Rose's Thorns: The Wolf's Prophecy

4

Rose saw a strange light pass between heiress and king, and then a strong sense of urgency, confusion, and danger racked her entire body. The feeling came so swiftly that Rose was momentarily paralyzed by it, and it took her quite a moment to gain her senses. Feeling suddenly ill, she mumbled "excuse me, Father, I'll be going" and hurried towards the open door that leads to the main corridor.

Six months had gone by since the sickness had killed so many, and all there was to go on was a small group of strangers who were at this very moment being welcomed into the castle and led into the fourth-floor meeting room.

If they have anything to do with the man... Rose thought to herself as she quietly followed the hooded figures, I want to know. After she had left the dining hall, she had rushed to one of her many concealed nooks and changed from her evening gown to a pair of more sensible pair of skinny -"un-ladylike" as her sisters would call them- pants. Here, she also changes into a soft cotton button-up shirt. Quickly and quietly she followed the strangers which in turn, were following her sister. Soft green moss grew under Rose's feet and quickly died away as suddenly as it had been conjured, as a way of muffling the sounds of her footfalls.

As it turns out, the moss was also a great way to mute the sound of her tripping over an unseen moving object and falling to the ground. The unknown object swiftly held her still, and when Rose went to open her mouth to cry out, a hand clamped tightly over her mouth. A split-second idea came to her and she hastily drew in a deep breath through her nose and held it in. In seconds, a dim sky-blue light began to fill the corridor and the hand dropped away in shock. Rose exhaled and a glowing vapor escaped from between her lips. The mist lit up her surroundings as it twisted and wrapped itself like smoke in the air so that she could just make out a thin pale face of a... a boy? Yes. A boy who was no younger than Rose herself. Older even. He had sharp bottle-green eyes which widened in surprise as the light curled around them. Oddly enough, Rose felt no fear, only a quick determination to uncover the mystery of why the boy was running around her castle. He clearly was not from the Meadow, as she would have recognized him. As she looked into his green eyes, another feeling pierced its way into Rose's heart. Fear. Desperation. Sadness. These were not her own feelings. This was her empathy. Many people will say it is a gift, but if you ask her, it is a curse. When you cannot tell whether you are afraid, or the prey is afraid, well it makes the hunt a bit more difficult. Rose never was one to hurt an innocent person, and being thirteen years old, nobody would really think she had it in her to disable her enemies, but that was their mistakes had tried her hand in every form of combat and self-defense she could get her hand on. In these trying times, Rose felt her duty to protect the kingdom where it counted, and that was her family. So how this boy had gotten into the castle without any guards knowing was beyond her. But she knew that it was her job to find out. As she shook away all other thoughts and foreign feelings, she had only one question to ask aloud.

"What do you want?" But another wave of the anxiety-filled ache hit her instead.

"Please don't tell them I'm here." a plead. A prayer.

"Please don't tell them I'm here."