Osmond grits his teeth and looks down, focusing on the cobblestones as they pass. A glittering trail of ice marks the exact path the fey took to reach the castle, and the Wild Hunt retraces their steps perfectly. As they step back onto their own tracks, the ice melts away as if the fairies were never here.

“That won’t do, child of Dale,” and the fey prince yanks Osmond up at an awkward angle, his hand once more back around his neck, scruffing him like a disobedient cat. “You should properly say your goodbyes,” he chides, false concern lining his tone, “Don’t you want to see your Iron-Blood home one last time?”

“Fuc—” he chokes on a breath as the hand tightens a fraction more, claws digging in enough to draw another trickle of blood, the “fuck off” he was planning to spit lodged in his throat.

“No.” And the word hangs in the air, an oppressive weight to the order that would have had Osmond choking for a breath even without the hand around his throat. “Behave, Dandelion. It would be such a shame if I had to kill you.”

He glares but holds his tongue. Nothing is really stopping the fey prince from doing just that. And, if Osmond dies before revealing the location of his grandfather, the deal will be incomplete, and the magic binding the Unseelie from action will break. The Wild Hunt on his family would resume, and Osmond would have sacrificed everything for nothing.

“We have an accord?”

Osmond nods, not sure he could speak even if he wanted to. The fairy hums and lets go of him once more. “A verbal response, if you will.”

“I’m not making another deal with you.”

The fey chuckles, golden eyes boring down at him from behind the black wolf mask; this close to the prince, it's clear his eyes are even more unusual than those of his compatriots. His pupil shattered like a broken star, the color far beyond the color Osmond knows as “gold”, but it is the only word that comes close. If Osmond hadn’t been one hundred percent positive he was facing a fey, he might have thought those eyes belonged to a god.

“Still being clever, I see.”

He doesn’t give that clear taunt a response, just staring resolutely out at the home he’s leaving behind. The fey is right about one thing, it would be a waste not to see it one last time. It’s a bittersweet feeling, to finally see the town he had watched change over the years from his bedroom window.

It is larger than he thought, with spiraling streets and crooked alleyways. He can almost imagine those festival days he used to watch, with colorful banners and garlands, dancing and song on the wind. It’s a shame he will never get to be in one.

With no more comments from the fey or the crowd, their slow procession through town is in silence, with only the flicking fires, the sound of hooves on stone, and the panicked breathing of the locals haunting their steps.

All too soon—or maybe all too late—they reach the broken, towering gates of Dale Castle. The large metal-reinforced wooden doors are knocked off their hinges, hanging precariously at awkward angles, as if a tornado had blown through the town and not the consequences of the Wild Hunt’s ride.

One of the doors now has a living and thriving fruit tree growing from it, and the other is coated in a heavy layer of frost. Destruction and life come so easily to the fey, as if they are the same word to them. While the carnage is hard to look at, the destruction is almost settling. It assures Osmond that he did have to do this, that the alternative could have been much worse.

“Well, little Dandelion?” the Unseelie prince says as he pulls the Wild Hunt to a stop right outside the gates to the still-smoldering castle that used to be his home. There is no going back now.

“Are you going to tell us where our quarry lies,” the fey continues, “or will I have to return you so soon after stealing you away?”

Osmond grits his teeth hard enough that his jaw aches. The prince had just declared his intentions of not giving Osmond up, and even made a public show about how powerless he was in the fey’s hands. And now, here, at the slightest inconvenience, he is threatening to return Osmond as if he is just a doll the fey have grown bored of.

However, the thing that truly angers Osmond is the fact he can’t let that happen, that he has to keep himself interesting enough to not be tossed away, and that he might even have to beg for this twisted fey’s attention, if only to keep it off his family.

The cobblestones have given way to rough, worn dirt, a sign of a well-traveled road. He keeps his gaze fixed on a lost spinning top lodged in the soil. He will not give the fey prince the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, even if he wants nothing more than to punch that smug grin off his face.

“North,” Osmond bites, trying to fight down a sudden wave of nausea. He knew that he would have to tell, of course, but it suddenly felt far more real. The reality finally hits him that he’s not only going to help the fey, but that he’ll be the sole cause of his grandpa’s death.

“In the forest,” he continues, all of the familiar tall tales of his grandfather’s exploits running on a loop inside of his head, piecing together scraps of stories to cobble together a secret he was never outright told. “Toward the western mountains, in the ruins of Merica. He has a base there in a broken tower in the middle of a lake. Says it used to be the old feyer headquarters.”

The prince’s smile twists into something too sharp to be human. “Hiding right under our noses… For a rat, he’s certainly gutsy.”

‘A rat you couldn’t find for over a hundred years,’ he snarks back, in his head alone, obviously. Osmond might be a bit rash and hot-blooded, but he’s not an idiot.

“Today we hunt the blood of a traitor!” the prince calls, raising the Echoing Horn once more into the air, the embedded pearls glinting in the midday sun.

All of the gathered fey cheer, raising weapons high as they echo back, “Today we hunt!”

There are only twenty of them, and considering the dead he saw littering their path, they couldn’t have numbered more than fifty when the Wild Hunt first arrived. That was all it took—fifty fey to destroy a castle guarded by hundreds of feyers.

“To the Fluxxen Forest!” the prince orders as the elk bucks, icy form shifting and rippling. Osmond flails, starting to slide off the saddle as the steed begins to change, bones of ice and fur of snow shifting and growing, melting in places and reforming in others. It would be impressive if Osmond wasn’t currently tumbling toward the ground.

A now annoyingly familiar hand clutches the back of his jacket, pulling him up, coughing and spluttering, easily tossing him back in place in front of the fey prince.

His ears ring from the sudden vertigo of nearly being bucked off. They are no longer riding an elk. Instead, the ice construct has shifted into the form of a towering bear. Osmond doesn’t even begin to question the fey logic of willingly shifting a steed into a slower creature, but he's not going to complain. In fact, he prefers the bear. There’s far more room on the saddle, allowing him to sit somewhat comfortably in his awkward, slung position. And even if it's not true, it still feels a bit safer, like he isn't about to slide off at any second.

Despite being quietly thankful for his new riding situation, Osmond is more hyperaware of the hand still lingering on his upper back. Slowly, it slides up, resting once more on the exposed skin of his neck.

Osmond can’t help the shiver that shakes down his frame, the cold hand now associated heavily with a sense of being trapped. The prince’s grip is loose, just a brush of fingers along the soft hairs at his nape, but it stays there, an unspoken threat that if he falls off again, his rescue will not be as kind.

“Hold on tight, Dandelion. Wouldn’t want you to blow away on a wayward breeze,” the Unseelie warns with a tone far too cheery for what is about to happen. Some rather choice words swim across Osmond’s mind, and the temptation is strong, but he knows better than to fight the fey when his hand rests so close to major arteries.

The prince doesn’t seem to expect an answer anyway, his attention shifting off Osmond to settle on the distant horizon. Golden eyes bore into the hazy blue sky as if he could see their destination already.

The fairy smiles, canines even sharper than Osmond recalls. The haunting sound of the Echoing Horn returns once more, and as one, the Unseelie race off, giddy yells and chiming songs accompanying every step.

And the Wild Hunt truly begins.