Excerpt: Witch Hunter

When I awoke, I was alone. Jaim stood at the window, sheathed once again in black leather. I sat up, shoving off the blanket he must have covered me with and he looked at me. Just Jaim, my Jaim, had been replaced once again by the Hunter. Hard and cold. Deadly. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as if I were staring down the maw of a dangerous beast rather than looking at a face I had grown so quickly to cherish.

“It'll be mid-night soon,” he said, turning back to the window.

I shivered. Retrieved my clothes and dressed quickly. I wanted... I bit the inside of my lip, banished the thought. What I wanted didn't matter in the least. And yet, I couldn't keep myself from asking. “Will you be careful?”

Jaim turned dark eyes to me and I felt suddenly a child. A fool. “A Hunter who fears death finds it.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat and nodded. I approached him on wobbly legs, but an arms length away, his voice stopped me cold. “Don't. Leave it in the past, Airon.”

“But--”

He shook his head. “We said our goodbyes. Leave it at that.”

My voice was choked, full of tears my eyes refused to shed. “And if I won't go with Reys?”

His face was colder than winter wind. “If they found you, what you saw done to me would be nothing by comparison. My family has a saying: Only the dead are spared the suffering of life.” A knife appeared in his hand, not the black blade of a Hunter, but a polished steel that caught the light of the fire as it spun through his fingers in a whirl. For a heartbeat, two, his face softened, his eyes grew sad. His voice was barely more than a harsh whisper, a plea. I remembered that his family had managed to make even him beg, in the end. “Please don't make me kill you.”

And then the mask returned and his eyes went dead again. The blade vanished back to wherever he had secreted it, and he turned back to the window.

I sat on the cot and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, shaking despite the heat of the fire he must have roused in the hearth for me.