent company. Many of them had fascinating stories to tell and were happy of a new listener. Others knew secrets about the palace she would never have learned otherwise, which was all very useful, because the palace was the extent of her world. While she attended her tutors during the day, she saved her enthusiasm for the education she received from a host of spirits delighted by the novelty of a breather who could see them.

It was in this fashion that she learned about the catacombs. She’d developed a habit of sneaking out of her bedchamber at night and poking around in the deepest, oldest parts of the palace, handily avoiding the halls and chambers that were commonly attended by guards. On this night, she was particularly excited: the ghost of a holy man had let slip the location of catacombs beneath the palace as she’d played captive audience to his spontaneous lecture about the subtleties of ceremonial incense. The catacombs, he’d said offhandedly, held a secret tunnel leading outside the grounds (which did little for ventilation, of course, and was thus quite ill-conceived). He’d immediately realized his faux pas and told her not to seek it out, and she’d immediately assured him she would never dream of it.

Several hours later, she was gleefully ignoring her promise as she found her way to a tapestry that she’d walked past many nights before. It was filthy and moth-eaten to the point of inscrutability, so she’d never bothered to look more closely. Now, as she pushed it aside, she saw the narrow, dusty, long-forgotten door. The wood was rotted in places, and, when she pressed on the latch, it swung open easily. A blast of stale air greeted her, chill and bone-dry. She checked the wick in her lamp, stepped through, and dutifully shut the door behind her.

Which was how Aster found herself creeping through the underground chamber of the old palace catacombs, along a musty tunnel, and into the fresh air of a beautiful summer night at the edge of the forest. The toes of her boots darkened with moisture from the grass. The trees in their full-leafed splendor dappled the ground with raindrop shadows. Just out of sight, insects and bats buzzed, squeaked, and chirped, and night-blooming flowers turned their pale faces to the moon. It was all so different than she remembered—that contradiction of delight cut short by terror, then turned delight again. The forest in summer was beautiful but less. Something she’d expected to find was missing. She felt alone, exposed. She hadn’t been this far from the palace since…

An image from that night in the woods returned: the huntsman who’d found Aster beneath the trees, the shiny silver buttons on his jerkin of green and black, the shocking rise of pronged antlers from his otherwise human head. She’d been alone, confused at the sight of her own body on the ground, but his hard face had softened a touch as he offered her a hand onto the back of his horse. The air around him had smelled of metal and electricity, riotous with pure, sparking energy, and the hunting party had been loud and raucous. She’d soon forgotten her fear and been swept up in the endless frantic glory of a hunt.

And then she had awakened in her body once more, her father’s teary face hovering over hers as the sun touched the yellowed grass.

Aster had begun to think that part hadn’t been real, even if all the ghosts since then had been. The huntsman and his party had been different—he, at least, had been different. Not a ghost, but something that existed in the same place they did. She’d never seen him again, never had the chance to return and seek him out. Now she couldn’t stop searching the gaps between the trees for a glint of silver stirrups or the flash of an antlered head, or listening for the cacophony of hunting dogs giving chase.

A twig snapped in the brush, and her eyes darted to see.

Nothing. An owl, perhaps. Disappointing, though she was not surprised.

~*~

 

It was the sixth night of the midwinter festival, and Aster had had more than enough for the year. She’d used to love this time most of all. When she was small, the festival had meant sugary treats, a new gown, and license to stay up later than usual. This year was different. She wasn’t hungry, and her dress, though soft and perfectly fitted, felt too tight, itchy, and dreadful. As she wove idly around the perimeter of a courtyard crammed with guests, she tried to understand this new sense of begrudging discomfort.

Perhaps it was just that she was fourteen now, and, apparently, at an age when it was common for children to delight in contrariness. She wouldn’t really know. She didn’t have anyone her own age to compare to. It could have been that, when she looked around, she saw not only the guests of the royal house, but the numberless ghosts who drifted among them in a celebration of their own. It was a strange, delightful sight she’d learned to look at with care to avoid headaches or dizziness. Tonight, her temples throbbed as she focused on the flagstones beneath her feet. She wanted to yell at all of them—the living, the dead, and any like her who might be somewhere in between—to get out and go home.

She sipped at a tumbler of wine she wasn’t supposed to have and glowered as someone walked past bearing a tray that overflowed with tiny, multicolored cakes topped with sugared fruits and cheerful sprigs of holly. Her stomach gurgled, though not with desire for dessert. She drifted back into the banquet hall to warm her hands. The change of scenery did not help. It was hardly a change at all; just more of the same sense that something was off.

Two ladies dallied nearby, heads bent close together, laughing and murmuring. One of them kept bouncing back and forth in time to the music, even as she spoke. They didn’t even glance at Aster.

“I’m happy you dragged me along to this, Lena, really!” said the taller woman, whose dark lipstick was smudged. She swayed a little until her companion caught her elbow, giggling. “They make it up so pretty, don’t they? You’d never know how things have been down in Holle’s Mount, all those little towns along that stretch…”

The other woman, Lena, scrunched her nose. “You know, you’re allowed to just say, ‘The queen throws a marvelous party, and I’m grateful to have you to pull me away from my studies.’”

A young man joined them, gesturing broadly with two drinks in hand. “What do you make of all this? Like covering a cowpat in gemstones, eh?”

“My god, you’re worse than she is! Actually worse! Why do I tolerate either of you?” said the beleaguered Lena, though she was laughing again. “Ooh, is that for me?”

