Read the Free First Chapter of Bride of the Briar Beast
Chapter One: Hunger Season
By midwinter, the air tasted like iron.
My breath came out in pale bursts that froze on the scarf at my mouth. Each step sank through old snow, then hit the frozen dirt beneath with a dull thud that vibrated up my shins. The Briarwood pressed close on both sides. Dark trunks. Gray sky. Nets of thorn branches that looked ready to fall at a touch.
I had walked this path so many times that my boots knew where to land, even when my thoughts slid somewhere else. Hunger made thinking easy. One track. Find meat. Bring it home. Keep Mira’s ribs from showing more than mine.
My stomach twisted on itself again. I pressed a hand flat over the wool at my belly and ignored it. Hunger did not care if I paid attention. It only sat there and gnawed.
Northvale’s woods had always been stingy. This year they turned mean.
I paused near a fallen pine and listened. Wind sighed through the high branches. Snow whispered when it dropped from a limb. Nothing else. No crack of hooves. No soft tread of paws. The forest had pulled every living thing deeper under its ribs.
The sight of my own footprints behind me made my throat tighten. A staggered line of dents in the snow. The only sign of life on this side of Thornford.
I checked the sky. The light already leaned toward late afternoon, flat and colorless. We did not have enough wood for another night of waiting, not with the heap in our yard shrinking so fast. If I went back now, empty-handed, the whole cottage would listen to my footsteps at the door, then look at my hands.
Brann would smile and tell stories with a hollow voice. Mira would try to say she was not hungry. My own body would shake hard enough to rattle the bedframe.
I drew a breath that burned my lungs and pushed farther in.
The Briarwood changed the farther you walked from the village boundary. Near Thornford, the trees wore a patchwork of charms. Bones on strings. Knotted cords. Little iron nails hammered into bark. All the small acts of a frightened people who wanted to believe their doors mattered.
Out here, those bits of hope vanished. No charms, only trees. No worn footpaths either. Plenty of stories, however. Offer your heart to the forest, and it might offer a wish. Stray too near the old house, and it might offer a grave.
Briarhold. The name slid through my mind like a cold finger. I pushed it away.
I had promised Brann I would stay clear of the estate’s boundary. I tried to keep that promise. Hunger pulled harder. Our last rabbit stew had stretched over three days. I had watched Mira’s hands shake when she lifted the spoon.
A crow called somewhere ahead. Harsh. Sharp. I took it as a sign and picked my way between two close-set maples.
Snow lay thinner here, scraped away by wind and fallen limbs. Old tracks scarred the ground. Deer prints. Boar. The wide drag of something heavier. None of them is fresh. I crouched and brushed my glove over a hoof print pressed into frozen mud, trying to guess how old it felt.
A day. Two. Useless.
“Come on,” I muttered to the trees. “Give me one foolish beast.”
The Briarwood stayed quiet.
I straightened and ran my thumb along the bowstring to check for frost. The bow had been my father’s once. Whenever I held it, I tried to picture his hands, not mine. I barely remembered the man who bought this bow, but I remembered the last time he pulled it.
He had missed the deer that day. Missed again the next. Missed until the baron’s men took the bow away and left us with nothing but unpaid debts.
Brann had traded two carvings and his pride to get it back for me when my shoulders grew strong enough to draw it.
The ash arrow rode in the quiver along my spine. Its weight sat differently from the others. Heavier. Solid. I felt it even when I did not reach for it. Some days I wanted to throw it into the river, then walk the bank until the water rubbed it smooth.
I had not. I doubted I ever would. The Story Witch had given that arrow to Brann in the hall, and Brann had pressed it into my hand on my eighteenth nameday. His eyes had looked bruised when he said, “For the day when deer and rabbits stop being the worst thing in the trees.”
That sort of gift clung.
A twig snapped to my right. My body moved before my thoughts caught up. I eased behind a spruce trunk and drew an arrow. Not the ash one. A plain one with fletching that I had fixed three times already.
Breath slowed. Ears opened the cold bit harder when I held still.
Three heartbeats. Four.
Something rustled in the low brush ahead. Too steady for the wind. Too heavy for a rabbit. I leaned around the trunk, bow half drawn, steadying my fingers against the bark.
A shape shifted between the shrubs. Brown. Low to the ground. A haunch. A glint of antler.
My chest went tight. A stag. Not the biggest I had seen, but big enough. Thick neck. Winter coat. Flesh that would roast well over our struggling fire.
“Come on,” I whispered.
The creature stepped clear, and the breath left my lungs.
His antlers looked normal at first. Solid, branching, pale against the dark tangle of brush. Then my eyes tracked down. Vines of thorn wrapped his legs and chest. The barbs lay flat against his fur, like bracelets. Each point shone faintly, as if frost had settled there and refused to melt.
