The Wild Huntress

by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Genres: YA Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of The Bone Houses and The Drowned Woods comes a thrilling standalone YA fantasy about three unlikely allies bound together in a deadly, magical competition—perfect for fans of Holly Black and Erin A. Craig. 

Every five years, two kingdoms take part in a Wild Hunt. Joining is a bloody risk, and even the most qualified hunters can suffer the deadliest fates. Still, hundreds gamble their lives to participate—all vying for the Hunt’s life-changing prize: a magical wish granted by the Otherking.

BRANWEN possesses a gift no other human has: the ability to see and slay monsters. She’s desperate to cure her mother’s sickness, and the Wild Hunt is her only option.

GWYDION is the least impressive of his magically talented family, but with his ability to control plants and his sleight of hand, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his cruel older brother from becoming a tyrant. 

PRYDERI is prince-born and monster-raised. Deep down, the royal crown doesn’t interest him—all he wants is to know where he belongs. 

A trickster, a prince, and a wild huntress—all in pursuit of the Champion’s prize. If they band together against the monstrous creatures within the woods, they have a chance to win. But nothing is guaranteed. After all, all are fair game in love and the Hunt.

Set in the same world as The Bone Houses and The Drowned Woods but with a whole new, unforgettable cast of characters—The Wild Huntress will have readers hooked from the very first page.

Release date: October 8, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 432

Sample

IT WAS WHISPERED that the otherfolk stole children, but one autumn evening they came for the midwife instead.

She was a slim woman with pale hair and strong hands. A small iron charm hung on a leather cord and rested in the hollow of her collarbones—a ward against magic. One did not live so close to Annwvyn without keeping to the old ways. Which was why the woman hesitated when a stranger knocked thrice at her door. Evenings were dangerous. Magic flourished in moments when the world was in flux: when the sun rose or fell, when seasons shifted, and when the days were at their shortest or longest.

“Yes?” said the midwife, speaking through her door. “Who is it?”

It was a man who answered. “Please. I have need for a midwife.”

Compassion overcame caution, and the midwife unlatched the door.

The man that stood before her was not human. His eyes had the flat pupils of a goat, and his clothes were spun from oak leaves and lichen. He was beautiful and unsettling, and at once the midwife took a step back, her hand going to her iron charm. She knew of the otherfolk, but one had never crossed her path. She was half tempted to shut the door on this magical creature.

“My lady,” said the man of the folk. “Please. My wife is laboring with our child, and I fear I will lose them both.” He looked pained. “I do not have gold, but I promise a favor of equal measure.”

The midwife straightened. This was familiar. She strode back into her home, gathering her supplies. Her own babe, a child of six months, was napping by the fire. The midwife bundled her into a sling and settled the babe against her shoulder. “I have no one to watch her,” said the midwife.

The man nodded. “I will provide safe passage to you both.”

The midwife lived on the edge of the wild country, where the forested mountains of Annwvyn cast shadows across the mortal lands. The man led the midwife past the fields and toward the wood. He moved with the unsettling grace of a deer, finding paths that the midwife would never have seen. She held her babe close, glad that her daughter was a heavy sleeper. Perhaps it would have been safer to remain indoors, to stay where iron and fires drove back the wilds. But she had been a midwife too long to let a mother suffer alone.

The man approached two ancient yew trees. Their branches were woven to form an archway—a living gate.

The gates of Annwvyn.

The man hesitated, casting a glance at the midwife. “While you are within the forest, do not speak your name. Nor your daughter’s. There are those who would remember, and they would have power over you both.”

The midwife hesitated for half a heartbeat. Taking a tighter hold on her daughter, she stepped through the wooded gates.

At first glance, all seemed ordinary. The forest was dusky; small creatures found their way by weak moonlight; owls called out overhead; a creek burbled nearby. But when the midwife glimpsed a bird, its wings glittered as though it had been made of spun gold.

“This way,” said the man. He led her down another unseen path until they came upon a small home. It was tucked in the roots of an old oak tree, and the man made a gesture. The roots moved obligingly, revealing a doorway. The midwife stepped inside.

At once, she smelled the blood. There were two of the folk inside: A very pregnant woman lay on a bedroll, laboring with uneven breaths and sweat staining her moss-green hair. A woman knelt beside her, holding a bandage over the pregnant woman’s shoulder. The bandage was soaked through with half-clotted blood.