By now the overlay of the living and the dead was making Aster’s vision swim, so she discreetly slipped into the main corridor to return to her bedchamber. The room was freezing when she arrived, and the chill from outside stuck to her skin like cobwebs. She flapped her hands briskly as if to shake it off, then dropped to her knees in front of the hearth to light a fire. With the first licks of light and warmth growing strong, she squirmed out of her party attire and pulled on her warmest nightgown. She could still hear the party, muffled by glass, wood, and stone. She’d never been happier to get away, but she didn’t really want to be here either.

Forehead pressed to the window, Aster peered out. The sickle of the moon grinned down pale yellow. There, just at the top of the walls surrounding the courtyard, something darted up from the spindly tops of the naked trees and over the sky like a swift-moving cloud. It was difficult to make sense of. One moment it was thick smoke; the next, a silvery mist; the next, almost solid. She thought she could see horses there and the faint shape of people riding. Her heart leapt with them. All of it flickered from one state to the next as it slid over the moon and then melted into the night.

Her hand was cranking the window open before she thought to do so, letting in a gust of frigid air and, just as she’d somehow known, the fading echoes of a hunter’s horn. It took all the self-control she could muster not to throw on her coat and make her way out to pursue them. They were already gone, anyway. Still, she couldn’t quell the eerie feeling she always got at this time of year in the late hours. It was like being bundled into clothing she’d outgrown long ago, and the forest—just the idea of it—was the only thing that eased the seams.

“Close that up, child!” came a voice from the corner of her room—Isolde, a chambermaid from back when people still had chambermaids, who appeared as a blurred figure near the bureau. She was prone to nag, which Aster thought her parents would approve of, if only they didn’t blanch at the mere suggestion she saw such things. “I know it sounds silly coming from me, but you’ll catch your death.”

Aster made a rude sound but did as she was told, huddled under her blankets, and waited to get warm. That night she dreamed again, for the first time in a long while, of riding breakneck through trees and banks of frothy cloud. When she woke she was chilled to the bone, and her hair smelled of smoke and frost.

 

~*~

 

“Have you ever seen a hunting party out here?”

It was late autumn, and Aster was walking the twilit woods with Philomena, the ghost of a groundskeeper who’d loved the land far too much to move on. She was one of Aster’s favorite people to spend time with, still brisk and lively a century after her death and generous with her time.

“What a question!” Philomena said with a fond cluck under the chin, a gesture Aster perceived as a cold, damp puff of air rather than the touch of skin. “Your parents are fond of it, are they not? That horse of your father’s—oh! What a magnificent creature.”

Philomena had been an avid hunter in life. In their short acquaintance, she’d enthusiastically imparted all sorts of useful knowledge to Aster—how to mend a bow or throw a spear, how to identify tracks or tell which plants were safe to eat. Given the passionate tremor in the dead woman’s voice, Aster realized she ought to have been more specific, and amended before Philomena launched into a meandering recollection of times long past, as ghosts were prone to do.

“Not that sort. I mean ghosts. I think they were ghosts. Led by a man with… er. Antlers. I thought you might know, is all.”

Though it had been nearly seven years since Aster had—she swore—ridden with a ghostly horde in pursuit of some unknown quarry, she struggled to speak of it without feeling foolish. In fact, she never spoke of it. But ghosts were forgiving of strange questions, and Philomena always gave frank, honest advice. Even so, Aster had worked herself up to this moment for months.

Philomena stopped walking and looked at Aster with wide eyes. “When did you see such a thing?”

Aster hesitated. “Years ago. The night I died, a hunting party found me and invited me to join them. I didn’t see any harm. I was afraid, so I went. It was—”

She’d been about to say ‘wonderful,’ but swallowed the word at Philomena’s anxious flutter of hands.

“You were right to be afraid,” Philomena said in grave, hushed tones. “The Wild Hunt is not to be trifled with. Why do you think we avoid the forest at midwinter? The forest belongs to the Hunt those twelve nights, and no spirit with half their faculties is foolish enough to risk getting swept up!”

Aster was baffled. It had never occurred to her that the ghosts purposely kept clear of the forest during midwinter. She never ventured to the woods at midwinter either; the pull persisted, strongest of all during that span of twelve nights, but she’d been ignoring it for years. Doing so felt like second nature. The festival always kept her too busy, too exhausted, and the ghosts were wrapped up in their own revels. To hear their avoidance was rooted in concerted, superstitious effort resulting was startling.

Philomena leaned closer. “They don’t let you leave, you know. Once you join them, you’re theirs forever, compelled to ride as their leader wills.”

“But that isn’t true. They let me leave.”

Which wasn’t expressly true either. She had, more precisely, been pulled back to her body, though she had only suspicions of how. For the first time, Aster found herself regarded with suspicion not by a living person, but a ghost. She might not have cared, had it been anyone but Philomena, whom she trusted above all. But the ghost’s look shifted to a sort of indulgent pity, and she placed a hand on Aster’s shoulder in consolation.

“Then you may be the luckiest person I know, dead or alive. I wouldn’t encourage you to test that. That huntsman—I will not speak his name—is a honey-tongued serpent. The woods at midwinter are no place for anyone with good sense.” Philomena gave a throaty little huff, as if it was all settled, and rocked back on her heels, face tilted aloft. Sunlight blurred the edges of her cheeks. “Strange thing, the trees this year. They’d dropped all their leaves by the end of summer. Even the gardens were a dreadful mess. I say, the queen ought to think about hiring someone new, it’s just disgraceful. Those roses have bloomed every year since you were born, and did you see them? Brown husks days after they blossomed! Back when I was alive we’d call that a bad omen.”

