Sunrise had come and gone by the time Magnai stole the faerie out of his cot, but it wasn't as if Briar had any way of knowing that. The grounds were still cool and misty with the early morning, colder still underneath the dense canopy of the trees beyond. With the moon fat in the sky, time had given Magnai all he needed when it came to the question of revenge -- no, that was too emotional a word for what he had planned. Discipline was better. Correction.
The castle was rife with warnings to not venture out after dark and the varcolac himself was but one reason for them. Magnai hadn't even washed the night's hunt from himself before he dragged Briar out of the Undercroft; even if the brat was blinded by magic he would smell the copper tang, the lingering must of damp fur in the air and know who'd come for him. Magnai didn't say a word to any demands or questions to help in that regard, not until he had the boy stripped and disoriented, a mile out into the forest. Find your way back to Krovs, he'd said, and consider yourself free from any further retaliation. Then he'd left him there. Magnai had leisurely found himself a stream to wash in, relaxed in the distance from the castle. When he quietly went off to track the Seelie down again, the alpha found he'd barely moved from where he'd left him.
That had been hours ago. Magnai had watched Briar stumbling over gnarled roots with his bare feet, trembling hard enough for it to be more fear than cold, not so long before the panicky breaths had dissolved into outright tears. Even when the slave nearly tripped over the remains of another wolf's kill from the night before (only venison this, no unlucky roaming man), Magnai didn't interfere. The fear was the point, after all. The master kept enough of a distance and stalked after his quarry, silent and steady, gauging the right moment to make himself known once more.