“A hunter’s arrow struck my sister,” said the kneeling woman. “The iron—it caused her labor to begin before it should. And none of us can dig out the iron.”

The midwife nodded. This was why one of the otherfolk had sought out a mortal midwife rather than one of their own. She set her own sleeping babe on a table, and then she began to work. The midwife found and removed the arrowhead from the folk woman’s shoulder, but the labor was too far gone to halt. The mother had little breath to cry out. The midwife tried her best to save mother and babe.

Her victory was only half won.

She bore a bloodied child to the table. She cleaned him and made sure the babe could breathe well enough on his own. He was a small thing, with briar-green eyes and wickedly sharp canines. The lad’s father sat beside his still wife, hand in hers. The sister had gone outside to howl her grief to the forest. “What can I do?” asked the midwife quietly.

The man let out a small hiccuped sob. “There is an oil,” he said dully. “The bottle on the shelf, with the green stopper. We anoint all our children with it.”

The midwife found the bottle. The liquid inside was a thick brown, and it smelled herbal and sharp. She touched her fingers to the liquid, then brushed it over the newborn’s brow. The lad blinked up at her, bewildered by the touch. He squealed sharply.

That noise startled the midwife’s young daughter. She let out a surprised sob. Hastily, the midwife went to her child.

But her fingers were still stained with the strange oil.

Unthinking, the midwife touched her child’s right eye, wiping away her tears.

Her daughter’s eyes had been the blue of a summer’s sky—but as the midwife watched, gold flooded through the iris. Gold as the strange birds in the forest. Gold as the late-autumn leaves.

Gold was not for people like the midwife. Gold meant coin or magic. It meant power.

Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the gold faded away. The babe sobbed harder, her face scrunching and chubby fingers rubbing at her right eye. Panicked, the midwife tried to use her sleeve to wipe away any traces of the strange oil, but it was too late.

Behind her, the man drew in a sharp breath. The midwife looked up, suddenly fearful for herself and her child.

“I didn’t mean to,” the midwife said, but the man spoke over her.

“Listen carefully,” said the man of the folk. “You saved the life of my son, and now I shall do the same for your daughter. I will tell no one of what happened, and neither shall you. You both need to leave.”

The midwife picked up her daughter and followed the man through the forest and toward home. When they stepped through the wooded yew gates, the man bowed to her. He reached for the babe, his hand hovering over her. “The trick is not in the seeing,” he murmured. “But in knowing where to look.”

His words made little sense to the midwife. But before she could ask, he returned to Annwvyn.

The midwife dared not chance a look backward until she was home. She locked her door, dragged a chair beneath it, and then placed her sleeping child in her cradle.

Magic had touched her babe, marked her. She knew what happened to those with magic—they were taken by nobles or royals, bound into service. She would not let that happen to her daughter. The midwife yanked the iron charm from around her neck. She stitched that charm into a small cloth and folded it across her babe’s right eye. Then she bound the cloth in place.

She considered leaving her village, to go as far from Annwvyn as she could. But she did not have the coin. Instead, the midwife moved to a home beyond the boundaries of her village, where there were fewer neighbors to watch them. She delivered children and found herbs to ease the pregnancies of her neighbors, all the while keeping an eye on her daughter.

The girl grew up like a weed. She was quiet and watchful, a determined little thing. Her mother told her to always wear the iron-stitched cloth around her eye, and most of the neighbors assumed she had lost her eye in an accident. The midwife told her daughter again and again that she needed to keep her right eye hidden from the world.

And the girl did as she was told.

Until she was seven.

The girl was out in her neighbor’s fields, having been offered a coin to count the lambs born in the night. As she worked, a few strands of sweaty hair snagged in her blindfold. The girl looked around to be sure she was alone, then yanked the cloth away. She knew the tale of what had happened to her eye; her mam had told the girl over firelight, whispering the story. But the girl only half believed it.

She blinked the world into focus, enjoying the early-morning sun on her face.

That was when she caught sight of a man walking along the distant road. Merchants, messengers, and travelers were not an uncommon sight. But this one made her look again. A creature was following the man.