~*~

 

Aster danced and laughed and pretended she didn’t see the specters amid the cavorting throng of ignorant living. Here, a gentleman in a collar so frilled it obscured his mouth walked unknowingly through a cluster of long-dead nurses nursing several glasses of foggy ghost-wine; there, a trio of children ran laughing one-two-three through the body of an old, half-transparent highwayman dozing on his feet at the edge of the dancefloor.

The reason for Aster’s burgeoning headache tonight was far more mundane than the chaos of one party intersected by another: now that she was seventeen, Petra and Sebastian had clearly decided this year’s midwinter gathering was the ideal place to begin trotting out agreeable suitors to whom they could quietly marry her off. She had passed the first two nights fending off dull young men from dull old families, feigning interest in their overtures for her attention, and thinking about how long she had to endure before retiring for the night.

By the third night, her skin was positively crawling when the dancing began and a boy with the barest hint of a mustache asked her to join him on the floor. She smiled and accepted, because she did like dancing even if she found his attempt at facial hair ill-advised, and she made herself a promise—no matter how late the party kept her, tonight she would go to the woods.

Only dimly did she recall Philomena’s warning of the month before, which now seemed insubstantial and rather silly. A ghost afraid of ghosts! She’d always thought that after a person was dead, they had very little to fear. But the dead feared the Wild Hunt, and they feared its leader, and they feared the woods at midwinter.

She, however, was not dead, and to her the prospect of meeting the hunt again at last only made her wonder why she’d waited three nights. Of course she would go. That decision made, the rest of the evening was easier to bear, and it felt like no time at all before she was emerging from the catacomb tunnel and into the clear cold of night.

In the palace all bedecked in festive finery, it was easy to forget that a world existed outside the trappings and distractions. With the din far behind her, she recalled what midwinter truly was. There was a crisp, fragile stillness in the air, as if it might be cracked like an eggshell to reveal something altogether different just beyond. An energy, restive and compelling, beat like a heart in the dark. She’d felt it before, from a distance, as she stared out the window of her room. It had been a temptation then, the nagging, fleeting thought of some rare delicacy she’d tasted once and never forgotten. Now it was an imperative. As she traveled deeper, seeking its source, the air was tremulous and gauzy. If she looked hard enough, she would find the cracks in its chilled veneer.

The sound of hoofbeats fell sudden on her ears from all directions at once. The trees grew so thickly that their trunks and branches intertwined in some places. It was impossible anyone could navigate it easily by horse. Yet she heard them approaching with an excited canine clamor in their wake.

Improbably, she stepped into a clearing. It had never been there before. Neither had the hunting party that had just come to a halt there. She stopped short and tried to count them, speechless, but she was distracted by the way it felt to be in their presence—the air cracked and cold, stretching around her, easing the seams. Through the fog of her quiet breath, Aster saw the huntsman. He watched her from his mount, leaning forward slightly. The hounds fell silent, and she walked toward him, her hand fumbling at the inside of her cloak.

She wasn’t sure what made her so bold. Manners drilled into her, or just a hope they would know her. But the solidity of the scrolled metal flask tucked against her hip grounded her. It was filled with mulled wine, steeped with spices and heated to amplify its complex flavors. A rare treat. She extended it to him.

“You must all be tired from your long hunt,” she said, her eyes leaving his face briefly to touch on the others. “I hope I’m not too presumptuous to think some wine will be appreciated.”

The party was silent. The huntsman dismounted and approached her slowly, as if he expected her to frighten and flee. His features were sharp, brow high and too prominent, deep-set eyes a bit too pale in his too-pale face, which was roughly the color of polished bone. His nose was freckled and upturned in a way that would have been whimsical if not for his thin downturned mouth, shadowed cheeks, and fussily trimmed beard. And the antlers.

They should have been absurd. She’d remembered them being larger, as if with each recollection the huntsman had become more outlandish until the antlers spread so wide he would not have been able to keep his head upright. In truth they emerged just above his temples, long, three-pronged protrusions that curved like a crown above a wild tumble of russet hair, somehow perfectly practical.

He accepted her offering with a nod of gratitude, uncapped the flask, and took a long pull. He wore a fine leather jerkin that was several centuries out of date, and breeches with a long hunting knife secured at his hip. Though his face was unlined, unscarred, untouched by any element, nothing else about him suggested youth or inexperience. He was something ageless, and the more she tried to work it out, the more it seemed to contradict itself.

“Do you know me, sir?” she asked.

“I do. Though you were a small thing then. How many years has it been?”

“Seven.”

“So long,” he said, in a way that suggested seven years was to him like as many minutes. “You’re either very foolish or very bold, to offer yourself to the Hunt again after eluding us so long.”

Despite the unease his words inspired, Aster detected none of the duplicity Philomena had ascribed to him. He was straightforward enough, and he looked her evenly in the face as he passed her flask to one of his fellows, a woman with a complication of iron-colored braids coiling at the back of her neck.

Aster swallowed. “The only thing I’m offering is wine.”

“You ventured out merely to offer us libations?”

“To see you. To prove to myself that you were real.”

“Ah, so bold rather than foolish,” he said. “We are quite real, and to see us is to ride with us. Which you already knew.”

“Yes.”

“Then you also know that no mortal rides with the Hunt and lives to speak of it after.”

Aster watched her flask making the rounds, then grumbled, “I have.”

