Eighteen years of life and ten summers of the hunt were enough to teach Demiric, son of the chief, that the stag before him was a rare trophy indeed.

The majestic creature weaved between a web of low slung branches and thick patches of morning-bright fog. It looked his way, then stilled like stone.

Dem notched an arrow, muscles taut and aim ready, and a breath later let it fly. The shaft cut silently through the air.

He missed.

By a long shot.

The arrow thunked against a solidified black trunk, splintering into shards.

“Runt’s foot,” he cursed through clenched teeth, expecting the animal to flee.

Instead, the stag dropped lifeless to the ground.

Dem stood and pivoted, searching the wood for another hunter. Had someone followed him? He thought he was the only one in the hunt to cross the mudflat and hike above the falls. No, no one was there—

He returned to his crouch and waited.

Somewhere beyond the kill, a young woman with a bow emerged and picked her way between trees and through the underbrush.

Her hair was a curtain of night, thick and dark, falling to the small of her back—except for a single crown of braid, plaited with luxurious strands of silver and purple. If that telltale feature didn’t convince Dem of what he suspected, the polished moon clasp fastening her cloak at her shoulder did.

Grvani. What was a Grvani doing on his land. . .

An atrocity and blight to his hunt, if there ever was one.

“I hardly think the animal is worth the price you will have to pay for trespassing on Rokka land, merria.” He spoke in Grvani as he stepped out of hiding and walked toward her. His words came slow and measured, but he hoped it was heard as a tone of warning rather than as one clumsy with her language.

She startled from her deer inspection. In one swift movement, her bow was up, loaded, and pointed — directly at Demiric’s nose.

It took less than a heartbeat for her to realize she, too, stared at the glinty end of an arrow.

The standoff was sure to last until one of their arms gave out from the tension.

“Merria? A mountain rat is calling me merria?” She seethed. “That endearment in your tongue is a smear in mine. And I did not know I crossed over. I saw no markers.”

He watched her carefully for signs of untruth, but the Grvani were known for their shifty eyes and it would be impossible to tell. Hers, however, watched him steadily.

They were bright gold. And almost metallic. Eyes the color of rolling lowland fields at harvest, reflecting an autumn lightning storm.

How long would they stand here like this? Until the kill atrophied between them?

He felt a familiar burn crawl up his arm. He would not last so long, he thought irritably. His bowstring was fresh, and thus far too tight to hold for any length of time.

“Let us talk. I will put down my bow,” he said as he moved to do so. But the movement was a mistake.

There was no time measurable between the sound of her arrow flying and the sting of it sinking into the flesh of his right chest. He made a strange sound — a strained, deep exhale.

She had let go on impulse of survival, but the moment her hand had loosed the string, his words sunk in.

“Oh no! I am so sorry!” She fell forward in shock, scrambling toward him as he stumbled to the ground. “I thought you were going to shoot me!”

“At least your aim was off,” he mumbled, in his own tongue this time, as she fretfully settled him on his back. He watched her worried frown float above him as his vision grew dim and murky, like the tepid waters of Brackish Lake.

Did she guess who I am? He wondered as waves of pain rose up and oblivion pulled him down.