Hindkin and Huntress: The Giving Year Cycle, #2

By Alexandra Brandt

In the Pictish kingdom of Cait, human stone-carver Eithni and her fey lover, the deer-woman Sable, survive in exile—even if they chafe at the need to hide their true selves from the people of Cenn River. But they know that if Sable's one-time liege, a Lightlord of the fey, finds them here in the mortal realm, his revenge will eclipse anything mere humans could enact ten-fold.

So when gathering winter storms give rise to old superstitions about "The Hunt of the Gods," and the Lady of Cenn River herself commissions a carving depicting the Huntress—an ancient, nearly-forgotten deity...

What seems mere coincidence at first quickly grows into threat. Especially with the appearance of another figure from Sable's hidden past.

Facing an unnatural storm howling through the valley, Eithni and Sable must overcome the secrets between them...
Before the oncoming Hunt sweeps them both away.

 

A sapphic romantasy novella set in Early Medieval Pictland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tangled Sky Press
• Release date: Feb 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224152773

Book preview

Hindkin and Huntress

HINDKIN AND HUNTRESS

THE GIVING YEAR CYCLE

BOOK 2

ALEXANDRA BRANDT

Tangled Sky Press

CONTENTS

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

A Thread of Daylight

Also by Alexandra Brandt

About the Author

EITHNI

The morning held the kind of damp chill that settled heavy on the bones.

Not the sharp, lancing cold of winter on Gull Island, a midwinter morning that still haunted Eithni’s thoughts although she had left it behind six weeks ago. Something altogether more dense here, dull and gray as the patches of wet snow that lingered here and there.

The gray seemed to hang upon the knotted bulk of the surrounding pine trees, falling along with the soft, steady drip, drip of moisture from their needles. Seeping through the dark earth. And from there, into Eithni’s feet, legs, hands, chest.

Eithni understood cold. She was used to it.

But something about this air, these woods, made it weigh on her like a stone.

Perhaps it was simply the unfamiliarity of the land. A reflection of the deeper problem:

Eithni didn’t belong here.

She didn’t belong anywhere.

She’d also stayed too long in this position, arms wrapped around knees by the wavering embers of her fire. Perhaps that was the real reason, a practical reason, for the lingering chill. Eithni suppressed a groan as she stretched painful leg muscles, unused to sitting on the ground for so long.

But she had chosen this, hadn’t she?

She put a hand down to stand up, and her fingers found a palm-sized stone. It was warm from proximity to the fire, and she picked it up, clasping both hands around it, focusing on its faint heat, the scrape of its rough surface on her skin. Granite. Eithni’s stone-carver’s hands could always tell.

Too hard to carve with ease, but solid—even staid—was granite. There seemed to be a lot of it here, in the mountains of Cait. So far from the familiar sandstone of Gull.

But Gull had never really been hers, either.

The clan had made that clear, twice over.

First, in those weeks leading up to Winter Solstice. Every year, the clan sent one of their brightest and best into the cairn of the ancients—as an offering to the gods in exchange for safety and freedom from the rule of King Brude in Fortriu.

Only once or twice every generation did the Door inside the cairn's chamber actually open and draw the human through...but this Solstice had been one of those years. A Taking Year. And the Wise Women had known it would be.

So they had chosen Eithni, who had always been difficult. Different. Unwilling to fit the mold laid out for her.

In such a small clan, she could hardly have hidden her love for Derilei—sweet, blue-eyed Derilei, who had gone on to respectably marry a Gull man and leave Eithni behind. Everyone could pretend they didn't see…but had it been on their minds when they chose Eithni for the ceremony?

Of course.

Then, there was Solstice Day itself.

Seeing no other recourse, Eithni had entered the chamber as was required of her—even though by then she had known what the Gull Clan did not: that the gods were naught but the corrupt and cruel Lightlords of the fey.

She had known this because of the unlikely, unexpected, unsanctioned friendship formed within the cairn itself, formed over seven mornings as the wall between the human world and that of the fey Summer Realm grew thin in preparation for Solstice. When, against the rules, Eithni had spoken through that wall...and Sable, Guardian of the Door, had answered.

And Eithni had learned the truth.

And Sable had fallen in love.

And somehow, for one brief and shining moment on that Solstice morning, the two of them had believed that they could present a joined front, human and fey, because they had just done something magical.

Too caught up in the excitement of defying the Lightlord, perhaps, they had stepped out into the gathered throng of the clan on Winter Solstice and told them what their gods truly were.

The Gull Clan hadn't taken it well.

Had it been the fact that Eithni, ultimately defiant, had refused to step through that door after all? Or had it been what she and Sable had said against the gods the clan relied on, flying in the face of their beliefs? Or had it been the living proof of those things in the form of strange, fey-looking Sable herself?

Had it been the fact that Sable was a female, and that Eithni had dared to hold hands with her before the entirety of the clan?

Any one of those things might have been enough.

All added up to rejection.

Straightening, stone in hand, Eithni closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Sable would be back soon, and didn’t need to see Eithni’s pain.

They had enough to deal with already, the two of them.

The light snap of wood nearby—very near—made her eyes fly open. A delicate tread like that could only mean Sable, moving like the deer she was.

Eithni turned, smiling, and then immediately stiffened.

Barely an arm’s-length away, a strange, leather-clad man slipped through the bracken instead. Auburn-haired, pale of skin, his large build incongruous with the stealthy grace of his movements.

Wait— the stranger raised his hands as Eithni took a step backward, gripping the stone harder. If she threw it, would it make any difference?

Eithni—

She paused, and looked again.

Deep, dark eyes, liquid as a doe’s, rich and brown and soft. Eithni knew those eyes.

Not a man at all.

Sable’s strange new form stepped forward, light and swift. We may have unexpected company coming, she said in a low voice. For now, I’m a man of Cait, and so are you.

Eithni blinked. The stone fell from her fingers, forgotten. "I’m a…what?"

Her own words came out as a low rumble.

Sable gently clasped Eithni’s shoulder and squeezed it, looking behind her significantly. My brother. If it comes to it, don’t talk.

As if Eithni would be able to speak after that.

Her own voice...

She looked down—

—her hands—

Eithni already knew Sable was a master of the uncanny magic called glamour; the fey woman had been masquerading as Eithni’s husband—a proper dark-haired man of the Gull Clan, not this Cait stranger—for weeks now.

But Sable had never glamoured Eithni before, let alone into another man. Eithni hadn’t known she could.

One more strange thing to add to