The smell hit him first.

Simon had traveled nearly thirty miles since dawn—half of it on foot where the cliffside trail had grown too narrow for his stallion, the other half on horseback once the ground leveled into dense woodland. But even exhaustion couldn’t blunt the stench that rolled thick through the trees: iron, blood, and burning magic.

His horse snorted uneasily, stamping the earth.

“Easy,” Simon muttered, gloved hand brushing its mane. “I smell it too.”

Hunters.

Not the honorable kind, either—the sort who set traps first and asked questions never. Carcasses of smaller forest beasts hung from branches, their bodies pierced with runes not meant for them. And threaded between the trees, barely visible unless one knew what to look for, were iron-wire snares. Iron that sizzled faintly where wild magic brushed it.

Simon’s jaw locked.

He owed the fae too much to let this pass.

More than once he had limped into their hidden markets, bones cracked, skin torn, and they had patched him together with shimmering elixirs and soft, knowing smiles. Their tonics sat in leather-wrapped vials at his hip even now, half the reason he still drew breath after years of demon-slaying.

Iron traps meant for fae were not something he could stomach.

A faint cry—a sound between a gasp and a pained choke—pulled him sharply to the left. Simon dismounted without a thought, sword drawn, boots silent in the pine needles.

He pushed through a thicket and froze.

There, crumpled in a ring of iron spikes and sigils, was a fae woman. Young. Barefoot. Wings slicked with soot, their edges blistered where metal had kissed magic. Her wrists were bound with braided iron, skin burned raw and down to exposed bone in places. She trembled each time the wind moved.

{{user}}.

He recognized her faintly—one of the wandering alchemists who sold him healing draughts in passing; the one who always slipped extra herbs into his purchases “just in case” with a shy smile.

Now she was severely wounded.

Simon stepped into the circle. The iron bit at his own skin with its curse-touched heat, but he didn’t care. He broke the first chain with brute strength; the second he hacked clean with his sword. {{user}} whimpered once, barely conscious, then went still.

“Stay with me,” he said, but her eyes rolled shut, breath shallow.

When he lifted her into his arms, her body was light—too light for someone still living. He carried her out of the trap and straight to his horse, mounting with her cradled against his chest. Her burned skin hissed against the air.

He clicked his tongue, and the stallion launched forward.

Simon didn’t look back at the traps.

He only held {{user}} tighter, vowing under his breath:

“I’ve got you, my lady.”

And he rode—through shadow, through silence, through miles of forest—toward the one sanctuary he knew where fae could be healed.