A hound. Long-legged and fearsome, with eyes that glowed like embers. It stalked the man with predatory grace, and the girl’s heartbeat tore into a gallop.

She called out to the distant traveler, warning him. But he merely looked at the girl as if she were telling tales. “There’s no dog,” he shouted back, pulling his cloak tighter around himself. “Go back to your mam, girl.”

“He’s right there,” cried the girl, pointing at the hound. It looked to be a skeletal thing, hungry and gaunt, but again, the man did not seem to see it.

The girl frowned. She raised her iron-stitched blindfold to cover her magicked eye—and the hound vanished from sight. When her hand fell away, the hound reappeared.

The traveler waved the girl off. The hound followed, silent and unseen. As it approached, the world grew unnaturally quiet. The girl shivered and ran back home, not stopping until she was safely behind a locked door, her iron-stitched blindfold firmly in place.

The next day, villagers found the man dead on the road. He had been mauled by some animal, it was whispered, but there were no tracks near his body.

In the following weeks, the girl began to steal moments when she looked at the world with both eyes. It was how she saw the kindly bwbach that lived at her neighbor’s home, helping keep mice and rats from the grain. She saw an aderyn y corph as it soared overhead, casting a long shadow over the fields. She saw the way the otherlands glowed on some nights.

And that was when she understood.

Her left eye saw the world as mortals did; her right eye saw the world as magic.

During the late-summer harvest, the midwife and her daughter went to the village markets. They browsed wares—woven baskets, iron charms, dried seeds. A man played a crwth while a woman sang, and several children danced to the tune. The smell of honeyed cakes and sweet drinks made the girl’s mouth water. She danced with a few other children until sweat trickled down her back. The blindfold itched, and she pulled it up for a moment, scratching at the corner of her eye.

A flicker of movement caught her gaze.

And then she saw the otherfolk.

There were three of them, children all. They darted in and out of the crowd like minnows in a stream. They were taking small treasures from pockets, unknotting cloaks, shoving pebbles into boots. They were folk children playing at mischief, and only the girl could see them.

She tried to turn away, she truly did.

But when one of the folk tried to slip his hand into the girl’s pocket, she seized his wrist. She had only a few coins, and she would not let herself be robbed.

It was a dangerous mistake.

The folk boy looked at her. He had the eyes of a cat, and his hair was red as old blood. “How did you—” he began to say, but then his voice caught. He reached out and pushed the girl’s pale hair aside, revealing her right eye.

“Look!” he said, and the otherfolk children flitted through the crowds. Before anyone could notice, they dragged the girl into an alleyway.

“She’s got an eye like one of us,” said one of the folk, a girl with flowers crowning her head and a voice like a burbling stream. “Did you steal that magic, human girl?”

A second folk boy watched her from a few steps away. He had briar-green eyes and a raspy voice. “She looks like a white crow.”

“We should cut out that eye,” said the first boy. He held a knife made of the fang of an afanc—long and wickedly jagged along one edge.

Cold terror flooded the girl. She was helpless, outnumbered and trapped, with no one near enough to help her. It was the first time she had ever felt such fear.

Fear sharpened into anger, crystallized into action.

The girl slapped the folk boy’s hand away. Tucked into her palm was the iron-stitched cloth. The iron stung the folk boy, and he stumbled back, snarling in agony. The afanc dagger clattered to the ground. The girl seized it, clumsy but determined, and backed away from the otherfolk.

“Try to take my eye,” said the girl, baring her teeth.

The otherfolk hissed, but she had iron in one hand and a knife in the other. The folk retreated.

One of them looked back—the boy with briar-green eyes. “What is your name?” he called.

The girl knew all the tales of Annwvyn. She knew of humans gone missing in the woods, of prophecies, of diviners of magic. And she knew better than to give one of the folk her birth name. She thought of what these folk children had called her.

“I’m a white, thieving crow,” she said flatly. “Call me that, if you are to call me anything.”

The boy flashed a grin. “So be it, Branwen.”

Then the midwife called out to her, rounding the corner. She saw her daughter holding a knife at nothing, and her brows drew tight. Hastily, she took her daughter by the hand and bustled her away. The girl looked over her shoulder and saw the folk watching her with those inhuman eyes.

They would not forget her.

She would not forget them.