“You,” the huntsman said crisply, “were stolen. Something I’m not inclined to take kindly to. Yet here you stand, as you are, blameless enough.” He stared at her, and she saw a flash of uncertainty in the pale eyes. “Whatever it is that’s made you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“You’re not quite mortal. Your spirit—yes, I see it—sits strangely in your body.”

Aster had no idea what this meant but understood innately. Whatever had happened that night had not left her as she had been before it. What she’d seen would not be unseen, and she’d long since had one foot on the other side of life.

She cast her eye over the rest of the party, which seemed to change in size when she looked away and back. Men and women of every sort bearing spears and bows and muskets. The dogs wove panting through the legs of unconcerned horses whose manes and tails drifted like smoke. All of it felt familiar, like a homecoming.

“What are you hunting?” she asked.

“A great boar, the size of a bear and twice as strong, with many tusks and hooves like razors.”

She was shocked that it only made her want to laugh, which should have been unthinkable. One didn’t laugh at those from the Otherworld; one didn’t laugh at the Wild Hunt, and certainly not at its master. Yet here he stood, piquing her interest with a boast, and all she could think of was that boy with his awkward mustache telling her of his fencing accolades, or a young man the night before who’d thought she would be floored by his gift for consuming vast amounts of brown ale without becoming ill.

Impressive, no doubt.

She didn’t want, or need, to be impressed. She had come out here on one of the coldest nights of the year because she wanted something. Now she knew what it was.

“I’ve seen it,” she said.

“An understatement. Though it was so long ago. I wonder if you truly recall it.”

The memory churned fresh and vivid. The creature’s weight bearing down on her, its hot breath, the agony of tusks at her belly. Her hand went to the spot instinctively, and she half expected to find it bleeding afresh. But the scar was old and worn, and it did not even ache.

She followed his gaze into the trees, a hopeful smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I want to join you.”

The huntsman let out a barking laugh.

“What for? Some petty revenge? Do you wish to watch it die?”

The idea was not without appeal. “Can it?”

“In its way. It comes back every year, as we do. It’s no ordinary beast.”

“I’m afraid I’m not either.”

“That’s not a thing to be afraid of.” He chuckled again, though this time it remained caught in his throat as he accepted the flask from another in his party. He drank again, then handed it back to her. “Come then. You will ride with me. Your return is long overdue.”

Aster followed him back to his mount and swung herself up. He joined her in the next moment, settled behind her in the tooled leather saddle. The reins were supple in her hands, and the moment she was settled, the huntsman gave a great cry and a kick and they were off in a whirl of barking dogs and hooves striking ice-hard ground like a hail of stones.

Aster had ridden many times before but never with another person, and the huntsman’s presence just behind her was exciting. Though he was not made of the same ghostly stuff as the others, neither did he belong in this world. His arms caged her in as he urged the horse onward. To say she felt safe would have been a lie; nothing about this was safe. Yet she belonged in the fold of the reckless ride, and soon she wasn’t thinking of safety at all.

The wind rose in a howl before and behind the party as they pressed on through the wood. She saw or heard no quarry. If they did pursue this legendary boar, they gloried in the ride far more than the kill. They rode through turns and twists at speeds no horse should have managed and with agility that defied physicality, unbounded by the world. Reality bent before them, the thin veneer of the living world cracked and brushed aside like snow powder. Something was undone for her, the seams let out to fit at last, and she was open and free to glory in the night as she did in dreams.

They caught no boar that night. Instead, as the sun hinted at its rising with a band of silver on the horizon, the huntsman veered away and rode her straight back to the edge of the forest. When she had slid to the ground, she turned to thank him, hiding her disappointment as she bowed.

“We’ll expect you tomorrow,” he said with a tip of his head.

“I’d return even if you weren’t.”

That thin mouth curved, and he turned his horse to canter off into the trees. He dissolved into moonlight-filtered shadows, but Aster heard the hoofbeats until it was only the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears.

She reached her room just as the sun broke the horizon. She could get an hour or so of sleep before she was expected to rise, but in truth she had never felt more awake in her life. So she left her bed made, kicked off her boots, and sat at the window, loose and airy. The flask, when she removed it from her cloak, was full despite its rounds with the hunting party, and the wine as hot as if it had just been poured.

~*~

 

She sneaked out earlier each night to meet the party at the clearing, or sometimes they found her as she walked, and they began their ride. The boar remained elusive, despite its wake of snapped branches or torn brush, deep swathes of churned earth or hunks of bark ripped away from trunks. For a creature Aster had stumbled upon by chance as a hapless child, it was infuriatingly coy now that she sought it. Adrenaline, at least, was still addictive, the party magnetic and alluring, and all of it more difficult to part with as the sun returned.

On the twelfth and final night, the boar made itself seen, as if it had merely been waiting for a cue. Aster saw it first. Her recollection of it was a fractured sum of sensory parts—a towering hulk of bristled fur and muscle, brief wonder turned to fear, moonlight glinting off curving tusks that shone white with frost, then red with blood, then her own hot pain and cold cold cold as the creature bolted back into the trees with a guttural shriek.

Those parts coalesced over the whole before her. The boar was, as the huntsman had said, enormous and unnatural; its head would nearly reach the withers of the horse she and the huntsman rode. A high crest of hair traveled from between its small, leaf-shaped ears and down its spine; its snout was long and lined with a row of three tusks on each side, the foremost as long as her forearm. Its head swung toward them from the brambles where it stood, its eyes narrow and bright, its hooves raking over the dirt with seeming disdain.