The stag moved without strain. The vines moved with him.
I had never seen anything like that.
He lowered his head and scraped at the snow until he uncovered a patch of dead leaves. My fingers shifted on the bowstring. My mouth filled with saliva. Seven people lived in our cottage. Eight, once you counted Brann’s leg, which always took the biggest portion of heat.
This one animal meant a week with no gnawing belly. Perhaps two. Meat stripped and dried. Bones boiled until they surrendered everything.
I swallowed hard.
Vines of briar. A stag deep in the Briarwood. Stories whispered about guardians near the house, beasts with thorns in their skin. I knew those stories. I also knew Mira’s face when she begged Brann for the end of his bread crust.
My arm trembled. I shut my left eye and let my right do the work. Wind brushed my cheek. I adjusted for it. My fingers relaxed, then released.
The arrow flew.
It sank deep behind the stag’s shoulder. A good shot. Clean. The beast lurched, staggered, then crashed forward into the snow. The thorns that wrapped his body bit into his flesh, then uncurled like they had minds of their own, sliding off into the white around him.
Silence rushed back.
I stepped out from behind the tree, already reaching for the knife at my belt.
The knife slipped in my hand before I took a whole step. My boots skidded. I froze.
Something watched me.
Hair rose along the back of my neck. The skin between my shoulder blades pulled tight. I lifted my head and scanned the trees.
Nothing moved.
The air had changed, though. The wind no longer brought simple cold. Something thicker slid through the branches. Old. Heavy. As if the whole forest held its breath.
“Show yourself,” I said.
My voice sounded thin in the white hush.
No sound came back, but my body did not loosen. I shifted my stance and turned in a circle, arrow nocked again. The stag lay on his side, breath steaming faintly around his muzzle. His eyes had gone dull. Blood spread slowly under his ribs.
Between two thorn bushes, something darker than bark blinked.
Yellow eyes. Low to the ground. Set in a head that came level with my chest, even from that crouched position.
A wolf, I thought. Then the thought broke apart.
Wolves in Northvale did not wear briars for fur.
This one did. Thick coils of thorn wrapped its shoulders and flanks. Its pelt seemed built from shadows and broken branches. Each breath rattled softly, like brambles rubbing together. It stared at me. I stared back.
We both glanced at the stag.
The creature’s lip curled off long, pale teeth.
Guardians near the old house. Wolves made of torn hedges that watched the roads. Mothers told those stories when children refused to stay near the cottage after dark.
My heart pounded hard enough to shake my ribs. I had one arrow ready and four more in the quiver. The ash shaft pulsed against my spine like a heartbeat that was not mine.
If the wolf came for me, I might not walk out. If I let it tear into the stag, my family would starve.
My arms lifted without waiting for my mind. The bowstring kissed my lips. I aimed between those yellow eyes and eased my fingers apart.
The arrow sank into Briar-wolf’s throat.
For a moment, nothing happened. The creature stood there. Eyes wide. Blood welled up around the shaft and soaked into the vines across its chest. Then its legs buckled. It hit the snow, shuddered once, and went still.
The forest seemed to exhale.
Branches swayed. Crows called again. Sound rushed back so fast I staggered.
I lowered the bow. My shoulders shook. I took three deep, slow breaths, then forced my feet to move.
“Sorry,” I muttered as I approached the body. “You picked the wrong hunt.”
Up close, the creature's wrongness grew. Its fur did not lie flat. Every strand ended in a tiny, sharp thorn. Its claws looked more like hooks torn from old rose stems than proper bone. I swallowed and reached for its snout.
My hand stopped a finger’s width from its muzzle. I had never touched a wolf before, real or twisted. The urge to feel the texture of that strange fur pulled hard.
I curled my hand into a fist instead.
“Later,” I told myself. “Work first.”
The stag had lost less blood than I feared. The thorns that had wrapped him had uncoiled and sunk back into the ground, leaving his hide smooth and natural. Whatever magic threaded through this part of the Briarwood did not waste good meat.
For once, the forest and I agreed.
I glanced at the sky again. The light had slid lower. Winter afternoons never lasted long.
“Fast,” I said.
My breath fogged the air as I worked. I bound the stag’s legs with a rope and heaved him over my shoulders. His weight crushed the air from my lungs. My knees bent. I locked them and rose an inch at a time.
Back at the wolf’s side, I hesitated.
Leaving that body in the snow felt wrong. Leaving it whole felt worse. Someone might find it before the forest finishes chewing through it. Someone who still believed that stories and meat never touched.
I knelt and slid the knife along its flank. The hide parted slowly, stubborn under the blade. Thick, dark fur clung to my fingers. Thorns pricked the skin between my knuckles as if they tried to plant themselves there.
