Huntsman's Prey by Marie Hall Page A

have questions. Who was the broker? How had she managed to escape the obvious trap? Was she really being honest about this with him? That was perhaps the one that bugged him most.
    But she was practically skipping along beside him and he just wasn’t in the mood to spar today. He’d ask his questions soon enough.
    The path they walked seemed to stretch on into infinity, they were still within the shadowy forest, and every so often when Aeric looked down there were holes. At some point they should exit the trees, and yet, it almost seemed to him as if they walked a giant circle. Rather than going out, the bridge was subtly looping in on itself.
    So what initially appeared to be a straight shot out was actually not.
    Stopping, Aeric grabbed the pocketknife out of the sheath in his boot he always carried and cut a notch into the thick branch of the tree nearest him.
    “What are you doing?”
    Flipping the blade down, he shoved it into his pocket. “Does any of this feel familiar to you?”
    She looked around them. “How so?”
    Jerking his chin for her to keep walking with him, he licked his canine. “Like we’re moving in circles.”
    “I’m not sure actually.”
    “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “So tell me, Lissa, how is it that I was able to touch you that first day? I felt your kiss?” Her face turned a bright sheet of scarlet. “Now you’re as solid as shadow.”
    She sighed. “It is like that with me sometimes. I cannot control this body and I’m not sure why. It is why I switch to feline, that one stays fully corporeal. Does this bother you?” She glanced down at herself.
    “Not as much as it did. I just find it different,” he admitted truthfully.
    A puff of smoke enveloped her, until she was once again the powder blue ball of fur. Her tail swished sensuously back and forth. “Better?”
    Not really. He actually preferred the woman to the cat, regardless that parts of her were sometimes missing. But he shrugged instead, not wishing to put those thoughts into words.
    “Look.” She pointed with her paw, when he turned to look, he immediately noticed the notch in the wood.
    He traced the roughened edge of it. “We’re lower.”
    “What?” She jumped onto the railing of the bridge, shoving her black little nose closer.
    “See.” He tapped his finger to it. “When I cut into it, I did it at eye level.”
    “It’s at your jaw line now.”
    He nodded. “We’re not actually walking in circles. We’re going down.”
    “Like a spiral staircase.”
    “Similar. Come on,” he started forward, “let’s see where this leads.”
    She trotted alongside him for a while before he asked again, “Who’s the broker?”
    “A man.” Her eyes looked shuttered.
    “Just a man? No, I don’t believe that. Not here. He’s called the broker, he’s important. So who is he?”
    She sighed and hung her head, her whiskers twitched as she said, “legends call him many names. Trickster. Coyote. Loki—”
    “Bloody hell, you made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin?” He wanted to smack his forehead. Hard. “Why would you go to him? Of all people, Lissa, not him.”
    It made Aeric sick to even think of what he’d owe the devil in exchange for freedom from the pits. No one ever made a deal with that imp and walked away unscathed.
    Many stories in Earth, about the lore and truths of Kingdom were mostly bald-faced lies. But not his. Rumpelstiltskin was as nasty as they came.
    “It was the only way to get you out of there. Would you rather I’d just left you to rot?”
    “Yes!” he glowered, and immediately felt contrite when she sank on her haunches and curled into herself. “No. Damn, Lissa. I am not one who enjoys being beholden to anyone, but especially not him. It is dangerous to owe him anything.”
    “I’m sorry, but when I saw you trapped that way, I panicked and he was the only way I could see us getting out of there.”
    She had already been out. Truth was, she could have left him at any point. But