 All wonder, no fear, Aster regarded it and tightened her grip on the reins. The boar spun and fled with shocking speed. In a surge of sound and motion, the party pursued. The hounds were a rolling wave of whipping tails, yowling throats, snapping teeth; the riders and their mounts were even more like smoke or water than they appeared to be at rest. Aster pressed herself nearly flat against the horse’s neck as the huntsman urged it on. Loosed arrows sped past, narrowly missing the boar’s flanks, and the thunderous crack of rifles made her jump as shots flew wide and filled the air with the acrid scent of heated powder. All of it was chaotic and utterly without order, not at all the way of things she had learned, and it ended when the boar ran itself into the dead-end of a sheer rock face. It turned to face them, frothing and contemptuous, and charged.

The huntsman was ready. Aster wasn’t sure where the spear had come from—whether handed over from one of his fellows or spun out of smoke and ash—but it was in his hand, and then it was in the boar, pierced expertly through its side and pinning it to the ground. It didn’t struggle or scream; the only uproar was from the hunting party, which threw up a cry of delight and a long blow of the horn. The boar just lay there motionless as if already dead, as if this was a game and it was following a rule. Aster looked into its blank empty eye and at the wound oozing blood around the spear shaft.

All she could think to say was, “Do you ever grow bored of chasing the same creature year after year?”

“The boar knows its part. But the hunt is never quite the same. There is other game to be found.” The huntsman dismounted and approached his kill, looking up at her with a cryptic, wry twist of his mouth. “That’s always very interesting—to see what those do. If they still try to get away, if they drop down dead of fright. You’re the only one to come chasing after us instead.”

She watched as he worked the spear free of the flesh. “What happens now?”

“We celebrate,” he said, passing her the spear, which dripped with ichor the color of quicksilver. Despite its size and heft—despite the fact that it had felled the boar in a single stroke—it was shockingly light and nimble in her hand, like it only half existed. She turned it over curiously. “We return to the Otherworld at daybreak, until next midwinter. And you go home.”

Aster shivered deep inside, her spirit tightening, like it had been covered in goosebumps. “I thought you would try to make me stay.”

“Why would you think that?”

It had been bothering her every night since, yet she continued to come, as if she half wished they would. “Something you said. That I’d been stolen from the hunt. Your hospitality has been most appreciated, but it must not be without motive.”

“You’re more shrewd than you let on. That matter was settled.”

“‘Settled’. How was it settled?”

“Carelessly, but well enough.” He gave her another strange look, as if enjoying a private joke. “If we wished you to stay now, you’d need to be dead. Is that what you would like?”

He said it so plainly—you’d need to be dead—that it hardly held the air of a threat. It was simple fact. “No.”

“Then you’ll live, and you’ll go home.”

 The huntsman gestured to a few of his party to see to the animal. A bonfire was set, the flask passed around, the boar dressed and trussed. It felt like an end to something, but by the time Aster returned to her room to shed her sweaty hunting clothes, she had no hope of figuring out what it was.

 

~*~

 

Spring arrived in fitful, fruitless starts. The new growth of leaves on the trees lacked their usual luster. The grass that sprouted never quite lost the sickly yellow tinge of late autumn. Garden flowers sprouted halfway before retreating in on themselves, curled and fearful. Even the moss that grew between the cracks on palace stone seemed to begrudge its own life, as if it couldn’t wait to perish.

By summer, as the air sizzled with relentless heat and withered all it touched, Aster began to find mold in odd places around the palace: growing on banisters or over doorways, hiding between the pages of a book and behind a slightly peeled corner of arabesque wallpaper, slipping long grayish fingers up between floorboards that had been solid and shining only days before. Her parents either didn’t notice or didn’t care. The offending books were thrown away, the wallpaper plastered back in place, the floors covered with new, plush rugs. Her concerns were met with a chorus of strident apathy.

“I don’t see anything amiss.”

“Don’t look at it.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“Just find somewhere else to sit.”

They were masters of ignoring the things they didn’t wish to see. If something was unappealing to them, it might as well have not been real. Aster began to wonder if this was how they had always seen her—if she was a thing with a bit of rot that they had found a way to make presentable and to cover up or hide when they could not. Aside from her sneaky forays to the forest, she hadn’t left the palace grounds in years. Not so much as a trip to the nearest towns.

By autumn, the seasons bled together entirely. Her walks with Philomena were grim affairs through dry bare trees and leaf-strewn dirt pounded flat. Winter arrived earlier than ever, and with it, something her mother and father could not turn away from.

 

~*~

 

The prince consort was the first in the palace to fall ill; the queen followed a few days later. The physicians who attended them could find no physical cause for the loss of appetite, the confusion, the torpidity, or the sleep that eventually left their bodies cold and stiff, blue-tinged as if in a living death. They were sequestered in their wing of the palace nonetheless, and Aster left to face a swarm of advisors scrambling to keep things from entirely falling apart.

After a sleepless night poring over reports, records, and requests, she could make only one conclusion: under her parents’ rule, the kingdom had been slipping into ruin for years, and they’d known it, and they’d done nothing. She longed to say she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she was no longer so naive. Blighted crops that never recovered; swaths of land wasted by yearly drought; people’s livelihoods destroyed, homes lost, fights for resources a daily occurrence. With another difficult winter on the rise, things were more desperate than ever.