By the time I finished, my breath came in sharp bursts, and my gloves looked shredded. I wrapped the pelt and slung it over the stag’s bulk. The added weight nearly drove me to my knees.
“Move,” I growled.
The forest watched.
Each step home tested my legs and temper. Snow slipped under my boots on the downhill stretches and clung around my ankles in drifts. The world narrowed to three simple things. The ache in my shoulders. The beating in my skull. The thought of Mira’s face when she saw this much meat.
At the edge of the Briarwood, the trees opened. The air tasted different near Thornford. Smoke carried from chimneys. Pig stink drifted from pens. The faint sound of a hammer rang from Torren’s forge.
My muscles shook when I reached the first charm tree. A little bundle of twine and bone swung from a low branch. Someone had painted a crude rose in red mud across its bark.
I slipped past it and did not look back.
If the forest had taken offense, it would find me later. Tonight, I won.
My vision blurred around the edges as the village came into view. Thornford crouched in the valley like a handful of stones dropped by a careless giant. Low cottages with sagging roofs. A small hall near the center. The baron’s house, two stories of gray rock and regrets, perched on a rise at the far end.
My boots hit the packed dirt of the main lane. Heads turned.
“By the old gods,” someone breathed.
The sound of my own name rolled through the street. “Sylvi. Sylvi Kerris.”
I did not straighten. The stag’s weight kept me folded, no matter how many eyes followed me.
Torren stepped out from his forge, wiping soot on his apron. His cheeks turned red, half from heat, half from disbelief.
“Where did you find that beast?” he called.
I hitched the stag higher on my shoulders and tried for a shrug. “Forest had one foolish animal left.”
“Guardians will want words with you,” Old Maresk muttered from her doorstep. Her eyes cut toward the Briarwood behind me. Her hair stuck out from beneath her scarf in rough gray wisps. “Trees do not tie thorns to a stag for nothing.”
I pretended not to hear. If I stopped now, my legs might give out and drop me, and the killer would too.
Our cottage sat near the low end of the lane, close to the patch of frozen mud that passed for a typical well. Smoke trickled from our chimney. Thin, but real. Brann had burned more wood than he wanted to admit to keep Mira’s cough from turning deep.
The door opened before I reached it. Mira stood in the frame, hair unbound, cheeks hollow.
Her eyes went wide. “Sylvi.”
I dropped the stag across the table with a heavy thud that rattled every cup and bowl. For a breath, the only sound in the cottage came from the blood that dripped onto the floor.
Brann sat up straighter in his chair. Lines around his mouth eased. He pushed his cane aside and reached for the table, fingers trembling.
“Old gods bless your aim,” he said.
I had no room for a proper answer. My back screamed. My arms shook. Relief and exhaustion tangled until my eyes stung.
Mira threw her arms around my middle. The impact nearly knocked me into the wall.
“You did it,” she whispered. “You did.”
I let myself lean into her for one second. Then I pulled away and reached for a rag.
“Close the door,” I said. “We will not waste daylight.”
While Mira slid the bar and Brann fetched the knives, I glanced at the bundle near the stag’s haunch.
The wolf pelt lay there, dark and heavy. Briars still threaded the fur. Tiny thorns glittered where blood had dried. It looked wrong in our small, poor cottage, like a piece of the forest that refused to stay outside.
Brann followed my gaze. His hand tightened around the knife handle.
“What else did you bring home, girl?” he asked quietly.
I met his eyes. For a heartbeat, I saw the man he had been before the cane, before the bruises on his leg, before debt made his shoulders round.
“A chance,” I said. “Meat now, and money when I sell the hide.”
“And the forest’s anger,” he murmured.
Mira did not hear him. She busied herself with pots and spices, humming under her breath.
I wiped my hands and reached for the wolf pelt.
Its fur felt colder than the air. Thorns pricked my palms, sharp enough to draw beads of blood. As soon as they rose, the briars shifted. The barbs bent, then sank back into the hide, drinking the drops.
I snatched my hands back.
The sting in my palms should have been the only thing I felt. It was not. A low pulse rolled through me, hot and wrong against winter air, as if the briars had brushed more than skin. I hated my body for answering a threat with anything close to curiosity. I hated the flicker of hunger even more.
Brann sucked in a breath.
“I will take it to market,” I said. The words tasted like a dare. “Someone in Eldrave will pay for a thing like this.”
“Someone in Eldrave will want to know where it came from,” he replied.
We stared at each other over the dead animal.
Outside, the wind rose. It howled around the chimney and pressed against the walls. Somewhere in the distance, at the edge of the Briarwood, something answered with a low sound that did not belong to any natural throat.
Mira stirred the pot and pretended not to hear.
I set my jaw and reached for the knife.
Hunger season had drawn its line. I had already stepped over it. The forest would come, sooner or later. When it did, I would not meet it with empty hands.