She slept with the knife for a week until she went to one of her neighbors. He was an older man, with aches in his joints and a grumble in his voice. But he had served in the cantref’s armies for many years, and his eyes were still sharp.

The girl brought him fresh eggs to sweeten his mood. Then she pulled out the dagger, placing it on his kitchen table. “Can you teach me how to use this?” she asked.

The neighbor picked up the dagger, examining it with a practiced eye. “That’s quite a weapon for a child.”

“I’m seven,” said the girl stubbornly.

He scoffed. “Why do you want to learn?”

The girl thought of the skeletal hound. Of the corpse-bird in the sky. And she thought of hands on her, dragging her into an alley to be threatened with this very knife.

“There are monsters in the mountains,” she said. “And some of them do not stay there.”

He nodded. “Aye. Is that why you’ve come to me? You afeared of monsters?”

The girl shook her head.

The power of monsters was that they could go unseen. Their magic shielded them from sight and sound, so they always struck the first blow.

But the girl had a power all her own. She unbound the iron-stitched blindfold, letting it flutter to the table. The world came into focus. There was an enchantment upon the afanc-fang dagger, a wicked gleam that would cut through anything. Her fingers settled around the hilt.

“The monsters,” she said, “will fear me.”

MONSTERS HAD LITTLE respect for mealtimes.

Branwen crouched behind a thicket of briars. The late-autumn sunlight cast the forest into shades of crimson and gold. The lush scent of sun-warmed blackberries made her stomach clench with hunger.

It had been hours. Perhaps she should give up this hunt and return in the morning. She was reaching for her small lantern when she heard it.

A whisper of leaves. The murmur of a footfall against damp earth.

Branwen swallowed, her tongue suddenly too dry. She touched the knife at her belt. Her bow was at home; the thick undergrowth and close trees ensured that this hunt would need to be at close range.

A woman rounded a bend in the path. Sunlight caught in her red-brown hair. She carried a basket brimming with loaves of bread, apples, and cheeses.

Or so it seemed.

In the immortal lands, one could not trust mortal senses.

Branwen reached up, her fingers alighting on the iron-stitched cloth she wore across her right eye. Quietly, she pulled it free.

And then the world changed.

The forest glittered with unseen power. Branwen blinked several times, waiting for her eye to adjust. Then she looked at the woman. She half expected to see one of the folk: hair woven with vines, inhuman eyes, or too-sharp teeth. It was not unheard of for one of the folk to visit the village wearing the guise of a mortal.

But nothing about the woman changed. Her hair was still a ruddy brown, a flush on her cheeks as she carried her day’s shopping.

It was just a human woman.

Branwen blew out a breath and sat back on her heels. She would wait another hour, then return home. One did not remain in the forests of Annwvyn—even the outskirts—after dark. She slid the blindfold back into place. Using that eye for too long left her with a headache that throbbed through her whole skull, made her flinch away from light and sound. It was best to use her power sparingly.

The traveler continued along the path. There were always a few willing to risk the edges of Annwvyn. Most of the time, they came out unscathed. Some emerged with bloody injuries or enchanted trinkets. And some simply vanished.

A noble, Barwn Ifor, lost his son a few weeks ago, after the young man ventured too near Annwvyn. The hunt to find him had led Branwen to this briar patch and this very ordinary-looking traveler.

The traveler stumbled over a root in the path and grumbled quietly to herself. Sweat beaded on her brow, and she paused, setting down her burden long enough to swipe at her forehead. She knelt beside a stream and cupped one hand, reaching for a drink. Sunlight danced merrily upon the water. It looked so clear and refreshing that Branwen dragged her dry tongue across her lips. It was easy to imagine how sweet that water would taste, how refreshing it would feel against her dirt-smudged fingers. The traveler cupped a handful of water.

And then a hand surged from the stream and seized her.

The woman shrieked. She thrashed like an animal caught in a snare, but the grip was unbreakable. It began to drag her toward the water. She reached for roots, for ferns, for any handhold. But it was a useless struggle, and slowly she was dragged into the stream.

Branwen surged to her feet. Her legs tingled with disuse, and she stumbled as she ducked out from behind the briars.

