He, like me, was too young to remember when the sidhe still had their shining horses. We had only had stories before this moment.
The circle of nightflyers parted and Rhys and Galen both reached upward, as if it were planned. The white shapes above us reached out toward them. Galen's reach was longer, so the horse that formed for him was as white and pure as mine. It turned flashing eyes that glowed golden to my red. There was no smoke from this one's nostrils, and the sparks from the hooves were as golden as its eyes. Only the size and the sense of strength let me know that they were kin.
Rhys's hand also brought a white horse, but it was like an illusion, or a trick of the eye. One moment white and solid and very real, the next skeletal, like the proverbial steed of death.
Rhys spoke quietly and happily as he rubbed its nose. He spoke in Welsh, but a dialect I could barely follow. I could understand that he was happy to see the horse, and that it had been too long.
Galen touched his horse, as if he were certain that it would vanish, but it didn't. It butted him gently in the shoulder, and made a high, happy whinny. Galen smiled, because you couldn't help but smile at that sound.
Sholto held Gran's body out to Galen, and he took her gently in his arms. His smile was gone, and there was nothing but sorrow. I let him have the sorrow, let him grieve for me, because my own grief could wait; tonight there would be blood.
A shape from above touched Sholto's shoulder, as if it could not wait for him to touch it, like an overeager lover. The moment it touched him, it formed into something white and shining, but it was not exactly a horse. It was as if the great white steed had mingled with a nightflyer, so that there were more legs than any horse would have, though one graceful head rose from strong shoulders. Its eyes were the empty black of the nightflyers that had begun to sing around us. Yes, sing, in high, almost childlike voices, as if bats could sing as they flew above your head. I knew in that moment that my power had changed what this hunt would be. I was not sluagh, nor pure Unseelie, and though we would be terrible and we would bring vengeance, we would come on the songs of the nightflyers. We would come shining from the sky, and until the vengeance was done nothing could stand against us. The mistake last time had been not giving the hunt a purpose, but that mistake would not be made tonight. I knew who we hunted, and I had spoken her crime. Until she was hunted to ground, no power in faerie or mortal lands could withstand us.
Sholto lifted me to sit on the horse with its red, glowing eyes. He mounted his own many-legged steed. The nightflyers' song became a chant of words so ancient that I could feel more of the building fall away just from the sound of it. Reality tore around us, and I spoke the words, "We ride."
Sholto said, "We hunt."
I nodded, wrapping my fingers in the horse's thick mane. "We fly," I said, and kicked my bare heels into her flanks. She leaped forward into the empty night beyond. I should have been afraid. I should have doubted that a horse without wings could fly, but I didn't. I knew she would fly. I knew what we were, and the wild hunt, hunts from the air.
The mare's hooves did not so much strike the air as simply run on it. Her hooves flared with green flame at each step, as if the empty air were a road that only she could see. Sholto rode at my side, on his many-legged stallion. The nightflyers spilled around us, still shining, still singing. But it was what followed in our wake that would make the humans turn away, and hide inside their houses. They would not know why, they would simply turn away. They would think our passing the cry of wild birds, or wind.
We rode in a shine of white and magic, and dark dreams flowed in our wake.
Chapter Six
The mare moved under me, her fiery hooves eating up the distance. The muscles in her back and the feel of her mane in my hands were real, and solid, but the rest of it... the rest of it was dreamlike. I wasn't certain if the feeling of unreality was what it would have always been to ride with the hunt, if it was the shock of all that had happened, or if it was my mind's way of protecting me from sights that should have destroyed my mortal mind.
Sholto moved up beside me on his own pale horse. His hair flowed behind him like a shining cloak, all white with hints of yellow, as if bits of sunlight were held in his hair, as if that hot, yellow light could be ensnared in the pale beauty of his hair.
The February cold pressed around us, caressing my bare arms and feet, but my breath did not fog in the cold. My skin did not chill. It was as if the cold were a sensation, but it had no power over me. The smoke that flared from my mare's nostrils wasn't from the cold. I remembered tales of horses in the wild hunt with flaming eyes and hellfire spilling from their nose and mouth. We could have been riding true nightmares, black and full of fire and terror, but something about my magic had turned the hunt ever so slightly to something a little less automatically frightening.
If you saw black horses that breathed fire riding down on you, you'd be convinced of evil intent, but if you saw white horses spilling toward you, even with eyes that glowed, and a little green fire at the hooves, would you automatically assume evil, or would you pause and marvel at the beauty? We rode the sky as if the Milky Way had brightened and turned into beings that could flow and travel the darkness.
I looked behind us, and found that there were other horses, barebacked, riderless, but spilling like seafoam at our backs. There were also hounds, white with red marks, like all faerie hounds, except that these had glowing eyes, and they were bulkier than the slim ones that had come to my hand only a few weeks ago. Those had looked more like greyhounds, but not these dogs. These were huge mastiffs, except for their colors, and they glowed against the darkness like some white ghost dotted with glowing red, like spilled blood across the purity of their coats.
The name for them came to me, with a scent of roses and herbs. Hounds of the Blood, they were hounds of the blood. Bloodhounds were named not for their bloodthirstiness, but for the fact that they were once only owned by nobles — noble blood. But the hounds that rode at our backs, that began to spill around the legs of the horses, were named blood for other reasons. They rode only for blood, and the gentleness of bloodhounds was not something that this pack would understand. That knowledge filled me with a fierce pleasure.