Shock swept over her, then outrage, then panic. She wanted to charge into the quarters where the queen and consort slept and demand answers. Had they kept this from her on purpose? Was it a side effect of hiding away the child by which they were so embarrassed? She knew, though, that it was far more obvious: they simply hadn’t given a damn when they could carry on above it all, kept and comfortable, business as usual.

And now they were about to die and leave her an ailing wasteland that they would never have to see. Aster had no idea how to be a leader. All she’d ever been expected to do was keep quiet and act as normal as possible.

Her panic curdled into terror as she lay awake the next night, staring at the frost legging long and thin across her windowpanes. It was nearly midwinter, but of course there would be no festival. There was nothing to celebrate; there hadn’t been anything to celebrate in a very long time. The Hunt would still ride, though. When she thought of that, it was easy to see a way out. She could join them again, the right way, and not have to worry about any of this.

Which would make her exactly the sort of person her parents had raised her to be. The idea of it made her cold all over, like she might die anyway of shame.

Why hadn’t they been ashamed? Why was she the one left to work it out, when they’d known better? Why did she feel she might hate them a little bit, when it was likely the next time she saw them would be at their funeral? It was horrible to have these questions and to know the answers might only make the feeling worse. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Aster shuddered and rolled out of bed. What she wanted most of all was advice, but the advisors didn’t respect or trust her, and she didn’t trust them much either.

She did have another idea, which she’d been toying with for days and talking herself out of every night. There was a woman who lived in the valley through the woods. Aster had heard all sorts of rumors about her, but most distinctly remembered two things: that she was known for having peculiar power, and the look on the prince’s face when the name Grandmother Gauden was mentioned. He paled as if drained of all his blood.

The first thing made her hopeful; the second made her curious. Before she could change her mind, Aster swept out of her room and made for the stables.

 

~*~

 

The cottage in the valley was shockingly easy to find, set between gnarled trees with a plume of smoke issuing from the chimney. It seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. A warm glow of light shone from the windows. Welcoming enough, she thought, and began to tie her mount at a crooked post beside the well.

The door burst open, and several dogs came dashing toward her with wagging tails and yips of excitement. Though startled (not nearly so much as her father’s horse), Aster realized she knew the dogs—and they knew her. They were the same hounds she’d ridden with a year ago, brushed, well-fed, and very eager to greet her. She dropped to a crouch and let them sniff at her and nudge at her pockets to see if she was hiding treats.

A woman stood in the door, watching with her hands resting on the frame.

“Back inside, you unruly lot,” she said, and stepped out. The hounds retreated into the cottage as if nothing was amiss. The woman stared some more, then lifted her chin. “Ah, it’s you again.”

Aster froze, trying to make out the woman’s features, but it was impossible with her backlit against the doorway. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

“Not as well as you seem to know my dogs.” She made an impatient sound and turned back inside. “Come along, we’re not going to do this out here.”

The inside of the cottage was perfectly warm and scented with something that reminded Aster of burning leaves. Well-swept floorboards creaked underfoot; a table before the hearth was covered in an assortment of pots, jars, and bottles; there was a spinning wheel by the window, its spindle wound in pale half-spun fiber; a bow and full quiver were tucked neatly against the far wall. The dogs were already dozing by the fire. As for the woman, Aster was positive this could not be Grandmother Gauden. Despite the bright white of her hair, she looked far too young—hardly older than Aster’s parents. Tall and straight-backed, her arms were bare beneath her cloak and leanly muscled, her beakish nose and wide, supple mouth somewhat too large for her face. She had the same eerie agelessness as the huntsman, and that aura of Otherworldly power.

“I’m looking for a woman called Gauden,” Aster said.

The woman leaned on the edge of the table, studying her.

“You’ve found her.” Her eyes were startling, a gleamy glass-black that seemed to see everything. “You look quite like your father.”

“You’ve met my father?”

“Oh, yes. Very young. Very handsome. Very much a donkey’s ass. Had a great deal of love for you, though.”

Aster shook her head. “I sought you out because I’m in such trouble. My parents—the prince, and the queen—have both fallen—”

“Deathly ill?”  

“People say you’re a great healer. I came to ask for your help.”

Gauden’s pale eyebrows flew up, and she looked away with a slow smile of disbelief. “My, how the cycle continues.”

“Why do you speak as if you know something I don’t?”

“I know many things you don’t.”

“Well then, if you please, tell me what they are. I’m tired and afraid, and if I’m wasting my time, I’d rather you just said so.”

Gauden gestured to the only chair in the room. “Sit.” Aster did, reluctantly, and found it gloriously soft and comfortable. “You have been here before, except at that time you were a corpse. I can see by your expression that at least part of this doesn’t surprise you, so we’re off to a good start.” Here Gauden began to busy herself at the fire, pouring them both a cup of tea as she spoke, stepping carefully around the knot of sprawling canines. “Your father brought you to me to restore your life. I attempted to warn him of the steep cost—you were already in the Otherworld and, I’m told, having a delightful time of it. The prince didn’t care, and readily mortgaged the well-being of his kingdom in return.”

“What? Why would he do such a thing?”

“I believe his exact words were ‘damn the kingdom,’ so long as you lived. Seemed quite steep to me, but I’ve seen many mortals do strange, stupid things out of love. He would not be turned away. So I gave him what he wished, and the payment was accepted. Herne wasn’t thrilled by the trade, the antlered cheeseparer” —Aster didn’t know the name, but several of the dogs lifted their heads, tails thumping on the floor— “but I believe in the end even he has been satisfied with the terms.” Gauden narrowed her eyes at Aster over the rim of her teacup. “You look well. How is the kingdom faring?”

