THE FOREST LORD By Susan Krinard

And the likely escape of the enemy.

Hartley lay still until his body demanded a deeper rest. The pain faded into an oblivion that passed for sleep.

“My lord?”

The whispered voice wakened him. Tod crouched over him, hand hovering above his face. Tears filled the hob’s eyes.

Tears. Like a mortal.

That shock alone roused Hartley. His body still hurt, but the pain might linger for days as he cast off the effects of the Cold Iron he’d absorbed.

“My lord?” Tod repeated. “You saved Tod.”

Hartley winced. “I merely repaid you for saving me. You warned me of the trap.”

Tod shivered. “A cage, with great teeth of Iron. The man was waiting.”

A cage. A trap. Hartley fought to his knees. “We must find a way to destroy it.”

“It is gone. The man took it, so the beasts say.”

Hartley listened, and he heard what Tod had already learned. The man had indeed gone and taken his trap with him.

Renewed sickness washed over him. “I must… speak to Eden,” he said. “Rest.”

Tod’s hand brushed his arm with a feather touch. “Do not go to the man place, my lord.”

“I must.” Using the support of the shrubbery about him, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered from the hollow. Tod moaned behind him.

With but half his usual energy, Hartley crept toward the house. His muscles were flimsy flower stems, and his heartbeat the tap of a dead leaf against a branch. Now he knew how mortals felt in their frail, short-lived bodies.

But he knew more than the feel of a mortal body. As he walked, reeling from tree to tree, he relived the moment when the arrow had nearly buried itself in Eden’s head. The thud of the point hitting the tree had seemed like the wail of the world’s ending.

Eden had nearly died.

Eden. Dead. Because of him.

He stopped and flung back his head and gave a cry that set the leaves to showering about him and the ground to trembling under his feet.

If Eden had died, his world would have ended. It mattered not if he lived a thousand thousand years, here or in Tir-na-nog.

Without Eden, endless life would become endless torment.

He moved again, blindly. But with each step, his vision grew more clear, and he saw the path before him.

He must tell her.

The rightness of it filled him, even as he trembled with the realization of what it meant.

Eden must be told the complete truth of who he was. Only then could he know if the things he contemplated were possible.

If he could forgo his homecoming, and Donal’s.

If he could give up everything for Eden.

If she could… love him.

Fear choked him as it had not when he had been so near his own death. When Eden learned the truth, she might hate him. Hate him for the past, for his deception, for his very inhuman nature.

He might lose her forever.

The thought was too monstrous to hold. He continued down the fell and cloaked himself in shadow as he reached the garden gate.

She would know, tonight, or he would give himself to the hunter’s Iron.

The fool. The wretched, bird-witted fool. Claudia looked at the clock once more. It was well past midnight, and still he had not come with proof of her enemy’s death.

She turned from the window and paced the length of the drawing room and back again. All the time Eden had believed her to be visiting friends in London she had been seeking—painstakingly and with much frustration—for a certain man. She did not know his name, or even his everyday occupation. Her search began in blindness. But she knew she must find him: a hunter skilled and intelligent enough to kill the monster of Hartsmere.

Such men were uncommon in England, where game laws and land ownership were so restricted. A mere poacher would not do. And the man she hired must also follow her instructions to the letter… and believe the wild tales she told without question.

Miraculously, she had found the perfect candidate. In the intervals between her searches, she had attended a few parties held by friends. At one such event she had spoken to a clergyman with whom she was somewhat acquainted, and they had fallen into a curious conversation.

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