Free Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) by Phoenix Sullivan

hunter’s stray, escaped from its shackles. Perhaps one of the large pack hounds used to hunt down deer in the northern lands.
    I chose not to be offended by ignorance. I would, however, need to be more careful during my Howling Hour as I’d affectionately come to call it. Already I’d changed my patterns, riding Calannog to the stream only a furlong’s distance from Tris’ clearing. There it was I shifted now rather than at the edge of the woods just beyond the castle’s low walls. Fewer eyes to spot me, fewer ears to hear.
    I had to change my routine regardless. As the first day of tourney approached, the grounds around Whitehaven Castle filled with tents and pavilions, colorful House pennants fluttering gaily to announce each new camp of guests. As the press of men and activity increased, I would have moved completely from the castle were it not for Yseult. For her I endured battling the throngs to meet with her in the private courtyard. Now, though, I not only shifted by the stream but slept by it as well.
    It wasn’t a need for solitude that drove me away. I had grown up part of a pack, wrapped in the many arms of The Wild Hunt. We ate, slept and ran as one. But they were fae and family. I trusted my heart and lives to them.
    Men, on the whole, I still could not trust so deep. Only the four in the courtyard—Yseult, Brangien, Queen Isolde and Tris—had earned that honor. Even if two of them schemed my capture.
    “And where is my hound?” Yseult demanded with mock indignation the day before the start of the tourney. “Are you not men and smarter than a mere beast?”
    “Mere beast?” Tris’ face fell. “My Lady, you wound me. I glimpsed it last evening and it is everything rumored. White coat, red ears and much taller than a wolf. Cannier than one too. It has to be when its prey is not rabbits nor deer nor even sly foxes but men.”
    “You really saw it?” Brangien’s eyes went wide and she leaned eagerly toward Tris.
    Yseult, too, looked rather astonished.
    “I assure you, I’m not given to lies.”
    I hid my smirk behind a cough. Was that Drustan the Harper or Tristan the Nephew of Mark making that claim? Though he did speak truth about having seen the hound. Of that I’d made certain.
    “It appeared from out of a hollow, rising from its rest like a wight from its barrow.”
    Ah, then it was Tris the Storyteller.
    “Were you horsed?” Yseult asked.
    “On foot, looking for tracks. It paused, as though wishing to be seen, and gave me a long look. The sun had already long set and in the gloaming, with no other light about, I saw its eyes sparkle like”—he gave me a sharp look—“like emeralds in starlight.”
    That gave me pause. Eyes of hound and fae had that quality, of course, but did my human eyes? What else of myself was I giving away to him in the night?
    “Aren’t demon eyes red?” Brangien whispered. “Like blood?”
    “Perhaps Gabriel Hounds aren’t demon-spawned after all.” Tris’ gaze remained steady on me. “Perhaps they are the stuff of angels. Just as Gabriel was. And Michael. Avenging guardians, not hounds of Hell.”
    “Did you follow it?” Brangien asked.
    “There was nothing to follow. It melted into twilight and disappeared. The ledge on which it stood was rock. No tracks, no trace. Just gone.”
    “Gone,” Brangien repeated, rapt in his words, by his voice.
    “But not gone.”
    It was my turn to look sharply at Tris.
    “I heard then,” he continued, “its howl trailing as it ran. Deep into the woods it fled where I dared not follow. Not at night by horseback. Not with the risk to a horse such as—” He caught himself. “Such as one lent me only. And so I come today empty-handed. But there’s still tonight.”
    “Bring me another such tale,” Yseult said, “and I’ll be satisfied.”
    “Will I still win the kiss?”
    She laughed. “I will hear the tale first before I decide. Or perhaps Des has a tale too?”
    I shook my head. “None that I may