There were a few charms against magic. Iron was the most common, but to scatter iron into Annwvyn was akin to walking into a prince’s great hall with a cup of poison. It was an insult at best and a declaration of war at worst.

Branwen shoved a hand into her pocket and withdrew a handful of dried gorse. It was less potent than iron, but it would also decay and leave no trace. She tossed the leaves into the water, where they bobbed merrily in the current. One of them touched the hand emerging from the water, and it flinched in pain.

The hand slipped back beneath the waves, and the traveler scurried to the path on hands and knees. When she saw Branwen, she let out a startled noise.

“Run,” snarled Branwen.

The traveler did not need telling twice. Leaving her fallen basket, she rushed up the path. Branwen listened to the thud of footsteps, to the ragged breathing, to those last mortal sounds. And then Branwen was alone with the monster that rose from the water. That stream should have been far too shallow to hide anything larger than a fish or frog. An illusion must have hidden this unseen creature.

Nothing beneath the trees of Annwvyn could be trusted, save for names and oaths.

The woman who stepped from the stream had hair black as obsidian, skin pale as sun-bleached driftwood, and the kind of beauty only glimpsed in paintings. She wore a white gown sodden with creek water. She looked like a maiden spun from magic and tales, just waiting for the right hero to save her from this place.

Branwen inhaled deeply a few times, blowing out each breath in its entirety—the way she prepared to dive beneath choppy waters. Then she pulled a small flask from her belt and tipped it into her mouth. Alcohol burned at the corners of her chapped lips, and she had to resist the instinct to swallow it down.

The corners of the woman’s mouth curved into a gentle smile. She opened her mouth and began to sing. It was as lovely as the rest of her: clear and perfectly pitched. Slow and gentle. The kind of melody that should have rocked babes to sleep.

Branwen dug her nails into her palms. She did not have magic.

She had something far more dangerous—knowledge.

She yanked away the cloth that covered her right eye. And Branwen saw the woman for what she was.

The creature was thin. Her stomach was hollow—not as one who was starving, but the flesh was simply not there. Her torso was all ribs and tattered cloth.

A cyhyraeth. A maiden of bracken, bone, and driftwood. It was whispered that they foretold death with a wailing song.

She was a nightmare. And yet somehow, when Branwen saw the truth of her nature, her song became all the more beautiful.

The creature approached on bare, skeletal feet. Branwen saw something glittering through her torso. A gleam of silver—no, not silver.

Iron.

An iron-tipped arrow had pierced the maiden’s chest and lodged there.

The cold weight of fear dropped into Branwen’s belly. She swallowed instinctively, and a few drops of the spirits slipped down her throat.

Iron was poison to the otherlands and to all those who dwelled within them. It smothered magic, like dirt poured on flames. It could drive monsters to madness. Iron sickness, the folk called it.

And this maiden of death had an arrowhead buried in her chest.

“Sweetling,” whispered the cyhyraeth. The melody was so lovely that it hurt. The song held all the ache of lost loves and faded flowers.

“What is your name, sweetling?” asked the cyhyraeth. Her voice was soothing as the touch of cool fingers against a fevered forehead. It made Branwen yearn to answer, to give this monster the power it needed to destroy her.

There was a cold touch at Branwen’s throat. Fingers that were half-bone and half-branch stroked her skin with such tenderness that a shiver of pleasure ripped through her.

“Tell me your name,” the cyhyraeth crooned. She had hold of Branwen, fingers curled around the young huntress’s throat.

It would have been so simple to tell her. To whisper the word that Branwen had forbidden herself to say. It was a name Branwen had tried to bury, to leave behind with the failings that accompanied it.

The cyhyraeth was so close, and she smelled of oceans and misty nights. It was intoxicating, as easy to slip into as a warm bath.

She opened her mouth—

The cyhyraeth’s song grew sharper, higher, hungrier.

—and Branwen spat her mouthful of spirits into the monster’s face.

The creature recoiled, its jaw gaping wide in a wordless scream.

Branwen’s left hand reached for her lantern, and she swung it upward, catching the cyhyraeth on the edge of her jaw. And this was why Branwen never stilled her tongue with mouthfuls of bread or iron.

Alcohol burned.

The moment the flames touched the strong drink, the cyhyraeth ignited. Fire caught in the wisps of her cobweb hair and the threadbare clothes dragging from her skeletal frame.