“Horribly!” Aster’s cup tipped out of her hand and shattered on the floor; Gauden eyed the shards of earthenware sadly. “It’s been faring horribly for years! I thought it was only my parents’ neglect—you’re telling me this is my fault?”

“Hardly. You aren’t the one who made such a deal. I daresay you haven’t been the one looking away as things have fallen apart since.”

“But— if it was an agreement, why has it taken so long?”

“You haven’t grown up all at once have you? No, of course not. Growth is slow. Life is slow. And so is decay. So is the death of a kingdom badly kept.”

Aster’s throat tightened. She was glad she’d dropped her tea, because she couldn’t have stomached it. “You don’t even care.”

“My child, human beings are foolish, appalling creatures. Amusing, it’s true—why, your arrival tonight was most unexpected and inconvenient, and now I’m having a wonderful time.”

“I’m not.”

“I see that. It was no trick. I swear it, whatever that’s worth to you. I have no malice toward humankind.” Gauden sighed and leaned forward as if to level with the obstinate girl before her. Her voice was almost gentle. “Do you believe the prince would have made a different decision if he’d truly heard my warning?”

The question was far too easy to answer. Of course he wouldn’t. Still, there was nothing wonderful or amusing about the fact that her father had entered into a thoughtless bargain with the Otherworld in desperation. Nor did she see any appeal in living with the knowledge that her life had been paid for with the gradual death of an entire kingdom by forces no human hand could rein.

“Is there no way to undo it?” she asked instead.

Gauden tilted her head. “Herne may be plied with a bargain.”

“The huntsman.”

“He was the offended party, if we want to get technical—I merely brokered the exchange.”

“You’re saying I need to join the Hunt properly. I need to die.”

“It would be most straightforward, but, as someone who knows him too well, I will let you in on a secret—he can’t resist a challenge. I remember, very long ago, Herne plundered a different graveyard every midwinter to lure unsuspecting souls into the Hunt. Soon enough the mortals caught on and began magicking their burial grounds against him and his party. But still he tried! That’s about the time I left the Hunt—he was making a fool of himself, and I fancied a quieter life.”

“You were a member of the Hunt?”

“My dear, I led it by his side. He’s lucky I still Iet him take the dogs.” Gauden glanced at the hounds and sighed. “Centuries passed before he accepted that there are places in these woods even he can’t go and sought other means of recruitment. So challenge him. Set your terms and make it a matter of his pride. He’ll be unable to resist.”

Aster considered this. “Why are you helping me?”

“I also have difficulty refusing a request. And I’d like to see Herne humbled for once. He’s too used to getting his way.”

“Thank you, then. Truly. This was… educational.”

Gauden tutted. “I’d wish you luck, but it won’t help. You’re clever enough. You’ll figure something out.” She waved a hand and moved toward a cabinet. “Now, clean up that mess you’ve made, and I’ll pour some fresh tea. It will keep you warm on your ride back—would be a perfect waste to have you freeze to death now.”

 

~*~

 

Aster did not seek the Hunt until the twelfth night of midwinter. She was in no mood to be tempted and flattered by Herne and his hunters. Tonight, her only intention was to settle the business of eight winters before. They awaited in the clearing as always, as if she hadn’t spent the last week and a half ignoring their call. One of the hounds trotted up and nipped affectionately at her belt.

“Ah, you see, she has not forgotten us,” Herne said from atop his steed, addressing the others with a superior lilt. “Though” —his attention landed squarely on her as he dismounted and approached— “your absence has been noted. A glut of partying at the palace, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.” She had been busy, no doubt—arguing with advisors and convincing the head of treasury to spend the festival budget on relief for the towns. It wouldn’t be nearly enough, but it was a start. “You haven’t been honest with me, huntsman.”

“I’m sure I have been.”

“Then you left some things out. I spoke with Gauden. She told me what the cost of my life was. What you took as your ‘settlement’.”

Herne let out a long sigh and tossed his head. “Ah, that.”

“That. The kingdom is in tatters. The land is ruined. My parents are—” She refused to say it. “Now that I know, I can’t let it continue. I’ve come to challenge you.”

There was a low murmur from the hunting party, who watched the exchange with the mild interest of someone watching mediocre dinner theater. As for Herne, he looked suddenly more intrigued. The air around him sizzled with that cold, metallic musk she remembered. “Go on.”

“I’ll run with the Hunt. If I’m able to slay the boar before you, you’ll consider my father’s debt paid. The land will be returned to its former state. I get a chance to fix the mess they’ve made.”

“And if I slay it?”

“Then I’ll join the Hunt for good, and you may spirit me away to the Otherworld. If this was all because I was stolen back—you’ll have what you want.”

“Why the fuss?” Herne rocked back on his heels. “Return to us now and I’ll do as you ask. Even exchange.”

“I’d rather take my chances and keep my life. Surely you’re not worried?”

He scoffed, though she could tell he was enjoying himself. A good thing; he didn’t think he could lose. “Very well. You’ll need a horse, and a weapon, as I see you’ve brought neither despite your intentions.”

Herne gestured at the party, and before Aster’s eyes, wisps of frosted mist came together, resolving bit by bit into equine shape. A horse stood at the edge of the party, black as soot and outfitted for a hunt. Steam plumed from its new-formed nose as she drew up to it and touched its flank, cold and smooth as fine marble.

