“Yes. Cade immediately blamed the satyr, of course. He claimed one of their cathclaws could have killed the boar.”

  Remembering his words still made Lowen quicken with quiet fury. Her grandmother reached across to pat the back of her right hand.

  “You must forgive their ignorance,” she said. “It is all they know.”

  “But why?” Lowen’s tone was harsher than she had intended. “We share Nymed with the satyr. Our chieftains meet regularly. Why do the Scrat still believe the satyr are to be feared?”

  Koth Conwen took another drink, carefully studying Lowen’s face over the rim of the cup. “What do you know about the Night of Blood’s Kiss? Have you ever spoken about it with Nicanor?”

  “No. In truth, I do not like to think about it.”

  The Night of Blood’s Kiss was the bloody culmination of the Waste Wars. After Lord Dewer was successfully driven from their lands, the satyr became wild, their minds broken by war. On the Night of Blood’s Kiss, they crept into Kree and carried several Scrat away while the rest of the village slept.

  Horrific stories of the Scrat’s fate soon reached the towns and cities of Joria, only confirming what many already privately thought: these otherworldly beings with their large glossy hooves—heavy enough to split a man’s skull with a single kick—their terrible height, and their wickedly sharp, spiralling horns, were nothing but animals. Beasts full of rage and barely disguised lust, as civilised as the giant cats they bred for hunting companions.

  “Do you really still believe those stories, with all that you know now?” Conwen asked.

  Lowen thought for a moment before slowly shaking her head.

  “Much of that so-called history is utter nonsense.” Flecks of spittle shot from the old woman’s mouth as she drew herself up in her chair, anger colouring her paper-white cheeks. “It’s true the satyr went a little wild after the war, but Scrat and satyr both were mourning the children they jointly sacrificed to keep them from Lord Dewer. The satyr took to running through the forest in what they called a funeral stampede, whining and bellowing all the while, scaring the very birds from the trees. That was how they coped. The Scrat understood their grief intimately and respected their traditions, yet I think the first seeds of rumour about the satyrs’ feral natures were sown then. Can you imagine being a traveller, traversing the main road through Nymed on the way to Armoria or Jonick, and coming across a herd of stampeding, wailing satyr? If you were of a simple mind and had no understanding of what you were seeing, you could spin it into any fanciful tale you wished.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “But what about their attacks on the Scrat? Was that a fanciful tale?”

  “That part, sadly, has a touch more truth to it.”

  Conwen’s shoulders slumped a little, the minute movement prompting the blanket to slip from her knees. She grasped the edge and held it still, her fingers curled into the wool.

  “There was a ringleader amongst the satyr, and he was very much in love with a young Scrat man. After the Waste Wars and the terrible sacrifices made to end them, the chieftains of each tribe made it law that Scrat and satyr were forbidden to lie with one another. They were not to seek a romantic relationship of any kind. This satyr ringleader took more bitter exception to the new laws than most. He gathered similarly stricken satyr together and plotted to kidnap their Scrat beloveds. This they succeeded in doing, in what the Scrat viewed as an unprovoked raid. In the dead of night one fine summer’s evening, they dragged their lovers away. Some went voluntarily, I might add. The story became twisted, retold and abused, until that night became the Night of Blood’s Kiss, as you are taught now.”

  “It is quite unbelievable what time can do to the truth,” Lowen said.

  “No, it’s very believable. Joria has always suffered from an unholy profusion of hateful bastards. Perhaps now you can see why it was so dangerous for Nicanor to come here. The Wild Scrat, particularly those who have not seen the world beyond this forest, believe the satyrs’ ancestors are guilty of kidnapping and rape.”

  Lowen sighed heavily, allowing herself to sink into a thick silence punctuated only by the snapping of the fire and Koth Conwen’s lusty swallows of blackberry mead. When she looked up her grandmother was watching her again, her head slightly inclined.

  “There is something else, my child,” she said slowly. “Something you have yet to tell me. What happened while you and Jenifer were hunting?”

  “How is it you always know these things?”

  “Do I bristle with a secret magick? Or do I simply know you well enough to spot trouble in your eyes, I wonder?” She was smiling gently, but it died on her lips when Lowen spoke again.

  “I have seen the keening wraiths.”

  “You mean, you heard them? Or you glimpsed them through the trees?”

  “We heard them, both Jenifer and I together.” Lowen suddenly yearned for her own cup of blackberry mead. “We heard their dreadful, wailing song, and we tried to escape it. We ran all night until I thought my legs would fail.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as her grandmother’s eyes grew large. “It was not enough.”

  Shadows fraying at the corners of the hut gathered closer as Lowen recalled the hag’s grasping claws and stretched-thin faces. The morning sunlight dulled, edged with a bitter, creeping chill.

  “We came upon their lake. It was a sight I will never be able to purge from my memory. They turned and looked straight at me, straight through me, to the child in my belly. They knew me. They knew my name, Grandmother.”

  Lowen shuddered, gripping the arms of the chair as she sought to draw some measure of strength from their solid, familiar surface.

  “They called to me. They wanted me to join them, to go down into that cold, black water. Is this child inside me an evil thing? Should I be bound in the wraiths’ bloody sheet, every bone in my body broken? Drowned, and my unborn child along with me? Is that what is best?”

  Koth Conwen drained her cup of mead and held it out for Lowen to refill, which she did with shaking hands. After a further long swallow, the old woman finally spoke.