Her song sharpened into a screech. The cyhyraeth’s hand flashed toward Branwen’s stomach. Her long nails were jagged as broken barnacles. Branwen leapt back, but those nails sliced through the loose fabric of her tunic. It parted, a few threads fluttering through the air.

The cyhyraeth shrieked again, pressing her advantage. Branwen stumbled. Her feet were on damp, uneven ground, and this creature was swift as a fish in water. The fire guttered in the cyhyraeth’s damp hair.

Fighting back a surge of fear, Branwen ducked and rolled away, reaching into her pocket. When she came up, she threw another handful of gorse leaves into the cyhyraeth’s face.

But the cyhyraeth was too swift. She ducked beneath the flutter of leaves, her mouth pulled back into a snarl. Her teeth were jagged chips of river rocks and a terrible light burned in her eyes. Before Branwen could swing her knife, the creature had her by the throat again. She felt the wind gusting out of her as she slammed into the hard ground. Creek pebbles dug into her back. Her hand was pinned beneath her, knife sinking into the ground. She dared not thrash, not with her own blade pressed flat against her back.

The cyhyraeth hissed, her slender fingers tight around Branwen’s throat. “What are you? A mortal with a fang in her hand and fire in her mouth?” Even those hissing words had the cadence of a song. “The iron-blooded should know better than to touch our lands, our streams.”

“You’ve iron in you, too,” gasped Branwen. Her gaze flicked down to the arrow embedded in the creature’s torso.

“Iron, iron, iron,” sang the cyhyraeth. “It burns in our bones, sings in our veins. We used to fear it, you know, but now it’s in the streams, in the rains, in the trees. We will never escape it—and so, we shall drown the ones who made it. A young man came into the forest looking for legends and glory, but all he brought was iron.”

The barwn’s son. He must have been the one to fire the arrow.

“Let me take it from you.” Branwen rasped out the words; she had one hand around the cyhyraeth’s wrist, and the other was twisted beneath her. Her heartbeat throbbed in her temples as the cyhyraeth squeezed her throat. Every time she blinked, the cyhyraeth’s visage shifted. First, she saw the creature with her mortal eye—beautiful, cold as a starlit night—and then her right eye focused on the monster—bone and sinew, river and murk. “I will free you from the iron if you tell me where to find the one who shot you.”

“Take it?” The cyhyraeth’s grip tightened, and Branwen could barely hold back the animal panic of suffocation. “You offer mercy with a blade in your hand.”

“You’re—a—monster.” It took the last of Branwen’s breath to utter the words.

The cyhyraeth leaned in closer. “Want to know a secret, mortal girl?” Her voice softened, losing its giddy ire. She sounded suddenly, terribly lucid. “I may be a monster, but you are the most dangerous creature in this forest.”

Branwen went limp.

The cyhyraeth loosened her hold, satisfied she had wrung the life from the mortal. But as her bony fingers slackened, Branwen bucked like a startled horse. She twisted, wrenching her arm out from beneath her, and drove the afanc-tooth dagger up. She cut the creature from pelvis to collarbone, shattering ribs and driftwood.

The cyhyraeth screeched. She pulled back, retreating into herself, but the damage had been done.

The cyhyraeth died like a pitiful spider: thin limbs pulled tight, her body drawn up, suddenly so much smaller than before. Only once she had gone utterly still did Branwen sheath her dagger and slump into a crouch. Her throat burned, and she could feel bruises forming on her back.

I may be a monster, but you are the most dangerous creature in this forest.

Some hunts let Branwen sleep better at night… while others gave her nightmares.

This would likely be the latter.

Branwen nudged the creature over. Wincing, she shoved her hand into the creature’s ribs and withdrew the metal arrow tip. She tucked it into her pocket. The ironfetches—humans tasked by the otherfolk to seek out and remove iron—would have found this arrow eventually. But Branwen might as well save them the trouble.

She picked up her lantern. The fire had gone out, candle fallen into the damp earth. Her cloak was stained with mud, and she smelled like burning driftwood.

All she wanted was a meal and a bath. But her job wasn’t done, not yet.

Branwen carefully picked her way down the embankment. Without the cyhyraeth’s magic to enchant the water. . .