“And this,” said Herne, who had crept up behind her on feet silent as a cat’s. She turned her head to look at him—he was offering her the spear he had favored last time. It was beautifully carved, the blade sharpened to a cruel point, the lugs ostentatiously inlaid with silver and sapphire.

She accepted it with a dubious look. “What will you use?”

“The bow.”

Longer range, she thought sourly, but had no complaint of his generosity. She’d seen the spear in action; it was a good weapon. She mounted her horse, its weight shifting eagerly beneath her as she clutched the spear in her right hand, and waited. The horn blared behind her, and they were off.

The horse was all liquid agility and weightless confidence. Branches tore past, stones rolled out of their path, and the moon shone bright over it all. Though Aster had ridden with the Hunt before, doing so on her own terms, on her own steed, was unspeakably exhilarating. She had to fight not to let that feeling distract her from her plan. She’d given Gauden’s advice much thought and come to the conclusion that she would need to employ a little trickery of her own if this was to work.

They seemed to ride for hours, north first, then eastward, though time and direction in the woods was strange on nights like this, and she didn’t trust her sense of either. The huntsman was uncharacteristically sober, attentive to the changing landscape with frightful intensity that made her see why ghosts feared the forest so when he roamed freely. She kept the same focus, chin and mouth tucked safely into her riding cowl, eyes teary with the cold. The trees were thinning out, the wind picking up—and there. A sudden flash of bristly gray, a curve of monstrous yellowed tusk. The boar had emerged from a space between two fallen trees as if from thin air, fully formed and barreling furiously away. Aster’s breath caught in her throat—the timing was too perfect, the location too right—and she urged her horse onward, paying no mind as the huntsman did the same.

It was not long before she and Herne had pulled away from the rest of the group. At first she thought it incidental but soon realized that they were falling back on purpose, spectators as much as participants, hoofbeats fading but ever-present as the dogs’ enthusiastic din. She peeled off further still, pushing the horse to its limits until they flew inches off the ground. The boar needed little coaxing. As she neared its right flank, hollering and brandishing her spear, it veered sharply away to head eastward, just as she wanted it to.

Aster knew the moment Herne realized where they were heading and what she was doing. He’d fallen behind but was close enough that she heard the sharp intake of breath, the grunt of displeasure, the sound of his heels striking hard at his mount’s sides. There was a high twang behind her, and then the flash of an arrow zipping past. It struck the boar’s shoulder, just a nick, and fell to the ground.

A ring of tall, upright stones came into view on the horizon. The necropole was close. She’d done her research—the oldest burial ground near the forest, and one of the most heavily magicked against the Hunt’s intrusions. She was gasping for breath as they thundered after the boar, which was now on a direct course for the necropole. Another half a minute and they would cross the threshold, and Herne would be able to go no further. He was releasing arrows in an impossible volley now, hot on her heels. One struck home, burying itself in the boar’s flank, but the creature all but ignored it.

It was just outside the perimeter of the necropole now, and she mere steps behind. Aster could feel the air changing, gathering itself like the build of pressure before a storm. The boar had crossed pell mell through the stones. She raised the spear, primed herself to strike.

The horse beneath her came to a violent halt as if it had run into a wall. Aster felt her body give a brutal lurch, and her ears popped painfully so that her own cry of confusion was only a muffled, distant sound. Her body flew forward, spear still clutched tight, arcing through the air toward the boar. The spear hit true—piercing from above, into the heart, and the creature dropped like a stone. Her body landed heavily, lifelessly, beside it.

Aster watched this from the edge of the necropole, still atop her horse, a spirit outside her body.

She should have panicked, probably. This was far stranger than looking down on her small bloodied corpse all those years ago. Her hand was still wrapped around the spear shaft where it stuck out of the boar, and her hood had fallen away over her grim, determined face. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips chapped, her eyes open and staring at the sky.

Herne rode up beside her, careful to stop short of the necropole border. “Quite a pretty tableau, huntress.”

She snorted, disbelieving, wondering if she should be embarrassed. “This wasn’t quite my plan.”

“Yet still a success. You have won your bargain, and I am obliged to honor it.”

The longer she stared at her body, hardly more than ten feet away, she understood. The Hunt could not pass into the necropole. She had joined the Hunt many years ago, and again tonight, but only in spirit. Her body was another matter entirely.

“The spell fades with the sun,” the huntsman said with knowing disdain. “You’ll be able to return to yourself at dawn, if you choose to.”

“Of course I do,” she said, masking her relief. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You could choose to join us. Your request would still be honored, on the matter of your father’s debt. The scourge on the kingdom—and all that entails—will end.”

It was more tempting than she would admit. She had rarely felt more alive than when she rode with the Hunt, dancing on the edge of life and death. And yet she hadn’t lived very much at all.

“There are too many things I’d like to do,” she said after a moment. “To resign myself to a half-life of shadows and moonlight before I’ve done them would be dreadful.”

“You seem to enjoy shadows and moonlight well enough.”

“Only when I’ve had enough of the sun.” Aster expelled a long sigh. “When I have—if your invitation stands—I’ll find you.”

“And we will be waiting.”

He took her hand and pressed a kiss there on her knuckles, his lips and the supple leather of his gloves warm on her spirit skin, then rode off to rejoin his party. He left her the spear. She supposed he hadn’t really had a choice but liked to think he would have anyway. She would keep it close and well cared for, and one day—when she was old, when she’d done all she needed to and seen all she wished—she would return it. She would stay.

But first, there was a matter of a kingdom and the life she owed to it. As the first rays of light broke the horizon, Aster walked into the necropole to claim what was hers.